providence

• providence

76:6.4And thus ends the story of the Plan­e­tary Adam and Eve of Uran­tia, a story of trial, tragedy, and tri­umph, at least per­sonal tri­umph for your well-mean­ing but de­luded Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter and un­doubt­edly, in the end, a story of ul­ti­mate tri­umph for their world and its re­bel­lion-tossed and evil-ha­rassed in­hab­i­tants. When all is summed up, Adam and Eve made a mighty con­tri­bu­tion to the speedy civ­i­liza­tion and ac­cel­er­ated bi­o­logic prog­ress of the hu­man race. They left a great cul­ture on earth, but it was not pos­si­ble for such an ad­vanced civ­i­liza­tion to sur­vive in the face of the early di­lu­tion and the even­tual sub­mer­gence of the Adamic in­her­i­tance. It is the peo­ple who make a civ­i­liza­tion; civ­i­liza­tion does not make the peo­ple.

118:10.1Prov­i­dence does not mean that God has de­cided all things for us and in ad­vance. God loves us too much to do that, for that would be noth­ing short of cos­mic tyranny. Man does have rel­a­tive pow­ers of choice. Nei­ther is the di­vine love that short­sighted af­fec­tion which would pam­per and spoil the chil­dren of men.

118:10.2The Fa­ther, Son, and Spirit—as the Trin­ity—are not the Al­mighty Su­preme, but the su­prem­acy of the Al­mighty can never be man­i­fest with­out them. The growth of the Al­mighty is cen­tered on the Ab­so­lutes of ac­tu­al­ity and pred­i­cated on the Ab­so­lutes of po­ten­tial­ity. But the func­tions of the Al­mighty Su­preme are re­lated to the func­tions of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity.

118:10.3It would ap­pear that, in the Su­preme Be­ing, all phases of uni­verse ac­tiv­ity are be­ing par­tially re­united by the per­son­al­ity of this ex­pe­ri­en­tial De­ity. When, there­fore, we de­sire to view the Trin­ity as one God, and if we limit this con­cept to the pres­ent known and or­ga­nized grand uni­verse, we dis­cover that the evolv­ing Su­preme Be­ing is the par­tial por­trai­ture of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity. And we fur­ther find that this Su­preme De­ity is evolv­ing as the per­son­al­ity syn­the­sis of fi­nite mat­ter, mind, and spirit in the grand uni­verse.

118:10.4The Gods have at­tri­butes but the Trin­ity has func­tions, and like the Trin­ity, prov­i­dence is a func­tion, the com­pos­ite of the other-than-per­sonal over­con­trol of the uni­verse of uni­verses, ex­tend­ing from the evo­lu­tion­ary lev­els of the Sev­en­fold syn­the­siz­ing in the power of the Al­mighty on up through the tran­scen­den­tal realms of the Ul­ti­macy of De­ity.

118:10.5God loves each crea­ture as a child, and that love over­shad­ows each crea­ture through­out all time and eter­nity. Prov­i­dence func­tions with re­gard to the to­tal and deals with the func­tion of any crea­ture as such func­tion is re­lated to the to­tal. Prov­i­den­tial in­ter­ven­tion with re­gard to any be­ing is in­dica­tive of the im­por­tance of the func­tion of that be­ing as con­cerns the evo­lu­tion­ary growth of some to­tal; such to­tal may be the to­tal race, the to­tal na­tion, the to­tal planet, or even a higher to­tal. It is the im­por­tance of the func­tion of the crea­ture that oc­ca­sions prov­i­den­tial in­ter­ven­tion, not the im­por­tance of the crea­ture as a per­son.

118:10.6Nev­er­the­less, the Fa­ther as a per­son may at any time in­ter­pose a fa­therly hand in the stream of cos­mic events all in ac­cor­dance with the will of God and in con­so­nance with the wis­dom of God and as mo­ti­vated by the love of God.

118:10.7But what man calls prov­i­dence is all too of­ten the prod­uct of his own imag­i­na­tion, the for­tu­itous jux­ta­po­si­tion of the cir­cum­stances of chance. There is, how­ever, a real and emerg­ing prov­i­dence in the fi­nite realm of uni­verse ex­is­tence, a true and ac­tu­al­iz­ing cor­re­la­tion of the en­er­gies of space, the mo­tions of time, the thoughts of in­tel­lect, the ide­als of char­ac­ter, the de­sires of spir­i­tual na­tures, and the pur­po­sive vo­li­tional acts of evolv­ing per­son­al­i­ties. The cir­cum­stances of the ma­te­rial realms find fi­nal fi­nite in­te­gra­tion in the in­ter­lock­ing pres­ences of the Su­preme and the Ul­ti­mate.

