revelation

• limitations

0:0.1In the minds of the mor­tals of Uran­tia—that be­ing the name of your world—there ex­ists great con­fu­sion re­spect­ing the mean­ing of such terms as God, di­vin­ity, and de­ity. Hu­man be­ings are still more con­fused and un­cer­tain about the re­la­tion­ships of the di­vine per­son­al­i­ties des­ig­nated by these nu­mer­ous ap­pel­la­tions. Be­cause of this con­cep­tual pov­erty as­so­ci­ated with so much ide­a­tional con­fu­sion, I have been di­rected to for­mu­late this in­tro­duc­tory state­ment in ex­pla­na­tion of the mean­ings which should be at­tached to cer­tain word sym­bols as they may be here­inafter used in those pa­pers which the Or­von­ton corps of truth re­veal­ers have been au­tho­rized to trans­late into the En­glish lan­guage of Uran­tia.

• limitations › resorted to only when concept has no adequate previous expression

0:0.2It is ex­ceed­ingly dif­fi­cult to pre­sent en­larged con­cepts and ad­vanced truth, in our en­deavor to ex­pand cos­mic con­scious­ness and en­hance spir­i­tual per­cep­tion, when we are re­stricted to the use of a cir­cum­scribed lan­guage of the realm. But our man­date ad­mon­ishes us to make ev­ery ef­fort to con­vey our mean­ings by us­ing the word sym­bols of the En­glish tongue. We have been in­structed to in­tro­duce new terms only when the con­cept to be por­trayed finds no ter­mi­nol­ogy in En­glish which can be em­ployed to con­vey such a new con­cept par­tially or even with more or less dis­tor­tion of mean­ing.

0:0.3In the hope of fa­cil­i­tat­ing com­pre­hen­sion and of pre­vent­ing con­fu­sion on the part of ev­ery mor­tal who may pe­ruse these pa­pers, we deem it wise to pre­sent in this ini­tial state­ment an out­line of the mean­ings to be at­tached to nu­mer­ous En­glish words which are to be em­ployed in des­ig­na­tion of De­ity and cer­tain as­so­ci­ated con­cepts of the things, mean­ings, and val­ues of uni­ver­sal re­al­ity.

0:0.4But in or­der to for­mu­late this Fore­word of def­i­ni­tions and lim­i­ta­tions of ter­mi­nol­ogy, it is nec­es­sary to an­tic­i­pate the us­age of these terms in the sub­se­quent pre­sen­ta­tions. This Fore­word is not, there­fore, a fin­ished state­ment within it­self; it is only a defini­tive guide de­signed to as­sist those who shall read the ac­com­pa­ny­ing pa­pers deal­ing with De­ity and the uni­verse of uni­verses which have been for­mu­lated by an Or­von­ton com­mis­sion sent to Uran­tia for this pur­pose.

• limitations › resorted to only when concept has no adequate previous expression

0:12.11In for­mu­lat­ing the suc­ceed­ing pre­sen­ta­tions hav­ing to do with the por­trayal of the char­ac­ter of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the na­ture of his Par­a­dise as­so­ciates, to­gether with an at­tempted de­scrip­tion of the per­fect cen­tral uni­verse and the en­cir­cling seven super­uni­verses, we are to be guided by the man­date of the super­uni­verse rulers which di­rects that we shall, in all our ef­forts to re­veal truth and co-or­di­nate es­sen­tial knowl­edge, give pref­er­ence to the high­est ex­ist­ing hu­man con­cepts per­tain­ing to the sub­jects to be pre­sented. We may re­sort to pure rev­e­la­tion only when the con­cept of pre­sen­ta­tion has had no ad­e­quate pre­vi­ous ex­pres­sion by the hu­man mind.

• personal revelation › God unfailingly manifests himself to fullness of creature’s capacity

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

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

• function of revelation › brought idea of personality of God

1:5.10The idea of the per­son­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is an en­larged and truer con­cept of God which has come to man­kind chiefly through rev­e­la­tion. Rea­son, wis­dom, and re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence all in­fer and im­ply the per­son­al­ity of God, but they do not al­to­gether val­i­date it. Even the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster is preper­sonal. The truth and ma­tu­rity of any re­li­gion is di­rectly pro­por­tional to its con­cept of the in­fi­nite per­son­al­ity of God and to its grasp of the ab­so­lute unity of De­ity. The idea of a per­sonal De­ity be­comes, then, the mea­sure of re­li­gious ma­tu­rity af­ter re­li­gion has first for­mu­lated the con­cept of the unity of God.

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

• Divine Counselors are highest source of r. on evolutionary worlds

1:7.9[Pre­sented by a Di­vine Coun­selor, a mem­ber of a group of ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties as­signed by the An­cients of Days on Uversa, the head­quar­ters of the sev­enth super­uni­verse, to super­vise those por­tions of this forth­com­ing rev­e­la­tion which have to do with af­fairs be­yond the bor­ders of the lo­cal uni­verse of Neb­a­don. I am com­mis­sioned to spon­sor those pa­pers por­tray­ing the na­ture and at­tri­butes of God be­cause I rep­re­sent the high­est source of in­for­ma­tion avail­able for such a pur­pose on any in­hab­ited world. I have served as a Di­vine Coun­selor in all seven of the super­uni­verses and have long resided at the Par­a­dise cen­ter of all things. Many times have I en­joyed the su­preme plea­sure of a so­journ in the im­me­di­ate per­sonal pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. I por­tray the re­al­ity and truth of the Fa­ther’s na­ture and at­tri­butes with un­chal­lenge­able au­thor­ity; I know whereof I speak.]

• only revealed religion is spiritually moral

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

• finite knowledge, even from high sources, is relative

2:7.1All fi­nite knowl­edge and crea­ture un­der­stand­ing are rel­a­tive. In­for­ma­tion and in­tel­li­gence, gleaned from even high sources, is only rel­a­tively com­plete, lo­cally ac­cu­rate, and per­son­ally true.

• accounts of things spiritual may vary in details among narrators

2:7.3Di­vine truth, fi­nal truth, is uni­form and uni­ver­sal, but the story of things spir­i­tual, as it is told by nu­mer­ous in­di­vid­u­als hail­ing from var­i­ous spheres, may some­times vary in de­tails ow­ing to this rel­a­tiv­ity in the com­plete­ness of knowl­edge and in the re­plete­ness of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence as well as in the length and ex­tent of that ex­pe­ri­ence. While the laws and de­crees, the thoughts and at­ti­tudes, of the First Great Source and Cen­ter are eter­nally, in­finitely, and uni­ver­sally true; at the same time, their ap­pli­ca­tion to, and ad­just­ment for, ev­ery uni­verse, sys­tem, world, and cre­ated in­tel­li­gence, are in ac­cor­dance with the plans and tech­nique of the Cre­ator Sons as they func­tion in their re­spec­tive uni­verses, as well as in har­mony with the lo­cal plans and pro­ce­dures of the In­fi­nite Spirit and of all other as­so­ci­ated ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties.

• function of revelation › only compensation for absence of mota

4:2.7The ap­par­ent de­fects of the nat­u­ral world are not in­dica­tive of any such cor­re­spond­ing de­fects in the char­ac­ter of God. Rather are such ob­served im­per­fec­tions merely the in­ev­i­ta­ble stop-mo­ments in the ex­hi­bi­tion of the ever-mov­ing reel of in­fin­ity pic­tur­iza­tion. It is these very de­fect-in­ter­rup­tions of per­fec­tion-con­ti­nu­ity which make it pos­si­ble for the fi­nite mind of ma­te­rial man to catch a fleet­ing glimpse of di­vine re­al­ity in time and space. The ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions of di­vin­ity ap­pear de­fec­tive to the evo­lu­tion­ary mind of man only be­cause mor­tal man per­sists in view­ing the phe­nom­ena of na­ture through nat­u­ral eyes, hu­man vi­sion un­aided by mor­ontia mota or by rev­e­la­tion, its com­pen­satory sub­sti­tute on the worlds of time.

• function of revelation › affirms First Cause of science and religion’s God of salvation are same Deity

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

• function of revelation › allures men to seek the God of love

5:4.1The moral­ity of the re­li­gions of evo­lu­tion drives men for­ward in the God quest by the mo­tive power of fear. The re­li­gions of rev­e­la­tion al­lure men to seek for a God of love be­cause they crave to be­come like him. But re­li­gion is not merely a pas­sive feel­ing of “ab­so­lute de­pen­dence” and “surety of sur­vival”; it is a liv­ing and dy­namic ex­pe­ri­ence of di­vin­ity at­tain­ment pred­i­cated on hu­man­ity ser­vice.

• limitations › distortions of language are best efforts at contact-compromise with human minds

6:0.2We speak of God’s “first” thought and al­lude to an im­pos­si­ble time ori­gin of the Eter­nal Son for the pur­pose of gain­ing ac­cess to the thought chan­nels of the hu­man in­tel­lect. Such dis­tor­tions of lan­guage rep­re­sent our best ef­forts at con­tact-com­pro­mise with the time-bound minds of mor­tal crea­tures. In the se­quen­tial sense the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther never could have had a first thought, nor could the Eter­nal Son ever have had a be­gin­ning. But I was in­structed to por­tray the re­al­i­ties of eter­nity to the time-lim­ited minds of mor­tals by such sym­bols of thought and to des­ig­nate the re­la­tion­ships of eter­nity by such time con­cepts of se­quen­tial­ity.

