seraphim

114:0.1The Most Highs rule in the king­doms of men through many ce­les­tial forces and agen­cies but chiefly through the min­istry of ser­a­phim.

39:8.9Seraph­ing­ton is the des­tiny sphere for an­gels, and their at­tain­ment of this world is quite dif­fer­ent from the ex­pe­ri­ences of the mor­tal pil­grims on As­cend­ing­ton. An­gels are not ab­so­lutely sure of their eter­nal fu­ture un­til they have at­tained Seraph­ing­ton. No an­gel at­tain­ing Seraph­ing­ton has ever been known to go astray; sin will never find re­sponse in the heart of a ser­a­phim of com­ple­tion.

40:1.2To climb to the su­per­nal heights of fi­nal­i­ter son­ship with God is a mas­terly achieve­ment for an an­gel, an ac­com­plish­ment far tran­scend­ing your at­tain­ment of eter­nal sur­vival through the plan of the Eter­nal Son and the ever-pres­ent help of the in­dwelling Ad­juster; but the guard­ian ser­a­phim, and oc­ca­sion­ally oth­ers, do ac­tu­ally ef­fect such as­cen­sions.

26:1.143. The Min­is­ter­ing Spir­its of the Lo­cal Uni­verses em­brace the ser­a­phim and their as­sis­tants, the cheru­bim. With these off­spring of a Uni­verse Mother Spirit mor­tal as­cend­ers have ini­tial con­tact. The mid­way crea­tures, of na­tiv­ity on the in­hab­ited worlds, are not re­ally of the an­gelic or­ders proper, though of­ten func­tion­ally grouped with the min­is­ter­ing spir­its. Their story, with an ac­count of the ser­a­phim and cheru­bim, is pre­sented in those pa­pers deal­ing with the af­fairs of your lo­cal uni­verse.

28:0.1As the super­na­phim are the an­gelic hosts of the cen­tral uni­verse and the ser­a­phim of the lo­cal uni­verses, so are the se­con­a­phim the min­is­ter­ing spir­its of the super­uni­verses. In de­gree of di­vin­ity and in po­ten­tial of su­prem­acy, how­ever, these chil­dren of the Re­flec­tive Spir­its are much more like super­na­phim than ser­a­phim. They serve not alone in the super­cre­ations, and both nu­mer­ous and in­trigu­ing are the trans­ac­tions spon­sored by their un­re­vealed as­so­ciates.

38:0.2As the super­na­phim in the cen­tral uni­verse and the se­con­a­phim in a super­uni­verse, so the ser­a­phim, with the as­so­ci­ated cheru­bim and sa­no­bim, con­sti­tute the an­gelic corps of a lo­cal uni­verse.

39:8.1Ser­a­phim are of ori­gin in the lo­cal uni­verses, and in these very realms of their na­tiv­ity some achieve ser­vice des­tiny. With the help and coun­sel of the se­nior arch­an­gels some ser­a­phim may be el­e­vated to the ex­alted du­ties of Bril­liant Evening Stars, while oth­ers at­tain the sta­tus and ser­vice of the un­re­vealed co-or­di­nates of the Evening Stars. Still other ad­ven­tures in lo­cal uni­verse des­tiny may be at­tempted, but Seraph­ing­ton ever re­mains the eter­nal goal of all an­gels. Seraph­ing­ton is the an­gelic thresh­old to Par­a­dise and De­ity at­tain­ment, the tran­si­tion sphere from the min­istry of time to the ex­alted ser­vice of eter­nity.

38:7.2Cheru­bim and sa­no­bim are in­her­ently as­so­ci­ated, func­tion­ally united. One is an en­ergy pos­i­tive per­son­al­ity; the other, en­ergy neg­a­tive. The right-hand de­flec­tor, or pos­i­tively charged an­gel, is the cheru­bim—the se­nior or con­trol­ling per­son­al­ity. The left-hand de­flec­tor, or neg­a­tively charged an­gel, is the sa­no­bim—the com­ple­ment of be­ing. Each type of an­gel is very lim­ited in soli­tary func­tion; hence they usu­ally serve in pairs. When serv­ing in­de­pen­dently of their se­raphic di­rec­tors, they are more than ever de­pen­dent on mu­tual con­tact and al­ways func­tion to­gether.