118:10.8As the mech­a­nisms of the grand uni­verse are per­fected to a point of fi­nal pre­ci­sion through the over­con­trol of mind, and as crea­ture mind as­cends to the per­fec­tion of di­vin­ity at­tain­ment through per­fected in­te­gra­tion with spirit, and as the Su­preme con­se­quently emerges as an ac­tual uni­fier of all these uni­verse phe­nom­ena, so does prov­i­dence be­come in­creas­ingly dis­cern­i­ble.

118:10.9Some of the amaz­ingly for­tu­itous con­di­tions oc­ca­sion­ally pre­vail­ing on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds may be due to the grad­u­ally emerg­ing pres­ence of the Su­preme, the fore­tast­ing of his fu­ture uni­verse ac­tiv­i­ties. Most of what a mor­tal would call prov­i­den­tial is not; his judg­ment of such mat­ters is very hand­i­capped by lack of far­sighted vi­sion into the true mean­ings of the cir­cum­stances of life. Much of what a mor­tal would call good luck might re­ally be bad luck; the smile of for­tune that be­stows un­earned leisure and un­de­served wealth may be the great­est of hu­man af­flic­tions; the ap­par­ent cru­elty of a per­verse fate that heaps tribu­la­tion upon some suf­fer­ing mor­tal may in re­al­ity be the tem­per­ing fire that is trans­mut­ing the soft iron of im­ma­ture per­son­al­ity into the tem­pered steel of real char­ac­ter.

118:10.10There is a prov­i­dence in the evolv­ing uni­verses, and it can be dis­cov­ered by crea­tures to just the ex­tent that they have at­tained ca­pac­ity to per­ceive the pur­pose of the evolv­ing uni­verses. Com­plete ca­pac­ity to dis­cern uni­verse pur­poses equals the evo­lu­tion­ary com­ple­tion of the crea­ture and may oth­er­wise be ex­pressed as the at­tain­ment of the Su­preme within the lim­its of the pres­ent state of the in­com­plete uni­verses.

118:10.11The love of the Fa­ther op­er­ates di­rectly in the heart of the in­di­vid­ual, in­de­pen­dent of the ac­tions or re­ac­tions of all other in­di­vid­u­als; the re­la­tion­ship is per­sonal—man and God. The im­per­sonal pres­ence of De­ity (Al­mighty Su­preme and Par­a­dise Trin­ity) man­i­fests re­gard for the whole, not for the part. The prov­i­dence of the over­con­trol of Su­prem­acy be­comes in­creas­ingly ap­par­ent as the suc­ces­sive parts of the uni­verse pro­gress in the at­tain­ment of fi­nite des­tinies. As the sys­tems, con­stel­la­tions, uni­verses, and super­uni­verses be­come set­tled in light and life, the Su­preme in­creas­ingly emerges as the mean­ing­ful cor­re­la­tor of all that is tran­spir­ing, while the Ul­ti­mate grad­u­ally emerges as the tran­scen­den­tal uni­fier of all things.

118:10.12In the be­gin­nings on an evo­lu­tion­ary world the nat­u­ral oc­cur­rences of the ma­te­rial or­der and the per­sonal de­sires of hu­man be­ings of­ten ap­pear to be an­tag­o­nis­tic. Much that takes place on an evolv­ing world is rather hard for mor­tal man to un­der­stand—nat­u­ral law is so of­ten ap­par­ently cruel, heart­less, and in­dif­fer­ent to all that is true, beau­ti­ful, and good in hu­man com­pre­hen­sion. But as hu­man­ity pro­gresses in plan­e­tary de­vel­op­ment, we ob­serve that this view­point is mod­i­fied by the fol­low­ing fac­tors:

118:10.131. Man’s aug­ment­ing vi­sion—his in­creased un­der­stand­ing of the world in which he lives; his en­larg­ing ca­pac­ity for the com­pre­hen­sion of the ma­te­rial facts of time, the mean­ing­ful ideas of thought, and the valu­able ide­als of spir­i­tual in­sight. As long as men mea­sure only by the yard­stick of the things of a phys­i­cal na­ture, they can never hope to find unity in time and space.