• limitations › distortions of language are best efforts at contact-compromise with human minds

6:0.4In an ef­fort to en­able the fi­nite mind of time to form some se­quen­tial con­cept of the re­la­tion­ships of the eter­nal and in­fi­nite be­ings of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity, we uti­lize such li­cense of con­cep­tion as to re­fer to the “Fa­ther’s first per­sonal, uni­ver­sal, and in­fi­nite con­cept.” It is im­pos­si­ble for me to con­vey to the hu­man mind any ad­e­quate idea of the eter­nal re­la­tions of the De­i­ties; there­fore do I em­ploy such terms as will af­ford the fi­nite mind some­thing of an idea of the re­la­tion­ship of these eter­nal be­ings in the sub­se­quent eras of time. We be­lieve the Son sprang from the Fa­ther; we are taught that both are un­qual­i­fiedly eter­nal. It is ap­par­ent, there­fore, that no time crea­ture can ever fully com­pre­hend this mys­tery of a Son who is de­rived from the Fa­ther, and yet who is co-or­di­nately eter­nal with the Fa­ther him­self.

• personal revelation › cosmic mind endowments of causation, duty, and worship

16:6.10In the lo­cal uni­verse mind be­stowals, these three in­sights of the cos­mic mind con­sti­tute the a pri­ori as­sump­tions which make it pos­si­ble for man to func­tion as a ra­tio­nal and self-con­scious per­son­al­ity in the realms of sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and re­li­gion. Stated oth­er­wise, the rec­og­ni­tion of the re­al­ity of these three man­i­fes­ta­tions of the In­fi­nite is by a cos­mic tech­nique of self-rev­e­la­tion. Mat­ter-en­ergy is rec­og­nized by the math­e­mat­i­cal logic of the senses; mind-rea­son in­tu­itively knows its moral duty; spirit-faith (wor­ship) is the re­li­gion of the re­al­ity of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. These three ba­sic fac­tors in re­flec­tive think­ing may be uni­fied and co-or­di­nated in per­son­al­ity de­vel­op­ment, or they may be­come dis­pro­por­tion­ate and vir­tu­ally un­re­lated in their re­spec­tive func­tions. But when they be­come uni­fied, they pro­duce a strong char­ac­ter con­sist­ing in the cor­re­la­tion of a fac­tual sci­ence, a moral phi­los­o­phy, and a gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. And it is these three cos­mic in­tu­itions that give ob­jec­tive va­lid­ity, re­al­ity, to man’s ex­pe­ri­ence in and with things, mean­ings, and val­ues.

• progress dependent on faith and r.

19:5.12And from all this, you mor­tals, just now tak­ing your first step on the eter­nal jour­ney, can well see that you must ad­vance a long way be­fore you will pro­gress by “sight” and “ma­te­rial” as­sur­ance. You will long use faith and be de­pen­dent on rev­e­la­tion if you hope to pro­gress quickly and safely.

• epochal revelations › 6th in 1000 years?
• overrevelation
• overrevelation › stifles imagination

30:0.2It is not pos­si­ble to for­mu­late com­pre­hen­sive and en­tirely con­sis­tent clas­si­fi­ca­tions of the per­son­al­i­ties of the grand uni­verse be­cause all of the groups are not re­vealed. It would re­quire nu­mer­ous ad­di­tional pa­pers to cover the fur­ther rev­e­la­tion re­quired to sys­tem­at­i­cally clas­sify all groups. Such con­cep­tual ex­pan­sion would hardly be de­sir­able as it would de­prive the think­ing mor­tals of the next thou­sand years of that stim­u­lus to cre­ative spec­u­la­tion which these par­tially re­vealed con­cepts sup­ply. It is best that man not have an over­rev­e­la­tion; it sti­fles imag­i­na­tion.

• God reveals himself to extent divinely possible

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

• personal revelation › we should obey divine leadings

34:5.5Though the Spirit of Truth is poured out upon all flesh, this spirit of the Son is al­most wholly lim­ited in func­tion and power by man’s per­sonal re­cep­tion of that which con­sti­tutes the sum and sub­stance of the mis­sion of the be­stowal Son. The Holy Spirit is partly in­de­pen­dent of hu­man at­ti­tude and par­tially con­di­tioned by the de­ci­sions and co-op­er­a­tion of the will of man. Nev­er­the­less, the min­istry of the Holy Spirit be­comes in­creas­ingly ef­fec­tive in the sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion and spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion of the in­ner life of those mor­tals who the more fully obey the di­vine lead­ings.

• personal revelation › 23rd Psalm whispered to shepherd boy

48:6.20That is the story whis­pered in the night sea­son to the shep­herd boy. He could not re­tain it word for word, but to the best of his mem­ory he gave it much as it is re­corded to­day.

• sometimes error so great that rectification by r. would be fatal to slowly emerging truths

48:6.32These an­gels are all in the chain of re­cord­ers ex­tend­ing from the low­est to the high­est cus­to­di­ans of the facts of time and the truths of eter­nity. Some day they will teach you to seek truth as well as fact, to ex­pand your soul as well as your mind. Even now you should learn to wa­ter the gar­den of your heart as well as to seek for the dry sands of knowl­edge. Forms are val­ue­less when lessons are learned. No chick may be had with­out the shell, and no shell is of any worth af­ter the chick is hatched. But some­times er­ror is so great that its rec­ti­fi­ca­tion by rev­e­la­tion would be fa­tal to those slowly emerg­ing truths which are es­sen­tial to its ex­pe­ri­en­tial over­throw. When chil­dren have their ide­als, do not dis­lodge them; let them grow. And while you are learn­ing to think as men, you should also be learn­ing to pray as chil­dren.

• limitations

50:6.1The iso­la­tion of Uran­tia ren­ders it im­pos­si­ble to un­der­take the pre­sen­ta­tion of many de­tails of the life and en­vi­ron­ment of your Sa­ta­nia neigh­bors. In these pre­sen­ta­tions we are lim­ited by the plan­e­tary quar­an­tine and by the sys­tem iso­la­tion. We must be guided by these re­stric­tions in all our ef­forts to en­lighten Uran­tia mor­tals, but in so far as is per­mis­si­ble, you have been in­structed in the prog­ress of an av­er­age evo­lu­tion­ary world, and you are able to com­pare such a world’s ca­reer with the pres­ent state of Uran­tia.

• personal revelation › capacity of receptivity determines rate and extent of

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.

• function of revelation › essential to realization of brotherhood

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:

• limitations › resorted to only when concept has no adequate previous expression

66:5.14None of the Prince’s staff would pre­sent rev­e­la­tion to com­pli­cate evo­lu­tion; they pre­sented rev­e­la­tion only as the cli­max of their ex­haus­tion of the forces of evo­lu­tion. But Hap did yield to the de­sire of the in­hab­i­tants of the city for the es­tab­lish­ment of a form of re­li­gious ser­vice. His group pro­vided the Dala­ma­tians with the seven chants of wor­ship and also gave them the daily praise-phrase and even­tu­ally taught them “the Fa­ther’s prayer,” which was:

• overrevelation › robs mankind of its advances by confusion and dismay
• Prince’s staff originally sought progression by evolution and not revolution by r.

66:6.6The Dala­ma­tia teach­ers sought to add con­scious so­cial se­lec­tion to the purely nat­u­ral se­lec­tion of bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion. They did not de­range hu­man so­ci­ety, but they did markedly ac­cel­er­ate its nor­mal and nat­u­ral evo­lu­tion. Their mo­tive was pro­gres­sion by evo­lu­tion and not rev­o­lu­tion by rev­e­la­tion. The hu­man race had spent ages in ac­quir­ing the lit­tle re­li­gion and morals it had, and these super­men knew bet­ter than to rob man­kind of these few ad­vances by the con­fu­sion and dis­may which al­ways re­sult when en­light­ened and su­pe­rior be­ings un­der­take to up­lift the back­ward races by overteach­ing and over­en­light­en­ment.

• without celestial help, society breaks down

68:3.4Hunger and love drove men to­gether; van­ity and ghost fear held them to­gether. But these emo­tions alone, with­out the in­flu­ence of peace-pro­mot­ing rev­e­la­tions, are un­able to en­dure the strain of the sus­pi­cions and ir­ri­ta­tions of hu­man in­teras­so­ci­a­tions. With­out help from super­hu­man sources the strain of so­ci­ety breaks down upon reach­ing cer­tain lim­its, and these very in­flu­ences of so­cial mo­bi­liza­tion—hunger, love, van­ity, and fear—con­spire to plunge man­kind into war and blood­shed.

68:3.5The peace ten­dency of the hu­man race is not a nat­u­ral en­dow­ment; it is de­rived from the teach­ings of re­vealed re­li­gion, from the ac­cu­mu­lated ex­pe­ri­ence of the pro­gres­sive races, but more es­pe­cially from the teach­ings of Je­sus, the Prince of Peace.