38:7.3Cheru­bim and sa­no­bim are the faith­ful and ef­fi­cient aids of the se­raphic min­is­ters, and all seven or­ders of ser­a­phim are pro­vided with these sub­or­di­nate as­sis­tants. Cheru­bim and sa­no­bim serve for ages in these ca­pac­i­ties, but they do not ac­com­pany ser­a­phim on as­sign­ments be­yond the con­fines of the lo­cal uni­verse.

48:5.1The Man­sion World Teach­ers are a corps of de­serted but glo­ri­fied cheru­bim and sa­no­bim. When a pil­grim of time ad­vances from a trial world of space to the man­sion and as­so­ci­ated worlds of mor­ontia train­ing, he is ac­com­pa­nied by his per­sonal or group ser­a­phim, the guard­ian of des­tiny. In the worlds of mor­tal ex­is­tence the ser­a­phim is ably as­sisted by cheru­bim and sa­no­bim; but when her mor­tal ward is de­liv­ered from the bonds of the flesh and starts out on the as­cen­dant ca­reer, when the post­ma­te­rial or mor­ontia life be­gins, the at­tend­ing ser­a­phim has no fur­ther need of the min­is­tra­tions of her for­mer lieu­tenants, the cheru­bim and sa­no­bim.

38:8.6When, as Man­sion World Teach­ers, the once-em­braced cheru­bim and sa­no­bim have long served on the mor­ontia spheres, from the low­est to the high­est, and when their corps on Sal­ving­ton is over­recruited, the Bright and Morn­ing Star sum­mons these faith­ful ser­vants of the crea­tures of time to ap­pear in his pres­ence. The oath of per­son­al­ity trans­for­ma­tion is ad­min­is­tered; and there­upon, in groups of seven thou­sand, these ad­vanced and se­nior cheru­bim and sa­no­bim are re-em­braced by the Uni­verse Mother Spirit. From this sec­ond em­brace they emerge as full-fledged ser­a­phim. Hence­forth, the full and com­plete ca­reer of a ser­a­phim, with all of its Par­a­dise pos­si­bil­i­ties, is open to such re­born cheru­bim and sa­no­bim. Such an­gels may be as­signed as guard­i­ans of des­tiny to some mor­tal be­ing, and if the mor­tal ward at­tains sur­vival, then do they be­come el­i­gi­ble for ad­vance­ment to Seraph­ing­ton and the seven cir­cles of se­raphic at­tain­ment, even to Par­a­dise and the Corps of the Fi­nal­ity.

48:5.10Many of the older of these teach­ers, those who have long served on the worlds of the Sal­ving­ton cir­cuit, are re-em­braced by the Uni­verse Mother Spirit, and from this sec­ond em­brace these cheru­bim and sa­no­bim emerge with the sta­tus of ser­a­phim.

• may become › Trinitized Sons of Selection

22:1.11The Trin­i­tized Sons of Se­lec­tion em­brace the Trin­i­tized Cus­to­di­ans and the Trin­i­tized Am­bas­sadors. They are re­cruited from cer­tain of the evo­lu­tion­ary ser­a­phim and trans­lated mid­way crea­tures who have tra­versed Ha­vona and have at­tained Par­a­dise, as well as from cer­tain of the Spirit-fused and the Son-fused mor­tals who have like­wise as­cended to the cen­tral Isle of Light and Life. Sub­se­quent to their em­brace by the Par­a­dise Trin­ity and af­ter a brief train­ing in Ha­vona, the Trin­i­tized Sons of Se­lec­tion are as­signed to the courts of the An­cients of Days.

• may become › Trinitized Custodians

22:5.2Trin­i­tized Cus­to­di­ans are as­cen­dant ser­a­phim and trans­lated mid­way crea­tures who have passed through Ha­vona and have at­tained Par­a­dise and the Corps of the Fi­nal­ity. Sub­se­quently they were em­braced by the Par­a­dise Trin­ity and were as­signed to the ser­vice of the An­cients of Days.

• may become › Technical Advisers

25:4.75. The Ser­a­phim.