118:10.142. Man’s in­creas­ing con­trol—the grad­ual ac­cu­mu­la­tion of the knowl­edge of the laws of the ma­te­rial world, the pur­poses of spir­i­tual ex­is­tence, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the philo­sophic co-or­di­na­tion of these two re­al­i­ties. Man, the sav­age, was help­less be­fore the on­slaughts of nat­u­ral forces, was slav­ish be­fore the cruel mas­tery of his own in­ner fears. Semi­civ­i­lized man is be­gin­ning to un­lock the store­house of the se­crets of the nat­u­ral realms, and his sci­ence is slowly but ef­fec­tively de­stroy­ing his su­per­sti­tions while at the same time pro­vid­ing a new and en­larged fac­tual ba­sis for the com­pre­hen­sion of the mean­ings of phi­los­o­phy and the val­ues of true spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Man, the civ­i­lized, will some­day achieve rel­a­tive mas­tery of the phys­i­cal forces of his planet; the love of God in his heart will be ef­fec­tively out­poured as love for his fel­low men, while the val­ues of hu­man ex­is­tence will be near­ing the lim­its of mor­tal ca­pac­ity.

118:10.153. Man’s uni­verse in­te­gra­tion—the in­crease of hu­man in­sight plus the in­crease of hu­man ex­pe­ri­en­tial achieve­ment brings him into closer har­mony with the uni­fy­ing pres­ences of Su­prem­acy—Par­a­dise Trin­ity and Su­preme Be­ing. And this is what es­tab­lishes the sov­er­eignty of the Su­preme on the worlds long set­tled in light and life. Such ad­vanced plan­ets are in­deed po­ems of har­mony, pic­tures of the beauty of achieved good­ness at­tained through the pur­suit of cos­mic truth. And if such things can hap­pen to a planet, then even greater things can hap­pen to a sys­tem and the larger units of the grand uni­verse as they too achieve a set­tled­ness in­di­cat­ing the ex­haus­tion of the po­ten­tials for fi­nite growth.

118:10.16On a planet of this ad­vanced or­der, prov­i­dence has be­come an ac­tu­al­ity, the cir­cum­stances of life are cor­re­lated, but this is not only be­cause man has come to dom­i­nate the ma­te­rial prob­lems of his world; it is also be­cause he has be­gun to live ac­cord­ing to the trend of the uni­verses; he is fol­low­ing the path­way of Su­prem­acy to the at­tain­ment of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

118:10.17The king­dom of God is in the hearts of men, and when this king­dom be­comes ac­tual in the heart of ev­ery in­di­vid­ual on a world, then God’s rule has be­come ac­tual on that planet; and this is the at­tained sov­er­eignty of the Su­preme Be­ing.

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

118:10.19Prov­i­dence be­comes in­creas­ingly dis­cern­i­ble as men reach up­ward from the ma­te­rial to the spir­i­tual. The at­tain­ment of com­pleted spir­i­tual in­sight en­ables the as­cend­ing per­son­al­ity to de­tect har­mony in what was thereto­fore chaos. Even mor­ontia mota rep­re­sents a real ad­vance in this di­rec­tion.

118:10.20Prov­i­dence is in part the over­con­trol of the in­com­plete Su­preme man­i­fested in the in­com­plete uni­verses, and it must there­fore ever be:

118:10.211. Par­tial—due to the in­com­plete­ness of the ac­tu­al­iza­tion of the Su­preme Be­ing, and

118:10.222. Un­pre­dictable—due to the fluc­tu­a­tions in crea­ture at­ti­tude, which ever varies from level to level, thus caus­ing ap­par­ently vari­able re­cip­ro­cal re­sponse in the Su­preme.

118:10.23When men pray for prov­i­den­tial in­ter­ven­tion in the cir­cum­stances of life, many times the an­swer to their prayer is their own changed at­ti­tudes to­ward life. But prov­i­dence is not whim­si­cal, nei­ther is it fan­tas­tic nor mag­i­cal. It is the slow and sure emer­gence of the mighty sov­er­eign of the fi­nite uni­verses, whose ma­jes­tic pres­ence the evolv­ing crea­tures oc­ca­sion­ally de­tect in their uni­verse pro­gres­sions. Prov­i­dence is the sure and cer­tain march of the galax­ies of space and the per­son­al­i­ties of time to­ward the goals of eter­nity, first in the Su­preme, then in the Ul­ti­mate, and per­haps in the Ab­so­lute. And in in­fin­ity we be­lieve there is the same prov­i­dence, and this is the will, the ac­tions, the pur­pose of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity thus mo­ti­vat­ing the cos­mic pan­o­rama of uni­verses upon uni­verses.