• limitations › new r. always contaminated by evolutionary beliefs

79:4.7When the Aryans en­tered In­dia, they brought with them their con­cepts of De­ity as they had been pre­served in the lin­ger­ing tra­di­tions of the re­li­gion of the sec­ond gar­den. But the Brah­man priests were never able to with­stand the pa­gan mo­men­tum built up by the sud­den con­tact with the in­fe­rior re­li­gions of the Dec­can af­ter the racial oblit­er­a­tion of the Aryans. Thus the vast ma­jor­ity of the pop­u­la­tion fell into the bond­age of the en­slav­ing su­per­sti­tions of in­fe­rior re­li­gions; and so it was that In­dia failed to pro­duce the high civ­i­liza­tion which had been fore­shad­owed in ear­lier times.

• God formulates religion in

85:6.3Tribal chiefs died and were de­i­fied. Later, dis­tin­guished souls passed on and were sainted. Un­aided evo­lu­tion never orig­i­nated gods higher than the glo­ri­fied, ex­alted, and evolved spir­its of de­ceased hu­mans. In early evo­lu­tion re­li­gion cre­ates its own gods. In the course of rev­e­la­tion the Gods for­mu­late re­li­gion. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion cre­ates its gods in the im­age and like­ness of mor­tal man; rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion seeks to evolve and trans­form mor­tal man into the im­age and like­ness of God.

• limitations › must submit to graduated control of evolution

89:9.3The an­cient so­cial broth­er­hoods were based on the rite of blood drink­ing; the early Jew­ish fra­ter­nity was a sac­ri­fi­cial blood af­fair. Paul started out to build a new Chris­tian cult on “the blood of the ev­er­last­ing covenant.” And while he may have un­nec­es­sar­ily en­cum­bered Chris­tian­ity with teach­ings about blood and sac­ri­fice, he did once and for all make an end of the doc­trines of re­demp­tion through hu­man or an­i­mal sac­ri­fices. His the­o­logic com­pro­mises in­di­cate that even rev­e­la­tion must sub­mit to the grad­u­ated con­trol of evo­lu­tion. Ac­cord­ing to Paul, Christ be­came the last and all-suf­fi­cient hu­man sac­ri­fice; the di­vine Judge is now fully and for­ever sat­is­fied.

• human race very early sought for

90:2.1Spirit con­jur­ing was a very pre­cise and highly com­pli­cated pro­ce­dure, com­pa­ra­ble to pres­ent-day church rit­u­als con­ducted in an an­cient tongue. The hu­man race very early sought for super­hu­man help, for rev­e­la­tion; and men be­lieved that the shaman ac­tu­ally re­ceived such rev­e­la­tions. While the shamans uti­lized the great power of sug­ges­tion in their work, it was al­most in­vari­ably neg­a­tive sug­ges­tion; only in very re­cent times has the tech­nique of pos­i­tive sug­ges­tion been em­ployed. In the early de­vel­op­ment of their pro­fes­sion the shamans be­gan to spe­cial­ize in such vo­ca­tions as rain mak­ing, dis­ease heal­ing, and crime de­tect­ing. To heal dis­eases was not, how­ever, the chief func­tion of a shamanic med­i­cine man; it was, rather, to know and to con­trol the haz­ards of liv­ing.

• personal revelation › every intense emotional experience is not a r.

91:7.3Re­li­gious ec­stasy is per­mis­si­ble when re­sult­ing from sane an­tecedents, but such ex­pe­ri­ences are more of­ten the out­growth of purely emo­tional in­flu­ences than a man­i­fes­ta­tion of deep spir­i­tual char­ac­ter. Re­li­gious per­sons must not re­gard ev­ery vivid psy­cho­logic pre­sen­ti­ment and ev­ery in­tense emo­tional ex­pe­ri­ence as a di­vine rev­e­la­tion or a spir­i­tual com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Gen­uine spir­i­tual ec­stasy is usu­ally as­so­ci­ated with great out­ward calm­ness and al­most per­fect emo­tional con­trol. But true pro­phetic vi­sion is a super­psy­cho­logic pre­sen­ti­ment. Such vis­i­ta­tions are not pseudo hal­lu­ci­na­tions, nei­ther are they trance­like ec­stasies.

91:7.4The hu­man mind may per­form in re­sponse to so-called in­spi­ra­tion when it is sen­si­tive ei­ther to the up­ris­ings of the sub­con­scious or to the stim­u­lus of the super­con­scious. In ei­ther case it ap­pears to the in­di­vid­ual that such aug­men­ta­tions of the con­tent of con­scious­ness are more or less for­eign. Un­re­strained mys­ti­cal en­thu­si­asm and ram­pant re­li­gious ec­stasy are not the cre­den­tials of in­spi­ra­tion, sup­pos­edly di­vine cre­den­tials.

• personal revelation › God answers prayer by giving increased

91:8.11God an­swers man’s prayer by giv­ing him an in­creased rev­e­la­tion of truth, an en­hanced ap­pre­ci­a­tion of beauty, and an aug­mented con­cept of good­ness. Prayer is a sub­jec­tive ges­ture, but it con­tacts with mighty ob­jec­tive re­al­i­ties on the spir­i­tual lev­els of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence; it is a mean­ing­ful reach by the hu­man for super­hu­man val­ues. It is the most po­tent spir­i­tual-growth stim­u­lus.

• function of revelation › sorts errors of evolution from truths of spirit

92:3.10And this sa­cred her­itage of an­i­mal as­cent, evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion, must ever con­tinue to be re­fined and en­no­bled by the con­tin­u­ous cen­sor­ship of re­vealed re­li­gion and by the fiery fur­nace of gen­uine sci­ence.

• function of revelation › portrays teachings not too advanced
• function of revelation › sorts errors of evolution from truths of spirit
• limitations › must submit to graduated control of evolution

92:4.1Rev­e­la­tion is evo­lu­tion­ary but al­ways pro­gres­sive. Down through the ages of a world’s his­tory, the rev­e­la­tions of re­li­gion are ever-ex­pand­ing and suc­ces­sively more en­light­en­ing. It is the mis­sion of rev­e­la­tion to sort and cen­sor the suc­ces­sive re­li­gions of evo­lu­tion. But if rev­e­la­tion is to ex­alt and up­step the re­li­gions of evo­lu­tion, then must such di­vine vis­i­ta­tions por­tray teach­ings which are not too far re­moved from the thought and re­ac­tions of the age in which they are pre­sented. Thus must and does rev­e­la­tion al­ways keep in touch with evo­lu­tion. Al­ways must the re­li­gion of rev­e­la­tion be lim­ited by man’s ca­pac­ity of re­cep­tiv­ity.

92:4.2But re­gard­less of ap­par­ent con­nec­tion or deriva­tion, the re­li­gions of rev­e­la­tion are al­ways char­ac­ter­ized by a be­lief in some De­ity of fi­nal value and in some con­cept of the sur­vival of per­son­al­ity iden­tity af­ter death.

• propounded by real spiritual world; is true

92:4.3Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is sen­ti­men­tal, not log­i­cal. It is man’s re­ac­tion to be­lief in a hy­po­thet­i­cal ghost-spirit world—the hu­man be­lief-re­flex, ex­cited by the re­al­iza­tion and fear of the un­known. Rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion is pro­pounded by the real spir­i­tual world; it is the re­sponse of the super­in­tel­lec­tual cos­mos to the mor­tal hunger to be­lieve in, and de­pend upon, the uni­ver­sal De­i­ties. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion pic­tures the cir­cuitous grop­ings of hu­man­ity in quest of truth; rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion is that very truth.

92:4.4There have been many events of re­li­gious rev­e­la­tion but only five of ep­ochal sig­nif­i­cance. These were as fol­lows:

• epochal revelations › 1st was Dalamatia teachings

92:4.51. The Dala­ma­tian teach­ings. The true con­cept of the First Source and Cen­ter was first pro­mul­gated on Uran­tia by the one hun­dred cor­po­real mem­bers of Prince Cali­gas­tia’s staff. This ex­pand­ing rev­e­la­tion of De­ity went on for more than three hun­dred thou­sand years un­til it was sud­denly ter­mi­nated by the plan­e­tary se­ces­sion and the dis­rup­tion of the teach­ing regime. Ex­cept for the work of Van, the in­flu­ence of the Dala­ma­tian rev­e­la­tion was prac­ti­cally lost to the whole world. Even the Nod­ites had for­got­ten this truth by the time of Adam’s ar­rival. Of all who re­ceived the teach­ings of the one hun­dred, the red men held them longest, but the idea of the Great Spirit was but a hazy con­cept in Amerindian re­li­gion when con­tact with Chris­tian­ity greatly clar­i­fied and strength­ened it.

• epochal revelations › 2nd was Edenic teachings

92:4.62. The Edenic teach­ings. Adam and Eve again por­trayed the con­cept of the Fa­ther of all to the evo­lu­tion­ary peo­ples. The dis­rup­tion of the first Eden halted the course of the Adamic rev­e­la­tion be­fore it had ever fully started. But the aborted teach­ings of Adam were car­ried on by the Sethite priests, and some of these truths have never been en­tirely lost to the world. The en­tire trend of Lev­an­tine re­li­gious evo­lu­tion was mod­i­fied by the teach­ings of the Sethites. But by 2500 B.C. man­kind had largely lost sight of the rev­e­la­tion spon­sored in the days of Eden.

