resident governors general

• Vevona attached to staff of

39:5.53. The Souls of Peace. The early mil­len­ni­ums of the up­ward striv­ings of evo­lu­tion­ary men are marked by many a strug­gle. Peace is not the nat­u­ral state of the ma­te­rial realms. The worlds first re­al­ize “peace on earth and good will among men” through the min­istry of the se­raphic souls of peace. Al­though these an­gels were largely thwarted in their early ef­forts on Uran­tia, Vevona, chief of the souls of peace in Adam’s day, was left on Uran­tia and is now at­tached to the staff of the res­i­dent gov­er­nor gen­eral. And it was this same Vevona who, when Mi­chael was born, her­alded to the worlds, as the leader of the an­gelic host, “Glory to God in Ha­vona and on earth peace and good will among men.”

• governors of quarantined worlds without Planetary Princes
• System Sovereign presides over council of

45:2.4While all the af­fairs of the iso­lated worlds of Sa­ta­nia have not been re­turned to his ju­ris­dic­tion, Lanaforge dis­closes great in­ter­est in their wel­fare, and he is a fre­quent vis­i­tor on Uran­tia. As in other and nor­mal sys­tems, the Sov­er­eign pre­sides over the sys­tem coun­cil of world rulers, the Plan­e­tary Princes and the res­i­dent gov­er­nors gen­eral of the iso­lated worlds. This plan­e­tary coun­cil as­sem­bles from time to time on the head­quar­ters of the sys­tem—“When the Sons of God come to­gether.”

• representative of 24 counselors

45:4.1614. Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek, the only Son of this or­der to be­stow him­self upon the Uran­tia races. While still num­bered as a Mel­chiz­e­dek, he has be­come “for­ever a min­is­ter of the Most Highs,” eter­nally as­sum­ing the as­sign­ment of ser­vice as a mor­tal as­cender, hav­ing so­journed on Uran­tia in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh at Salem in the days of Abra­ham. This Mel­chiz­e­dek has lat­terly been pro­claimed vicegerent Plan­e­tary Prince of Uran­tia with head­quar­ters on Je­ru­sem and au­thor­ity to act in be­half of Mi­chael, who is ac­tu­ally the Plan­e­tary Prince of the world whereon he ex­pe­ri­enced his ter­mi­nal be­stowal in hu­man form. Not­with­stand­ing this, Uran­tia is still super­vised by suc­ces­sive res­i­dent gov­er­nors gen­eral, mem­bers of the four and twenty coun­selors.

• 1-2-3 the first has served as Urantia’s

77:9.51-2-3 the first, the el­dest of the pri­mary or­der, was re­leased from im­me­di­ate plan­e­tary du­ties shortly af­ter Pen­te­cost. This no­ble mid­wayer stood stead­fast with Van and Amadon dur­ing the tragic days of the plan­e­tary re­bel­lion, and his fear­less lead­er­ship was in­stru­men­tal in re­duc­ing the ca­su­al­ties in his or­der. He serves at pres­ent on Je­ru­sem as a mem­ber of the twenty-four coun­selors, hav­ing al­ready func­tioned as gov­er­nor gen­eral of Uran­tia once since Pen­te­cost.

• Machiventa Melchizedek invisibly present for 100 years as

93:10.10Less than a thou­sand years ago this same Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek, the one­time sage of Salem, was in­vis­i­bly pres­ent on Uran­tia for a pe­riod of one hun­dred years, act­ing as res­i­dent gov­er­nor gen­eral of the planet; and if the pres­ent sys­tem of di­rect­ing plan­e­tary af­fairs should con­tinue, he will be due to re­turn in the same ca­pac­ity in a lit­tle over one thou­sand years.

• seraphim and midwayers execute mandates of

114:0.2At noon to­day the roll call of plan­e­tary an­gels, guard­i­ans, and oth­ers on Uran­tia was 501,234,619 pairs of ser­a­phim. There were as­signed to my com­mand two hun­dred se­raphic hosts—597,196,800 pairs of ser­a­phim, or 1,194,393,600 in­di­vid­ual an­gels. The reg­istry, how­ever, shows 1,002,469,238 in­di­vid­u­als; it fol­lows there­fore that 191,924,362 an­gels were ab­sent from this world on trans­port, mes­sen­ger, and death duty. (On Uran­tia there are about the same num­ber of cheru­bim as ser­a­phim, and they are sim­i­larly or­ga­nized.)

• 100-year terms

114:3.1Ev­ery one hun­dred years of Uran­tia time, the Je­ru­sem corps of twenty-four plan­e­tary super­vi­sors des­ig­nates one of their num­ber to so­journ on your world to act as their ex­ec­u­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tive, as res­i­dent gov­er­nor gen­eral. Dur­ing the times of the prepa­ra­tion of these nar­ra­tives this ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer was changed, the nine­teenth so to serve be­ing suc­ceeded by the twen­ti­eth. The name of the cur­rent plan­e­tary super­vi­sor is with­held from you only be­cause mor­tal man is so prone to ven­er­ate, even to de­ify, his ex­traor­di­nary com­pa­tri­ots and super­hu­man su­pe­ri­ors.