118:10.24[Spon­sored by a Mighty Mes­sen­ger tem­porar­ily so­journ­ing on Uran­tia.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4:1.10There is also an or­ganic unity in the uni­verses of time and space which seems to un­der­lie the whole fab­ric of cos­mic events. This liv­ing pres­ence of the evolv­ing Su­preme Be­ing, this Im­ma­nence of the Pro­jected In­com­plete, is in­ex­pli­ca­bly man­i­fested ever and anon by what ap­pears to be an amaz­ingly for­tu­itous co-or­di­na­tion of ap­par­ently un­re­lated uni­verse hap­pen­ings. This must be the func­tion of Prov­i­dence—the realm of the Su­preme Be­ing and the Con­joint Ac­tor.

9:1.3While you en­vis­age the Fa­ther as an orig­i­nal cre­ator and the Son as a spir­i­tual ad­min­is­tra­tor, you should think of the Third Source and Cen­ter as a uni­ver­sal co-or­di­na­tor, a min­is­ter of un­lim­ited co-op­er­a­tion. The Con­joint Ac­tor is the cor­re­la­tor of all ac­tual re­al­ity; he is the De­ity re­pos­i­tory of the Fa­ther’s thought and the Son’s word and in ac­tion is eter­nally re­gard­ful of the ma­te­rial ab­so­lute­ness of the cen­tral Isle. The Par­a­dise Trin­ity has or­dained the uni­ver­sal or­der of prog­ress, and the prov­i­dence of God is the do­main of the Con­joint Cre­ator and the evolv­ing Su­preme Be­ing. No ac­tual or ac­tu­al­iz­ing re­al­ity can es­cape even­tual re­la­tion­ship with the Third Source and Cen­ter.

97:8.5All mod­ern re­li­gions have se­ri­ously blun­dered in the at­tempt to put a mirac­u­lous in­ter­pre­ta­tion on cer­tain epochs of hu­man his­tory. While it is true that God has many times thrust a Fa­ther’s hand of prov­i­den­tial in­ter­ven­tion into the stream of hu­man af­fairs, it is a mis­take to re­gard the­o­logic dog­mas and re­li­gious su­per­sti­tion as a super­nat­u­ral sed­i­men­ta­tion ap­pear­ing by mirac­u­lous ac­tion in this stream of hu­man his­tory. The fact that the “Most Highs rule in the king­doms of men” does not con­vert sec­u­lar his­tory into so-called sa­cred his­tory.

• shamans viewed as custodians of p.

90:2.10In many ways and by de­vi­ous meth­ods the olden shamans es­tab­lished their rep­u­ta­tions as voices of God and cus­to­di­ans of prov­i­dence. They sprin­kled the new­born with wa­ter and con­ferred names upon them; they cir­cum­cised the males. They pre­sided over all burial cer­e­monies and made due an­nounce­ment of the safe ar­rival of the dead in spir­it­land.

• Jews derived concept from Egyptians

95:2.1The orig­i­nal Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ings re­ally took their deep­est root in Egypt, from where they sub­se­quently spread to Eu­rope. The evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion of the Nile val­ley was pe­ri­od­i­cally aug­mented by the ar­rival of su­pe­rior strains of Nod­ite, Adamite, and later And­ite peo­ples of the Eu­phrates val­ley. From time to time, many of the Egyp­tian civil ad­min­is­tra­tors were Sume­ri­ans. As In­dia in these days har­bored the high­est mix­ture of the world races, so Egypt fos­tered the most thor­oughly blended type of re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy to be found on Uran­tia, and from the Nile val­ley it spread to many parts of the world. The Jews re­ceived much of their idea of the cre­ation of the world from the Baby­lo­ni­ans, but they de­rived the con­cept of di­vine Prov­i­dence from the Egyp­tians.

• Egyptian teaching that prosperity was reward for serving El Shaddai

96:1.6One of the dom­i­nant ideas of the re­li­gion of this era was the Egyp­tian con­cept of di­vine Prov­i­dence, the teach­ing that ma­te­rial pros­per­ity was a re­ward for serv­ing El Shad­dai.