• epochal revelations › 3rd was Melchizedek of Salem

92:4.73. Mel­chiz­e­dek of Salem. This emer­gency Son of Neb­a­don in­au­gu­rated the third rev­e­la­tion of truth on Uran­tia. The car­di­nal pre­cepts of his teach­ings were trust and faith. He taught trust in the om­nipo­tent benef­i­cence of God and pro­claimed that faith was the act by which men earned God’s fa­vor. His teach­ings grad­u­ally com­min­gled with the be­liefs and prac­tices of var­i­ous evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gions and fi­nally de­vel­oped into those the­o­logic sys­tems pres­ent on Uran­tia at the open­ing of the first mil­len­nium af­ter Christ.

• epochal revelations › 4th was Jesus of Nazareth

92:4.84. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. Christ Mi­chael pre­sented for the fourth time to Uran­tia the con­cept of God as the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, and this teach­ing has gen­er­ally per­sisted ever since. The essence of his teach­ing was love and ser­vice, the lov­ing wor­ship which a crea­ture son vol­un­tar­ily gives in rec­og­ni­tion of, and re­sponse to, the lov­ing min­istry of God his Fa­ther; the free­will ser­vice which such crea­ture sons be­stow upon their breth­ren in the joy­ous re­al­iza­tion that in this ser­vice they are like­wise serv­ing God the Fa­ther.

• epochal revelations › 5th is Urantia Papers
• limitations › no r. short of Father ever complete

92:4.95. The Uran­tia Pa­pers. The pa­pers, of which this is one, con­sti­tute the most re­cent pre­sen­ta­tion of truth to the mor­tals of Uran­tia. These pa­pers dif­fer from all pre­vi­ous rev­e­la­tions, for they are not the work of a sin­gle uni­verse per­son­al­ity but a com­pos­ite pre­sen­ta­tion by many be­ings. But no rev­e­la­tion short of the at­tain­ment of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther can ever be com­plete. All other ce­les­tial min­is­tra­tions are no more than par­tial, tran­sient, and prac­ti­cally adapted to lo­cal con­di­tions in time and space. While such ad­mis­sions as this may pos­si­bly de­tract from the im­me­di­ate force and au­thor­ity of all rev­e­la­tions, the time has ar­rived on Uran­tia when it is ad­vis­able to make such frank state­ments, even at the risk of weak­en­ing the fu­ture in­flu­ence and au­thor­ity of this, the most re­cent of the rev­e­la­tions of truth to the mor­tal races of Uran­tia.

• always difficult to induce men suddenly to accept

92:6.19Is­lam is the re­li­gio-cul­tural con­nec­tive of North Africa, the Lev­ant, and south­east­ern Asia. It was Jew­ish the­ol­ogy in con­nec­tion with the later Chris­tian teach­ings that made Is­lam mono­the­is­tic. The fol­low­ers of Mo­hammed stum­bled at the ad­vanced teach­ings of the Trin­ity; they could not com­pre­hend the doc­trine of three di­vine per­son­al­i­ties and one De­ity. It is al­ways dif­fi­cult to in­duce evo­lu­tion­ary minds sud­denly to ac­cept ad­vanced re­vealed truth. Man is an evo­lu­tion­ary crea­ture and in the main must get his re­li­gion by evo­lu­tion­ary tech­niques.

• intolerant theologic egotism appears with

92:7.2New re­li­gions can­not be in­vented; they are ei­ther evolved, or else they are sud­denly re­vealed. All new evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gions are merely ad­vanc­ing ex­pres­sions of the old be­liefs, new adap­ta­tions and ad­just­ments. The old does not cease to ex­ist; it is merged with the new, even as Sikhism bud­ded and blos­somed out of the soil and forms of Hin­duism, Bud­dhism, Is­lam, and other con­tem­po­rary cults. Prim­i­tive re­li­gion was very demo­cratic; the sav­age was quick to bor­row or lend. Only with re­vealed re­li­gion did au­to­cratic and in­tol­er­ant the­o­logic ego­tism ap­pear.

• overrevelation › Melchizedek taught followers all they could assimilate

93:3.6Mel­chiz­e­dek taught his fol­low­ers all they had ca­pac­ity to re­ceive and as­sim­i­late. Even many mod­ern re­li­gious ideas about heaven and earth, of man, God, and an­gels, are not far re­moved from these teach­ings of Mel­chiz­e­dek. But this great teacher sub­or­di­nated ev­ery­thing to the doc­trine of one God, a uni­verse De­ity, a heav­enly Cre­ator, a di­vine Fa­ther. Em­pha­sis was placed upon this teach­ing for the pur­pose of ap­peal­ing to man’s ado­ra­tion and of prepar­ing the way for the sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance of Mi­chael as the Son of this same Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• limitations › new r. always contaminated by evolutionary beliefs

93:7.4You who to­day en­joy the ad­van­tages of the art of print­ing lit­tle un­der­stand how dif­fi­cult it was to per­pet­u­ate truth dur­ing these ear­lier times; how easy it was to lose sight of a new doc­trine from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other. There was al­ways a ten­dency for the new doc­trine to be­come ab­sorbed into the older body of re­li­gious teach­ing and mag­i­cal prac­tice. A new rev­e­la­tion is al­ways con­tam­i­nated by the older evo­lu­tion­ary be­liefs.

• overrevelation › only educated Egyptians could comprehend Ikhnaton’s teachings

95:5.12The weak­ness of Ikh­na­ton’s doc­trine lay in the fact that he pro­posed such an ad­vanced re­li­gion that only the ed­u­cated Egyp­tians could fully com­pre­hend his teach­ings. The rank and file of the ag­ri­cul­tural la­bor­ers never re­ally grasped his gospel and were, there­fore, ready to re­turn with the priests to the old-time wor­ship of Isis and her con­sort Osiris, who was sup­posed to have been mirac­u­lously res­ur­rected from a cruel death at the hands of Set, the god of dark­ness and evil.

95:5.13The teach­ing of im­mor­tal­ity for all men was too ad­vanced for the Egyp­tians. Only kings and the rich were prom­ised a res­ur­rec­tion; there­fore did they so care­fully em­balm and pre­serve their bod­ies in tombs against the day of judg­ment. But the democ­racy of sal­va­tion and res­ur­rec­tion as taught by Ikh­na­ton even­tu­ally pre­vailed, even to the ex­tent that the Egyp­tians later be­lieved in the sur­vival of dumb an­i­mals.

• function of revelation › harmonizes partial approaches to reality

99:4.13And these three par­tial ap­proaches to the re­al­ity of the cos­mos must even­tu­ally be­come har­mo­nized by the rev­e­la­tory pre­sen­ta­tion of re­li­gion, phi­los­o­phy, and cos­mol­ogy which por­trays the tri­une ex­is­tence of spirit, mind, and en­ergy pro­ceed­ing from the Trin­ity of Par­a­dise and at­tain­ing time-space uni­fi­ca­tion within the De­ity of the Su­preme.

• personal revelation › every intense emotional experience is not a r.

100:5.6If one is dis­posed to rec­og­nize a the­o­ret­i­cal sub­con­scious mind as a prac­ti­cal work­ing hy­poth­e­sis in the oth­er­wise uni­fied in­tel­lec­tual life, then, to be con­sis­tent, one should pos­tu­late a sim­i­lar and cor­re­spond­ing realm of as­cend­ing in­tel­lec­tual ac­tiv­ity as the super­con­scious level, the zone of im­me­di­ate con­tact with the in­dwelling spirit en­tity, the Thought Ad­juster. The great dan­ger in all these psy­chic spec­u­la­tions is that vi­sions and other so-called mys­tic ex­pe­ri­ences, along with ex­traor­di­nary dreams, may be re­garded as di­vine com­mu­ni­ca­tions to the hu­man mind. In times past, di­vine be­ings have re­vealed them­selves to cer­tain God-know­ing per­sons, not be­cause of their mys­tic trances or mor­bid vi­sions, but in spite of all these phe­nom­ena.

100:5.7In con­trast with con­ver­sion-seek­ing, the bet­ter ap­proach to the mor­ontia zones of pos­si­ble con­tact with the Thought Ad­juster would be through liv­ing faith and sin­cere wor­ship, whole­hearted and un­selfish prayer. Al­to­gether too much of the up­rush of the mem­o­ries of the un­con­scious lev­els of the hu­man mind has been mis­taken for di­vine rev­e­la­tions and spirit lead­ings.

• excellent as well as genuine

100:6.8Even evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is all of this in loy­alty and grandeur be­cause it is a gen­uine ex­pe­ri­ence. But rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion is ex­cel­lent as well as gen­uine. The new loy­al­ties of en­larged spir­i­tual vi­sion cre­ate new lev­els of love and de­vo­tion, of ser­vice and fel­low­ship; and all this en­hanced so­cial out­look pro­duces an en­larged con­scious­ness of the Fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man.

100:6.9The char­ac­ter­is­tic dif­fer­ence be­tween evolved and re­vealed re­li­gion is a new qual­ity of di­vine wis­dom which is added to purely ex­pe­ri­en­tial hu­man wis­dom. But it is ex­pe­ri­ence in and with the hu­man re­li­gions that de­vel­ops the ca­pac­ity for sub­se­quent re­cep­tion of in­creased be­stowals of di­vine wis­dom and cos­mic in­sight.