• leader of celestial beings functioning on Urantia
• representative of 24 counselors

114:3.2The res­i­dent gov­er­nor gen­eral has no ac­tual per­sonal au­thor­ity in the man­age­ment of world af­fairs ex­cept as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the twenty-four Je­ru­sem coun­selors. He acts as the co-or­di­na­tor of super­hu­man ad­min­is­tra­tion and is the re­spected head and uni­ver­sally rec­og­nized leader of the ce­les­tial be­ings func­tion­ing on Uran­tia. All or­ders of an­gelic hosts re­gard him as their co-or­di­nat­ing di­rec­tor, while the United Mid­way­ers, since the de­par­ture of 1-2-3 the first to be­come one of the twenty-four coun­selors, re­ally look upon the suc­ces­sive gov­er­nors gen­eral as their plan­e­tary fa­thers.

• hand down scores of rulings each day

114:3.3Al­though the gov­er­nor gen­eral does not pos­sess ac­tual and per­sonal au­thor­ity on the planet, he hands down scores of rul­ings and de­ci­sions each day which are ac­cepted as fi­nal by all per­son­al­i­ties con­cerned. He is much more of a fa­therly ad­viser than a tech­ni­cal ruler. In cer­tain ways he func­tions as would a Plan­e­tary Prince, but his ad­min­is­tra­tion much more closely re­sem­bles that of the Ma­te­rial Sons.

114:3.4The Uran­tia gov­ern­ment is rep­re­sented in the coun­cils of Je­ru­sem in ac­cor­dance with an ar­range­ment whereby the re­turn­ing gov­er­nor gen­eral sits as a tem­po­rary mem­ber of the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign’s cab­i­net of Plan­e­tary Princes. It was ex­pected, when Ma­chi­venta was des­ig­nated vicegerent Prince, that he would im­me­di­ately as­sume his place in the coun­cil of the Plan­e­tary Princes of Sa­ta­nia, but thus far he has made no ges­ture in this di­rec­tion.

114:3.5The super­ma­te­rial gov­ern­ment of Uran­tia does not main­tain a very close or­ganic re­la­tion­ship with the higher units of the lo­cal uni­verse. In a way, the res­i­dent gov­er­nor gen­eral rep­re­sents Sal­ving­ton as well as Je­ru­sem since he acts on be­half of the twenty-four coun­selors, who are di­rectly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Mi­chael and Ga­briel. And be­ing a Je­ru­sem cit­i­zen, the plan­e­tary gov­er­nor can func­tion as a spokesman for the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign. The con­stel­la­tion au­thor­i­ties are rep­re­sented di­rectly by a Vo­ron­da­dek Son, the Eden­tia ob­server.

• advisory chief executive

114:5.1The ac­tual ad­min­is­tra­tion of Uran­tia is in­deed dif­fi­cult to de­scribe. There ex­ists no for­mal gov­ern­ment along the lines of uni­verse or­ga­ni­za­tion, such as sep­a­rate leg­isla­tive, ex­ec­u­tive, and ju­di­cial de­part­ments. The twenty-four coun­selors come the near­est to be­ing the leg­isla­tive branch of the plan­e­tary gov­ern­ment. The gov­er­nor gen­eral is a pro­vi­sional and ad­vi­sory chief ex­ec­u­tive with the veto power res­i­dent in the Most High ob­server. And there are no ab­so­lutely au­thor­i­ta­tive ju­di­cial pow­ers op­er­a­tive on the planet—only the con­cil­i­at­ing com­mis­sions.

• resolves problems by mutual consent

114:5.2A ma­jor­ity of the prob­lems in­volv­ing ser­a­phim and mid­way­ers are, by mu­tual con­sent, de­cided by the gov­er­nor gen­eral. But ex­cept when voic­ing the man­dates of the twenty-four coun­selors, his rul­ings are all sub­ject to ap­peal to con­cil­i­at­ing com­mis­sions, to lo­cal au­thor­i­ties con­sti­tuted for plan­e­tary func­tion, or even to the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign of Sa­ta­nia.

• administrative cabinet

114:5.6The di­rect ad­min­is­tra­tive cab­i­net of the gov­er­nor gen­eral con­sists of twelve ser­a­phim, the act­ing chiefs of the twelve groups of spe­cial an­gels func­tion­ing as the im­me­di­ate super­hu­man di­rec­tors of plan­e­tary prog­ress and sta­bil­ity.

• administrative cabinet

114:6.2These twelve groups of an­gels, while func­tion­ing un­der the gen­eral super­vi­sion of the res­i­dent gov­er­nor gen­eral, are im­me­di­ately di­rected by the se­raphic coun­cil of twelve, the act­ing chiefs of each group. This coun­cil also serves as the vol­un­teer cab­i­net of the res­i­dent gov­er­nor gen­eral.