• Moses was believer in

96:5.4Moses was a be­liever in Prov­i­dence; he had be­come thor­oughly tainted with the doc­trines of Egypt con­cern­ing the super­nat­u­ral con­trol of the Nile and the other el­e­ments of na­ture. He had a great vi­sion of God, but he was thor­oughly sin­cere when he taught the He­brews that, if they would obey God, “He will love you, bless you, and mul­ti­ply you. He will mul­ti­ply the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land—the corn, wine, oil, and your flocks. You shall be pros­pered above all peo­ple, and the Lord your God will take away from you all sick­ness and will put none of the evil dis­eases of Egypt upon you.” He even said: “Re­mem­ber the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth.” “You shall lend to many na­tions, but you shall not bor­row. You shall reign over many na­tions, but they shall not reign over you.”

• pessimism of Ecclesiastes was reaction to overoptimistic belief in

97:8.2In or­der to un­der­stand how the dev­as­tat­ing pres­sure and the in­es­cap­able co­er­cion of sec­u­lar his­tory so ter­ror­ized the cap­tive and alien-ruled Jews that they at­tempted the com­plete rewrit­ing and re­cast­ing of their his­tory, we should briefly sur­vey the rec­ord of their per­plex­ing na­tional ex­pe­ri­ence. It must be re­mem­bered that the Jews failed to evolve an ad­e­quate non­the­o­logic phi­los­o­phy of life. They strug­gled with their orig­i­nal and Egyp­tian con­cept of di­vine re­wards for righ­teous­ness cou­pled with dire pun­ish­ments for sin. The drama of Job was some­thing of a protest against this er­ro­neous phi­los­o­phy. The frank pes­simism of Ec­cle­si­astes was a worldly wise re­ac­tion to these overop­ti­mistic be­liefs in Prov­i­dence.

• Hebraic belief in

98:7.52. The He­braic sys­tem of moral­ity, ethics, the­ol­ogy, and be­lief in both Prov­i­dence and the su­preme Yah­weh.

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.

4:1.1For ages the in­hab­i­tants of Uran­tia have mis­un­der­stood the prov­i­dence of God. There is a prov­i­dence of di­vine out­work­ing on your world, but it is not the child­ish, ar­bi­trary, and ma­te­rial min­istry many mor­tals have con­ceived it to be. The prov­i­dence of God con­sists in the in­ter­lock­ing ac­tiv­i­ties of the ce­les­tial be­ings and the di­vine spir­its who, in ac­cor­dance with cos­mic law, un­ceas­ingly la­bor for the honor of God and for the spir­i­tual ad­vance­ment of his uni­verse chil­dren.

4:1.2Can you not ad­vance in your con­cept of God’s deal­ing with man to that level where you rec­og­nize that the watch­word of the uni­verse is prog­ress? Through long ages the hu­man race has strug­gled to reach its pres­ent po­si­tion. Through­out all these mil­len­ni­ums Prov­i­dence has been work­ing out the plan of pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion. The two thoughts are not op­posed in prac­tice, only in man’s mis­taken con­cepts. Di­vine prov­i­dence is never ar­rayed in op­po­si­tion to true hu­man prog­ress, ei­ther tem­po­ral or spir­i­tual. Prov­i­dence is al­ways con­sis­tent with the un­chang­ing and per­fect na­ture of the su­preme Law­maker.

4:1.7A be­ing of my or­der is able to dis­cover ul­ti­mate har­mony and to de­tect far-reach­ing and pro­found co-or­di­na­tion in the rou­tine af­fairs of uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion. Much that seems dis­jointed and hap­haz­ard to the mor­tal mind ap­pears or­derly and con­struc­tive to my un­der­stand­ing. But there is very much go­ing on in the uni­verses that I do not fully com­pre­hend. I have long been a stu­dent of, and am more or less con­ver­sant with, the rec­og­nized forces, en­er­gies, minds, mor­ontias, spir­its, and per­son­al­i­ties of the lo­cal uni­verses and the super­uni­verses. I have a gen­eral un­der­stand­ing of how these agen­cies and per­son­al­i­ties op­er­ate, and I am in­ti­mately fa­mil­iar with the work­ings of the ac­cred­ited spirit in­tel­li­gences of the grand uni­verse. Not­with­stand­ing my knowl­edge of the phe­nom­ena of the uni­verses, I am con­stantly con­fronted with cos­mic re­ac­tions which I can­not fully fathom. I am con­tin­u­ally en­coun­ter­ing ap­par­ently for­tu­itous con­spir­a­cies of the in­teras­so­ci­a­tion of forces, en­er­gies, in­tel­lects, and spir­its, which I can­not sat­is­fac­to­rily ex­plain.

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.