• assurance of r. based on faith plus experience in r.
• function of revelation › explains how God works out his will
• function of revelation › synthesizes science and theology, creating harmony of mind and satisfaction of spirit

101:2.1The fact of re­li­gion con­sists wholly in the re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of ra­tio­nal and av­er­age hu­man be­ings. And this is the only sense in which re­li­gion can ever be re­garded as sci­en­tific or even psy­cho­log­i­cal. The proof that rev­e­la­tion is rev­e­la­tion is this same fact of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence: the fact that rev­e­la­tion does syn­the­size the ap­par­ently di­ver­gent sci­ences of na­ture and the the­ol­ogy of re­li­gion into a con­sis­tent and log­i­cal uni­verse phi­los­o­phy, a co-or­di­nated and un­bro­ken ex­pla­na­tion of both sci­ence and re­li­gion, thus cre­at­ing a har­mony of mind and sat­is­fac­tion of spirit which an­swers in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence those ques­tion­ings of the mor­tal mind which craves to know how the In­fi­nite works out his will and plans in mat­ter, with minds, and on spirit.

• function of revelation › only compensation for absence of mota

101:2.2Rea­son is the method of sci­ence; faith is the method of re­li­gion; logic is the at­tempted tech­nique of phi­los­o­phy. Rev­e­la­tion com­pen­sates for the ab­sence of the mor­ontia view­point by pro­vid­ing a tech­nique for achiev­ing unity in the com­pre­hen­sion of the re­al­ity and re­la­tion­ships of mat­ter and spirit by the me­di­a­tion of mind. And true rev­e­la­tion never ren­ders sci­ence un­nat­u­ral, re­li­gion un­rea­son­able, or phi­los­o­phy il­log­i­cal.

• function of revelation › instructs and validates faith

101:2.3Rea­son, through the study of sci­ence, may lead back through na­ture to a First Cause, but it re­quires re­li­gious faith to trans­form the First Cause of sci­ence into a God of sal­va­tion; and rev­e­la­tion is fur­ther re­quired for the val­i­da­tion of such a faith, such spir­i­tual in­sight.

• function of revelation › affirms First Cause of science and religion’s God of salvation are same Deity

101:2.7Sci­ence ends its rea­son-search in the hy­poth­e­sis of a First Cause. Re­li­gion does not stop in its flight of faith un­til it is sure of a God of sal­va­tion. The dis­crim­i­nat­ing study of sci­ence log­i­cally sug­gests the re­al­ity and ex­is­tence of an Ab­so­lute. Re­li­gion be­lieves un­re­servedly in the ex­is­tence and re­al­ity of a God who fos­ters per­son­al­ity sur­vival. What meta­physics fails ut­terly in do­ing, and what even phi­los­o­phy fails par­tially in do­ing, rev­e­la­tion does; that is, af­firms that this First Cause of sci­ence and re­li­gion’s God of sal­va­tion are one and the same De­ity.

• assurance of r. based on faith plus experience in r.
• function of revelation › only compensation for absence of mota

101:2.8Rea­son is the proof of sci­ence, faith the proof of re­li­gion, logic the proof of phi­los­o­phy, but rev­e­la­tion is val­i­dated only by hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Sci­ence yields knowl­edge; re­li­gion yields hap­pi­ness; phi­los­o­phy yields unity; rev­e­la­tion con­firms the ex­pe­ri­en­tial har­mony of this tri­une ap­proach to uni­ver­sal re­al­ity.

• function of revelation › synthesizes science and theology, creating harmony of mind and satisfaction of spirit

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

• personal revelation › human experience is continuous r.

101:2.12Rev­e­la­tion as an ep­ochal phe­nom­e­non is pe­ri­odic; as a per­sonal hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence it is con­tin­u­ous. Di­vin­ity func­tions in mor­tal per­son­al­ity as the Ad­juster gift of the Fa­ther, as the Spirit of Truth of the Son, and as the Holy Spirit of the Uni­verse Spirit, while these three super­mor­tal en­dow­ments are uni­fied in hu­man ex­pe­ri­en­tial evo­lu­tion as the min­istry of the Su­preme.

• limitations › laws of r. proscribe imparting unearned or premature knowledge
• should not be slighted if accompanied by errors, obsolete ideas

101:4.1Be­cause your world is gen­er­ally ig­no­rant of ori­gins, even of phys­i­cal ori­gins, it has ap­peared to be wise from time to time to pro­vide in­struc­tion in cos­mol­ogy. And al­ways has this made trou­ble for the fu­ture. The laws of rev­e­la­tion ham­per us greatly by their pro­scrip­tion of the im­par­ta­tion of un­earned or pre­ma­ture knowl­edge. Any cos­mol­ogy pre­sented as a part of re­vealed re­li­gion is des­tined to be out­grown in a very short time. Ac­cord­ingly, fu­ture stu­dents of such a rev­e­la­tion are tempted to dis­card any el­e­ment of gen­uine re­li­gious truth it may con­tain be­cause they dis­cover er­rors on the face of the as­so­ci­ated cos­molo­gies therein pre­sented.

• limitations › not necessarily inspired

101:4.2Man­kind should un­der­stand that we who par­tic­i­pate in the rev­e­la­tion of truth are very rig­or­ously lim­ited by the in­struc­tions of our su­pe­ri­ors. We are not at lib­erty to an­tic­i­pate the sci­en­tific dis­cov­er­ies of a thou­sand years. Rev­e­la­tors must act in ac­cor­dance with the in­struc­tions which form a part of the rev­e­la­tion man­date. We see no way of over­com­ing this dif­fi­culty, ei­ther now or at any fu­ture time. We full well know that, while the his­toric facts and re­li­gious truths of this se­ries of rev­e­la­tory pre­sen­ta­tions will stand on the rec­ords of the ages to come, within a few short years many of our state­ments re­gard­ing the phys­i­cal sci­ences will stand in need of re­vi­sion in con­se­quence of ad­di­tional sci­en­tific de­vel­op­ments and new dis­cov­er­ies. These new de­vel­op­ments we even now fore­see, but we are for­bid­den to in­clude such hu­manly undis­cov­ered facts in the rev­e­la­tory rec­ords. Let it be made clear that rev­e­la­tions are not nec­es­sar­ily in­spired. The cos­mol­ogy of these rev­e­la­tions is not in­spired. It is lim­ited by our per­mis­sion for the co-or­di­na­tion and sort­ing of pres­ent-day knowl­edge. While di­vine or spir­i­tual in­sight is a gift, hu­man wis­dom must evolve.

• personal revelation › Adjuster constantly communicates
• propounded by real spiritual world; is true

101:4.3Truth is al­ways a rev­e­la­tion: au­torev­e­la­tion when it emerges as a re­sult of the work of the in­dwelling Ad­juster; ep­ochal rev­e­la­tion when it is pre­sented by the func­tion of some other ce­les­tial agency, group, or per­son­al­ity.

101:4.4In the last anal­y­sis, re­li­gion is to be judged by its fruits, ac­cord­ing to the man­ner and the ex­tent to which it ex­hibits its own in­her­ent and di­vine ex­cel­lence.

• function of revelation › transiently clarifies knowledge

101:4.5Truth may be but rel­a­tively in­spired, even though rev­e­la­tion is in­vari­ably a spir­i­tual phe­nom­e­non. While state­ments with ref­er­ence to cos­mol­ogy are never in­spired, such rev­e­la­tions are of im­mense value in that they at least tran­siently clar­ify knowl­edge by:

101:4.61. The re­duc­tion of con­fu­sion by the au­thor­i­ta­tive elim­i­na­tion of er­ror.

101:4.72. The co-or­di­na­tion of known or about-to-be-known facts and ob­ser­va­tions.

101:4.83. The restora­tion of im­por­tant bits of lost knowl­edge con­cern­ing ep­ochal trans­ac­tions in the dis­tant past.

101:4.94. The sup­ply­ing of in­for­ma­tion which will fill in vi­tal miss­ing gaps in oth­er­wise earned knowl­edge.

• function of revelation › presents cosmic data so as to illuminate spiritual teachings

101:4.105. Pre­sent­ing cos­mic data in such a man­ner as to il­lu­mi­nate the spir­i­tual teach­ings con­tained in the ac­com­pa­ny­ing rev­e­la­tion.

• function of revelation › sorts errors of evolution from truths of spirit

101:5.1Rev­e­la­tion is a tech­nique whereby ages upon ages of time are saved in the nec­es­sary work of sort­ing and sift­ing the er­rors of evo­lu­tion from the truths of spirit ac­quire­ment.

101:5.2Sci­ence deals with facts; re­li­gion is con­cerned only with val­ues. Through en­light­ened phi­los­o­phy the mind en­deav­ors to unite the mean­ings of both facts and val­ues, thereby ar­riv­ing at a con­cept of com­plete re­al­ity. Re­mem­ber that sci­ence is the do­main of knowl­edge, phi­los­o­phy the realm of wis­dom, and re­li­gion the sphere of the faith ex­pe­ri­ence. But re­li­gion, nonethe­less, pre­sents two phases of man­i­fes­ta­tion:

101:5.31. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. The ex­pe­ri­ence of prim­i­tive wor­ship, the re­li­gion which is a mind deriva­tive.

• concerned with eternal realities, survival of personality, attainment of Deity

101:5.42. Re­vealed re­li­gion. The uni­verse at­ti­tude which is a spirit deriva­tive; the as­sur­ance of, and be­lief in, the con­ser­va­tion of eter­nal re­al­i­ties, the sur­vival of per­son­al­ity, and the even­tual at­tain­ment of the cos­mic De­ity, whose pur­pose has made all this pos­si­ble. It is a part of the plan of the uni­verse that, sooner or later, evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is des­tined to re­ceive the spir­i­tual ex­pan­sion of rev­e­la­tion.