9:2.3There are many un­tram­meled lines of spir­i­tual force and sources of super­ma­te­rial power link­ing the peo­ple of Uran­tia di­rectly with the De­i­ties of Par­a­dise. There ex­ist the con­nec­tion of the Thought Ad­justers di­rect with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, the wide­spread in­flu­ence of the spir­i­tual-grav­ity urge of the Eter­nal Son, and the spir­i­tual pres­ence of the Con­joint Cre­ator. There is a dif­fer­ence in func­tion be­tween the spirit of the Son and the spirit of the Spirit. The Third Per­son in his spir­i­tual min­istry may func­tion as mind plus spirit or as spirit alone.

9:2.4In ad­di­tion to these Par­a­dise pres­ences, Uran­tians ben­e­fit by the spir­i­tual in­flu­ences and ac­tiv­i­ties of the lo­cal and the super­uni­verse, with their al­most end­less ar­ray of lov­ing per­son­al­i­ties who ever lead the true of pur­pose and the hon­est of heart up­ward and in­ward to­wards the ide­als of di­vin­ity and the goal of su­preme per­fec­tion.

9:2.5The pres­ence of the uni­ver­sal spirit of the Eter­nal Son we know—we can un­mis­tak­ably rec­og­nize it. The pres­ence of the In­fi­nite Spirit, the Third Per­son of De­ity, even mor­tal man may know, for ma­te­rial crea­tures can ac­tu­ally ex­pe­ri­ence the benef­i­cence of this di­vine in­flu­ence which func­tions as the Holy Spirit of lo­cal uni­verse be­stowal upon the races of man­kind. Hu­man be­ings can also in some de­gree be­come con­scious of the Ad­juster, the im­per­sonal pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. These di­vine spir­its which work for man’s up­lift­ing and spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion all act in uni­son and in per­fect co-op­er­a­tion. They are as one in the spir­i­tual op­er­a­tion of the plans of mor­tal as­cen­sion and per­fec­tion at­tain­ment.

• inexplicable things of life are termed mysterious dispensations of p.

85:0.4At one time or an­other mor­tal man has wor­shiped ev­ery­thing on the face of the earth, in­clud­ing him­self. He has also wor­shiped about ev­ery­thing imag­in­able in the sky and be­neath the sur­face of the earth. Prim­i­tive man feared all man­i­fes­ta­tions of power; he wor­shiped ev­ery nat­u­ral phe­nom­e­non he could not com­pre­hend. The ob­ser­va­tion of pow­er­ful nat­u­ral forces, such as storms, floods, earth­quakes, land­slides, vol­ca­noes, fire, heat, and cold, greatly im­pressed the ex­pand­ing mind of man. The in­ex­pli­ca­ble things of life are still termed “acts of God” and “mys­te­ri­ous dis­pen­sa­tions of Prov­i­dence.”

• catastrophes not visitations of p.

149:2.10As Je­sus min­gled with the peo­ple, they found him en­tirely free from the su­per­sti­tions of that day. He was free from re­li­gious prej­u­dices; he was never in­tol­er­ant. He had noth­ing in his heart re­sem­bling so­cial an­tag­o­nism. While he com­plied with the good in the re­li­gion of his fa­thers, he did not hes­i­tate to dis­re­gard man-made tra­di­tions of su­per­sti­tion and bond­age. He dared to teach that catas­tro­phes of na­ture, ac­ci­dents of time, and other calami­tous hap­pen­ings are not vis­i­ta­tions of di­vine judg­ments or mys­te­ri­ous dis­pen­sa­tions of Prov­i­dence. He de­nounced slav­ish de­vo­tion to mean­ing­less cer­e­mo­ni­als and ex­posed the fal­lacy of ma­te­ri­al­is­tic wor­ship. He boldly pro­claimed man’s spir­i­tual free­dom and dared to teach that mor­tals of the flesh are in­deed and in truth sons of the liv­ing God.

178:1.14You are not to be pas­sive mys­tics or col­or­less as­cetics; you should not be­come dream­ers and drifters, supinely trust­ing in a fic­ti­tious Prov­i­dence to pro­vide even the ne­ces­si­ties of life. You are in­deed to be gen­tle in your deal­ings with erring mor­tals, pa­tient in your in­ter­course with ig­no­rant men, and for­bear­ing un­der provo­ca­tion; but you are also to be valiant in de­fense of righ­teous­ness, mighty in the pro­mul­ga­tion of truth, and ag­gres­sive in the preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom, even to the ends of the earth.