101:5.5Both sci­ence and re­li­gion start out with the as­sump­tion of cer­tain gen­er­ally ac­cepted bases for log­i­cal de­duc­tions. So, also, must phi­los­o­phy start its ca­reer upon the as­sump­tion of the re­al­ity of three things:

101:5.61. The ma­te­rial body.

101:5.72. The super­ma­te­rial phase of the hu­man be­ing, the soul or even the in­dwelling spirit.

101:5.83. The hu­man mind, the mech­a­nism for in­ter­com­mu­ni­ca­tion and in­teras­so­ci­a­tion be­tween spirit and mat­ter, be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual.

101:5.9Sci­en­tists as­sem­ble facts, philoso­phers co-or­di­nate ideas, while proph­ets ex­alt ide­als. Feel­ing and emo­tion are in­vari­able con­comi­tants of re­li­gion, but they are not re­li­gion. Re­li­gion may be the feel­ing of ex­pe­ri­ence, but it is hardly the ex­pe­ri­ence of feel­ing. Nei­ther logic (ra­tio­nal­iza­tion) nor emo­tion (feel­ing) is es­sen­tially a part of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, al­though both may var­i­ously be as­so­ci­ated with the ex­er­cise of faith in the fur­ther­ance of spir­i­tual in­sight into re­al­ity, all ac­cord­ing to the sta­tus and tem­per­a­men­tal ten­dency of the in­di­vid­ual mind.

101:5.10Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is the out­work­ing of the en­dow­ment of the lo­cal uni­verse mind ad­ju­tant charged with the cre­ation and fos­ter­ing of the wor­ship trait in evolv­ing man. Such prim­i­tive re­li­gions are di­rectly con­cerned with ethics and morals, the sense of hu­man duty. Such re­li­gions are pred­i­cated on the as­sur­ance of con­science and re­sult in the sta­bi­liza­tion of rel­a­tively eth­i­cal civ­i­liza­tions.

• function of revelation › concerned with expansion of truth

101:5.11Per­son­ally re­vealed re­li­gions are spon­sored by the be­stowal spir­its rep­re­sent­ing the three per­sons of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity and are es­pe­cially con­cerned with the ex­pan­sion of truth. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion drives home to the in­di­vid­ual the idea of per­sonal duty; re­vealed re­li­gion lays in­creas­ing em­pha­sis on lov­ing, the golden rule.

• assurance of r. based on faith plus experience in r.

101:5.12Evolved re­li­gion rests wholly on faith. Rev­e­la­tion has the ad­di­tional as­sur­ance of its ex­panded pre­sen­ta­tion of the truths of di­vin­ity and re­al­ity and the still more valu­able tes­ti­mony of the ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence which ac­cu­mu­lates in con­se­quence of the prac­ti­cal work­ing union of the faith of evo­lu­tion and the truth of rev­e­la­tion. Such a work­ing union of hu­man faith and di­vine truth con­sti­tutes the pos­ses­sion of a char­ac­ter well on the road to the ac­tual ac­quire­ment of a mor­ontial per­son­al­ity.

101:5.13Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion pro­vides only the as­sur­ance of faith and the con­fir­ma­tion of con­science; rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion pro­vides the as­sur­ance of faith plus the truth of a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the re­al­i­ties of rev­e­la­tion. The third step in re­li­gion, or the third phase of the ex­pe­ri­ence of re­li­gion, has to do with the mor­ontia state, the firmer grasp of mota. In­creas­ingly in the mor­ontia pro­gres­sion the truths of re­vealed re­li­gion are ex­panded; more and more you will know the truth of su­preme val­ues, di­vine good­nesses, uni­ver­sal re­la­tion­ships, eter­nal re­al­i­ties, and ul­ti­mate des­tinies.

101:5.14In­creas­ingly through­out the mor­ontia pro­gres­sion the as­sur­ance of truth re­places the as­sur­ance of faith. When you are fi­nally mus­tered into the ac­tual spirit world, then will the as­sur­ances of pure spirit in­sight op­er­ate in the place of faith and truth or, rather, in con­junc­tion with, and super­im­posed upon, these for­mer tech­niques of per­son­al­ity as­sur­ance.

• function of revelation › recognizes and expands duty demands of evolutionary religion

101:9.1No pro­fessed rev­e­la­tion of re­li­gion could be re­garded as au­then­tic if it failed to rec­og­nize the duty de­mands of eth­i­cal obli­ga­tion which had been cre­ated and fos­tered by pre­ced­ing evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. Rev­e­la­tion un­fail­ingly en­larges the eth­i­cal hori­zon of evolved re­li­gion while it si­mul­ta­ne­ously and un­fail­ingly ex­pands the moral obli­ga­tions of all prior rev­e­la­tions.

• should not be slighted if accompanied by errors, obsolete ideas

102:1.3Ow­ing to the iso­la­tion of re­bel­lion, the rev­e­la­tion of truth on Uran­tia has all too of­ten been mixed up with the state­ments of par­tial and tran­sient cos­molo­gies. Truth re­mains un­changed from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, but the as­so­ci­ated teach­ings about the phys­i­cal world vary from day to day and from year to year. Eter­nal truth should not be slighted be­cause it chances to be found in com­pany with ob­so­lete ideas re­gard­ing the ma­te­rial world. The more of sci­ence you know, the less sure you can be; the more of re­li­gion you have, the more cer­tain you are.

• contrasted with science, religion, and philosophy
• function of revelation › only compensation for absence of mota

102:3.5Sci­ence, knowl­edge, leads to fact con­scious­ness; re­li­gion, ex­pe­ri­ence, leads to value con­scious­ness; phi­los­o­phy, wis­dom, leads to co-or­di­nate con­scious­ness; rev­e­la­tion (the sub­sti­tute for mor­ontia mota) leads to the con­scious­ness of true re­al­ity; while the co-or­di­na­tion of the con­scious­ness of fact, value, and true re­al­ity con­sti­tutes aware­ness of per­son­al­ity re­al­ity, max­i­mum of be­ing, to­gether with the be­lief in the pos­si­bil­ity of the sur­vival of that very per­son­al­ity.

102:3.6Knowl­edge leads to plac­ing men, to orig­i­nat­ing so­cial strata and castes. Re­li­gion leads to serv­ing men, thus cre­at­ing ethics and al­tru­ism. Wis­dom leads to the higher and bet­ter fel­low­ship of both ideas and one’s fel­lows. Rev­e­la­tion lib­er­ates men and starts them out on the eter­nal ad­ven­ture.

102:3.7Sci­ence sorts men; re­li­gion loves men, even as your­self; wis­dom does jus­tice to dif­fer­ing men; but rev­e­la­tion glo­ri­fies man and dis­closes his ca­pac­ity for part­ner­ship with God.

• function of revelation › portrays eternal brotherhood; makes man Godlike

102:3.8Sci­ence vainly strives to cre­ate the broth­er­hood of cul­ture; re­li­gion brings into be­ing the broth­er­hood of the spirit. Phi­los­o­phy strives for the broth­er­hood of wis­dom; rev­e­la­tion por­trays the eter­nal broth­er­hood, the Par­a­dise Corps of the Fi­nal­ity.

102:3.9Knowl­edge yields pride in the fact of per­son­al­ity; wis­dom is the con­scious­ness of the mean­ing of per­son­al­ity; re­li­gion is the ex­pe­ri­ence of cog­nizance of the value of per­son­al­ity; rev­e­la­tion is the as­sur­ance of per­son­al­ity sur­vival.

102:3.10Sci­ence seeks to iden­tify, an­a­lyze, and clas­sify the seg­mented parts of the lim­it­less cos­mos. Re­li­gion grasps the idea-of-the-whole, the en­tire cos­mos. Phi­los­o­phy at­tempts the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the ma­te­rial seg­ments of sci­ence with the spir­i­tual-in­sight con­cept of the whole. Wherein phi­los­o­phy fails in this at­tempt, rev­e­la­tion suc­ceeds, af­firm­ing that the cos­mic cir­cle is uni­ver­sal, eter­nal, ab­so­lute, and in­fi­nite. This cos­mos of the In­fi­nite I AM is there­fore end­less, lim­it­less, and all-in­clu­sive—time­less, space­less, and un­qual­i­fied. And we bear tes­ti­mony that the In­fi­nite I AM is also the Fa­ther of Mi­chael of Neb­a­don and the God of hu­man sal­va­tion.

102:3.11Sci­ence in­di­cates De­ity as a fact; phi­los­o­phy pre­sents the idea of an Ab­so­lute; re­li­gion en­vi­sions God as a lov­ing spir­i­tual per­son­al­ity. Rev­e­la­tion af­firms the unity of the fact of De­ity, the idea of the Ab­so­lute, and the spir­i­tual per­son­al­ity of God and, fur­ther, pre­sents this con­cept as our Fa­ther—the uni­ver­sal fact of ex­is­tence, the eter­nal idea of mind, and the in­fi­nite spirit of life.

• personal revelation › hunger for truth is a r.

102:3.12The pur­suit of knowl­edge con­sti­tutes sci­ence; the search for wis­dom is phi­los­o­phy; the love for God is re­li­gion; the hunger for truth is a rev­e­la­tion. But it is the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster that at­taches the feel­ing of re­al­ity to man’s spir­i­tual in­sight into the cos­mos.

102:3.13In sci­ence, the idea pre­cedes the ex­pres­sion of its re­al­iza­tion; in re­li­gion, the ex­pe­ri­ence of re­al­iza­tion pre­cedes the ex­pres­sion of the idea. There is a vast dif­fer­ence be­tween the evo­lu­tion­ary will-to-be­lieve and the prod­uct of en­light­ened rea­son, re­li­gious in­sight, and rev­e­la­tion—the will that be­lieves.

• function of revelation › portrays eternal brotherhood; makes man Godlike

102:3.14In evo­lu­tion, re­li­gion of­ten leads to man’s cre­at­ing his con­cepts of God; rev­e­la­tion ex­hibits the phe­nom­e­non of God’s evolv­ing man him­self, while in the earth life of Christ Mi­chael we be­hold the phe­nom­e­non of God’s re­veal­ing him­self to man. Evo­lu­tion tends to make God man­like; rev­e­la­tion tends to make man God­like.

102:3.15Sci­ence is only sat­is­fied with first causes, re­li­gion with su­preme per­son­al­ity, and phi­los­o­phy with unity. Rev­e­la­tion af­firms that these three are one, and that all are good. The eter­nal real is the good of the uni­verse and not the time il­lu­sions of space evil. In the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of all per­son­al­i­ties, al­ways is it true that the real is the good and the good is the real.

• function of revelation › unifies history, geology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, and psychology

102:4.6Re­vealed re­li­gion is the uni­fy­ing el­e­ment of hu­man ex­is­tence. Rev­e­la­tion uni­fies his­tory, co-or­di­nates ge­ol­ogy, as­tron­omy, physics, chem­istry, bi­ol­ogy, so­ci­ol­ogy, and psy­chol­ogy. Spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence is the real soul of man’s cos­mos.

• function of revelation › punctuates otherwise slow-moving planetary evolution

103:0.2The re­li­gious ten­den­cies of the hu­man races are in­nate; they are uni­ver­sally man­i­fested and have an ap­par­ently nat­u­ral ori­gin; prim­i­tive re­li­gions are al­ways evo­lu­tion­ary in their gen­e­sis. As nat­u­ral re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence con­tin­ues to pro­gress, pe­ri­odic rev­e­la­tions of truth punc­tu­ate the oth­er­wise slow-mov­ing course of plan­e­tary evo­lu­tion.

• function of revelation › only compensation for absence of mota

103:6.8Meta­physics has proved a fail­ure; mota, man can­not per­ceive. Rev­e­la­tion is the only tech­nique which can com­pen­sate for the ab­sence of the truth sen­si­tiv­ity of mota in a ma­te­rial world. Rev­e­la­tion au­thor­i­ta­tively clar­i­fies the mud­dle of rea­son-de­vel­oped meta­physics on an evo­lu­tion­ary sphere.

• function of revelation › only compensation for absence of mota

103:6.12Out of his in­com­plete grasp of sci­ence, his faint hold upon re­li­gion, and his abortive at­tempts at meta­physics, man has at­tempted to con­struct his for­mu­la­tions of phi­los­o­phy. And mod­ern man would in­deed build a wor­thy and en­gag­ing phi­los­o­phy of him­self and his uni­verse were it not for the break­down of his all-im­por­tant and in­dis­pens­able meta­phys­i­cal con­nec­tion be­tween the worlds of mat­ter and spirit, the fail­ure of meta­physics to bridge the mor­ontia gulf be­tween the phys­i­cal and the spir­i­tual. Mor­tal man lacks the con­cept of mor­ontia mind and ma­te­rial; and rev­e­la­tion is the only tech­nique for aton­ing for this de­fi­ciency in the con­cep­tual data which man so ur­gently needs in or­der to con­struct a log­i­cal phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse and to ar­rive at a sat­is­fy­ing un­der­stand­ing of his sure and set­tled place in that uni­verse.

103:6.13Rev­e­la­tion is evo­lu­tion­ary man’s only hope of bridg­ing the mor­ontia gulf. Faith and rea­son, un­aided by mota, can­not con­ceive and con­struct a log­i­cal uni­verse. With­out the in­sight of mota, mor­tal man can­not dis­cern good­ness, love, and truth in the phe­nom­ena of the ma­te­rial world.

• function of revelation › instructs and validates faith

103:7.1Sci­ence is sus­tained by rea­son, re­li­gion by faith. Faith, though not pred­i­cated on rea­son, is rea­son­able; though in­de­pen­dent of logic, it is nonethe­less en­cour­aged by sound logic. Faith can­not be nour­ished even by an ideal phi­los­o­phy; in­deed, it is, with sci­ence, the very source of such a phi­los­o­phy. Faith, hu­man re­li­gious in­sight, can be surely in­structed only by rev­e­la­tion, can be surely el­e­vated only by per­sonal mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence with the spir­i­tual Ad­juster pres­ence of the God who is spirit.

• function of revelation › affirms First Cause of science and religion’s God of salvation are same Deity

103:7.8The truth—an un­der­stand­ing of cos­mic re­la­tion­ships, uni­verse facts, and spir­i­tual val­ues—can best be had through the min­istry of the Spirit of Truth and can best be crit­i­cized by rev­e­la­tion. But rev­e­la­tion orig­i­nates nei­ther a sci­ence nor a re­li­gion; its func­tion is to co-or­di­nate both sci­ence and re­li­gion with the truth of re­al­ity. Al­ways, in the ab­sence of rev­e­la­tion or in the fail­ure to ac­cept or grasp it, has mor­tal man re­sorted to his fu­tile ges­ture of meta­physics, that be­ing the only hu­man sub­sti­tute for the rev­e­la­tion of truth or for the mota of mor­ontia per­son­al­ity.

• function of revelation › compensates for frailties of philosophy

103:8.6Phi­los­o­phy, to be of the great­est ser­vice to both sci­ence and re­li­gion, should avoid the ex­tremes of both ma­te­ri­al­ism and pan­the­ism. Only a phi­los­o­phy which rec­og­nizes the re­al­ity of per­son­al­ity—per­ma­nence in the pres­ence of change—can be of moral value to man, can serve as a li­ai­son be­tween the the­o­ries of ma­te­rial sci­ence and spir­i­tual re­li­gion. Rev­e­la­tion is a com­pen­sa­tion for the frail­ties of evolv­ing phi­los­o­phy.

• personal revelation › Adjuster constantly communicates

108:6.7The Ad­justers are the eter­nal an­ces­tors, the di­vine orig­i­nals, of your evolv­ing im­mor­tal souls; they are the un­ceas­ing urge that leads man to at­tempt the mas­tery of the ma­te­rial and pres­ent ex­is­tence in the light of the spir­i­tual and fu­ture ca­reer. The Mon­i­tors are the pris­on­ers of undy­ing hope, the founts of ev­er­last­ing pro­gres­sion. And how they do en­joy com­mu­ni­cat­ing with their sub­jects in more or less di­rect chan­nels! How they re­joice when they can dis­pense with sym­bols and other meth­ods of in­di­rec­tion and flash their mes­sages straight to the in­tel­lects of their hu­man part­ners!

• personal revelation › Adjuster’s direct voice may be heard in supreme decision

109:5.2It is some­times pos­si­ble to have the mind il­lu­mi­nated, to hear the di­vine voice that con­tin­u­ally speaks within you, so that you may be­come par­tially con­scious of the wis­dom, truth, good­ness, and beauty of the po­ten­tial per­son­al­ity con­stantly in­dwelling you.

• personal revelation › Adjuster constantly communicates

110:1.1Ad­justers should not be thought of as liv­ing in the ma­te­rial brains of hu­man be­ings. They are not or­ganic parts of the phys­i­cal crea­tures of the realms. The Thought Ad­juster may more prop­erly be en­vis­aged as in­dwelling the mor­tal mind of man rather than as ex­ist­ing within the con­fines of a sin­gle phys­i­cal or­gan. And in­di­rectly and un­rec­og­nized the Ad­juster is con­stantly com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the hu­man sub­ject, es­pe­cially dur­ing those sub­lime ex­pe­ri­ences of the wor­ship­ful con­tact of mind with spirit in the super­con­scious­ness.

• personal revelation › often blinds a person, precipitating fanaticism

110:4.5There ex­ists a vast gulf be­tween the hu­man and the di­vine, be­tween man and God. The Uran­tia races are so largely elec­tri­cally and chem­i­cally con­trolled, so highly an­i­mallike in their com­mon be­hav­ior, so emo­tional in their or­di­nary re­ac­tions, that it be­comes ex­ceed­ingly dif­fi­cult for the Mon­i­tors to guide and di­rect them. You are so de­void of coura­geous de­ci­sions and con­se­crated co-op­er­a­tion that your in­dwelling Ad­justers find it next to im­pos­si­ble to com­mu­ni­cate di­rectly with the hu­man mind. Even when they do find it pos­si­ble to flash a gleam of new truth to the evolv­ing mor­tal soul, this spir­i­tual rev­e­la­tion of­ten so blinds the crea­ture as to pre­cip­i­tate a con­vul­sion of fa­nati­cism or to ini­ti­ate some other in­tel­lec­tual up­heaval which re­sults dis­as­trously. Many a new re­li­gion and strange “ism” has arisen from the aborted, im­per­fect, mis­un­der­stood, and gar­bled com­mu­ni­ca­tions of the Thought Ad­justers.

• personal revelation › Adjuster’s direct voice may be heard in supreme decision

110:7.9While the voice of the Ad­juster is ever within you, most of you will hear it sel­dom dur­ing a life­time. Hu­man be­ings be­low the third and sec­ond cir­cles of at­tain­ment rarely hear the Ad­juster’s di­rect voice ex­cept in mo­ments of su­preme de­sire, in a su­preme sit­u­a­tion, and con­se­quent upon a su­preme de­ci­sion.

• limitations

112:5.11There are two dif­fi­cul­ties that ham­per my ef­forts to ex­plain just what hap­pens to you in death, the sur­viv­ing you which is dis­tinct from the de­part­ing Ad­juster. One of these con­sists in the im­pos­si­bil­ity of con­vey­ing to your level of com­pre­hen­sion an ad­e­quate de­scrip­tion of a trans­ac­tion on the bor­der­land of the phys­i­cal and mor­ontia realms. The other is brought about by the re­stric­tions placed upon my com­mis­sion as a rev­e­la­tor of truth by the ce­les­tial gov­ern­ing au­thor­i­ties of Uran­tia. There are many in­ter­est­ing de­tails which might be pre­sented, but I with­hold them upon the ad­vice of your im­me­di­ate plan­e­tary super­vi­sors. But within the lim­its of my per­mis­sion I can say this much:

• personal revelation › word often spoken by angels

113:0.1Hav­ing pre­sented the nar­ra­tives of the Min­is­ter­ing Spir­its of Time and the Mes­sen­ger Hosts of Space, we come to the con­sid­er­a­tion of the guard­ian an­gels, ser­a­phim de­voted to the min­istry to in­di­vid­ual mor­tals, for whose el­e­va­tion and per­fec­tion all of the vast sur­vival scheme of spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion has been pro­vided. In past ages on Uran­tia, these des­tiny guard­i­ans were about the only group of an­gels that had rec­og­ni­tion. The plan­e­tary ser­a­phim are in­deed min­is­ter­ing spir­its sent forth to do ser­vice for those who shall sur­vive. These at­tend­ing ser­a­phim have func­tioned as the spir­i­tual helpers of mor­tal man in all the great events of the past and the pres­ent. In many a rev­e­la­tion “the word was spo­ken by an­gels”; many of the man­dates of heaven have been “re­ceived by the min­istry of an­gels.”

• limitations › imposed by mandate

119:0.1Chief of the Evening Stars of Neb­a­don, I am as­signed to Uran­tia by Ga­briel on the mis­sion of re­veal­ing the story of the seven be­stowals of the Uni­verse Sov­er­eign, Mi­chael of Neb­a­don, and my name is Gavalia. In mak­ing this pre­sen­ta­tion, I will ad­here strictly to the lim­i­ta­tions im­posed by my com­mis­sion.

• limitations › imposed by mandate

119:0.7The lo­cal uni­verse of Neb­a­don is now ruled by a Cre­ator Son who has com­pleted his ser­vice of be­stowal; he reigns in just and mer­ci­ful su­prem­acy over all the vast realms of his evolv­ing and per­fect­ing uni­verse. Mi­chael of Neb­a­don is the 611,121^st be­stowal of the Eter­nal Son upon the uni­verses of time and space, and he be­gan the or­ga­ni­za­tion of your lo­cal uni­verse about four hun­dred bil­lion years ago. Mi­chael made ready for his first be­stowal ad­ven­ture about the time Uran­tia was tak­ing on its pres­ent form, one bil­lion years ago. His be­stowals have oc­curred about one hun­dred and fifty mil­lion years apart, the last tak­ing place on Uran­tia nine­teen hun­dred years ago. I will now pro­ceed to un­fold the na­ture and char­ac­ter of these be­stowals as fully as my com­mis­sion per­mits.

• limitations
• limitations › imposed by mandate

119:6.3Mi­chael ap­peared on the head­quar­ters of con­stel­la­tion five as a full-fledged mor­ontia mor­tal of as­cend­ing sta­tus. I re­gret that I am for­bid­den to re­veal the de­tails of this un­num­bered mor­ontia mor­tal’s ca­reer, for it was one of the most ex­traor­di­nary and amaz­ing epochs in Mi­chael’s be­stowal ex­pe­ri­ence, not even ex­cept­ing his dra­matic and tragic so­journ on Uran­tia. But among the many re­stric­tions im­posed upon me in ac­cept­ing this com­mis­sion is one which for­bids my un­der­tak­ing to un­fold the de­tails of this won­der­ful ca­reer of Mi­chael as the mor­ontia mor­tal of En­dan­tum.

• personal revelation › certain wise men of earth knew of Michael’s impending arrival

119:7.6Cer­tain wise men of earth knew of Mi­chael’s im­pend­ing ar­rival. Through the con­tacts of one world with an­other, these wise men of spir­i­tual in­sight learned of the forth­com­ing be­stowal of Mi­chael on Uran­tia. And the ser­a­phim did, through the mid­way crea­tures, make an­nounce­ment to a group of Chaldean priests whose leader was Ard­non. These men of God vis­ited the new­born child in the manger. The only super­nat­u­ral event as­so­ci­ated with the birth of Je­sus was this an­nounce­ment to Ard­non and his as­so­ciates by the ser­a­phim of for­mer at­tach­ment to Adam and Eve in the first gar­den.

• limitations › resorted to only when concept has no adequate previous expression

121:8.13The mem­o­randa which I have col­lected, and from which I have pre­pared this nar­ra­tive of the life and teach­ings of Je­sus—aside from the mem­ory of the rec­ord of the Apos­tle An­drew—em­brace thought gems and su­pe­rior con­cepts of Je­sus’ teach­ings as­sem­bled from more than two thou­sand hu­man be­ings who have lived on earth from the days of Je­sus down to the time of the in­dit­ing of these rev­e­la­tions, more cor­rectly re­state­ments. The rev­e­la­tory per­mis­sion has been uti­lized only when the hu­man rec­ord and hu­man con­cepts failed to sup­ply an ad­e­quate thought pat­tern. My rev­e­la­tory com­mis­sion for­bade me to re­sort to ex­trahu­man sources of ei­ther in­for­ma­tion or ex­pres­sion un­til such a time as I could tes­tify that I had failed in my ef­forts to find the re­quired con­cep­tual ex­pres­sion in purely hu­man sources.

• personal revelation › flashes upon earth in lives of God-revealing men

132:7.6Then ex­claimed Ga­nid: “Teacher, let’s you and I make a new re­li­gion, one good enough for In­dia and big enough for Rome, and maybe we can trade it to the Jews for Yah­weh.” And Je­sus replied: “Ga­nid, re­li­gions are not made. The re­li­gions of men grow up over long pe­ri­ods of time, while the rev­e­la­tions of God flash upon earth in the lives of the men who re­veal God to their fel­lows.” But they did not com­pre­hend the mean­ing of these pro­phetic words.

• overrevelation › Jesus did not precipitate confusion by

137:7.14As they thus tar­ried be­fore em­bark­ing on their ac­tive pub­lic preach­ing, Je­sus and the seven spent two evenings each week at the syn­a­gogue in the study of the He­brew scrip­tures. In later years af­ter sea­sons of in­tense pub­lic work, the apos­tles looked back upon these four months as the most pre­cious and prof­itable of all their as­so­ci­a­tion with the Mas­ter. Je­sus taught these men all they could as­sim­i­late. He did not make the mis­take of overteach­ing them. He did not pre­cip­i­tate con­fu­sion by the pre­sen­ta­tion of truth too far be­yond their ca­pac­ity to com­pre­hend.

• personal revelation › Nalda’s checkered past came before her

143:5.13Nalda told John that Je­sus had told her “all I ever did.” John many times wanted to ask Je­sus about this visit with Nalda, but he never did. Je­sus told her only one thing about her­self, but his look into her eyes and the man­ner of his deal­ing with her had so brought all of her check­ered life in panoramic re­view be­fore her mind in a mo­ment of time that she as­so­ci­ated all of this self-rev­e­la­tion of her past life with the look and the word of the Mas­ter. Je­sus never told her she had had five hus­bands. She had lived with four dif­fer­ent men since her hus­band cast her aside, and this, with all her past, came up so vividly in her mind at the mo­ment when she re­al­ized Je­sus was a man of God that she sub­se­quently re­peated to John that Je­sus had re­ally told her all about her­self.

• not limited to any one generation

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

• epochal revelations

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.

• epochal revelations

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.

• always comes in times of great testing or defeat

195:9.3The teach­ings of Je­sus, even though greatly mod­i­fied, sur­vived the mys­tery cults of their birth­time, the ig­no­rance and su­per­sti­tion of the dark ages, and are even now slowly tri­umph­ing over the ma­te­ri­al­ism, mech­a­nism, and sec­u­lar­ism of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. And such times of great test­ing and threat­ened de­feat are al­ways times of great rev­e­la­tion.

• of God to world will not fail

196:3.33Be not dis­cour­aged; hu­man evo­lu­tion is still in prog­ress, and the rev­e­la­tion of God to the world, in and through Je­sus, shall not fail.