• may become › Celestial Recorders

25:6.1These are the re­cord­ers who ex­e­cute all rec­ords in du­pli­cate, mak­ing an orig­i­nal spirit record­ing and a semi­ma­te­rial coun­ter­part—what might be called a car­bon copy. This they can do be­cause of their pe­cu­liar abil­ity si­mul­ta­ne­ously to ma­nip­u­late both spir­i­tual and ma­te­rial en­ergy. Ce­les­tial Re­cord­ers are not cre­ated as such; they are as­cen­dant ser­a­phim from the lo­cal uni­verses. They are re­ceived, clas­si­fied, and as­signed to their spheres of work by the coun­cils of the Chiefs of Rec­ords on the head­quar­ters of the seven super­uni­verses. There also are lo­cated the schools for train­ing Ce­les­tial Re­cord­ers. The school on Uversa is con­ducted by the Per­fec­tors of Wis­dom and the Di­vine Coun­selors.

• may become › Paradise Companions

25:8.1The Par­a­dise Com­pan­ions are a com­pos­ite or as­sem­bled group re­cruited from the ranks of the ser­a­phim, se­con­a­phim, super­na­phim, and om­niaphim. Though serv­ing for what you would re­gard as an ex­traor­di­nary length of time, they are not of per­ma­nent sta­tus. When this min­istry has been com­pleted, as a rule (but not in­vari­ably) they re­turn to those du­ties they per­formed when sum­moned to Par­a­dise ser­vice.

• may become › finaliters (are Father-indwelt before admission to Corps of Mortal Finaliters)

31:4.1Many of the faith­ful se­raphic guard­i­ans of mor­tals are per­mit­ted to go through the as­cen­dant ca­reer with their hu­man wards, and many of these guard­ian an­gels, af­ter be­com­ing Fa­ther fused, join their sub­jects in tak­ing the fi­nal­i­ter oath of eter­nity and for­ever ac­cept the des­tiny of their mor­tal as­so­ciates. An­gels who pass through the as­cend­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of mor­tal be­ings may share the des­tiny of hu­man na­ture; they may equally and eter­nally be mus­tered into this Corps of the Fi­nal­ity. Large num­bers of the adopted and glo­ri­fied ser­a­phim are at­tached to the var­i­ous non­mor­tal fi­nal­i­ter corps.

• may become › Brilliant Evening Stars

37:2.4The Bril­liant Evening Stars are a unique two­fold or­der, em­brac­ing some of cre­ated dig­nity and oth­ers of at­tained ser­vice. The Neb­a­don corps of these super­an­gels now num­bers 13,641. There are 4,832 of cre­ated dig­nity, while 8,809 are as­cen­dant spir­its who have at­tained this goal of ex­alted ser­vice. Many of these as­cen­dant Evening Stars started their uni­verse ca­reers as ser­a­phim; oth­ers have as­cended from un­re­vealed lev­els of crea­ture life. As an at­tain­ment goal this high corps is never closed to as­cen­sion can­di­dates so long as a uni­verse is not set­tled in light and life.

• may become › Celestial Recorders

37:8.8Of the Ce­les­tial Re­cord­ers, the as­cen­dant ser­a­phim, we have in Neb­a­don sev­enty-five. These are the se­nior or super­vis­ing re­cord­ers. The ad­vanc­ing stu­dents of this or­der in train­ing num­ber al­most four bil­lion.

39:8.2Ser­a­phim may at­tain Par­a­dise in scores—hun­dreds—of ways, but the most im­por­tant as elab­o­rated in these nar­ra­tives are the fol­low­ing:

• may become › celestial artisans
• may become › Celestial Recorders
• may become › Paradise Companions
• may become › Technical Advisers

39:8.31. To gain ad­mis­sion to the Par­a­dise se­raphic abode in a per­sonal ca­pac­ity by achiev­ing per­fec­tion of spe­cial­ized ser­vice as a ce­les­tial ar­ti­san, a Tech­ni­cal Ad­viser, or a Ce­les­tial Re­corder. To be­come a Par­a­dise Com­pan­ion and, hav­ing thus at­tained the cen­ter of all things, per­haps then to be­come an eter­nal min­is­ter and ad­viser to the se­raphic or­ders and oth­ers.

• sometimes achieve Paradise quicker than mortals

39:8.42. To be sum­moned to Seraph­ing­ton. Un­der cer­tain con­di­tions ser­a­phim are com­manded on high; in other cir­cum­stances an­gels some­times achieve Par­a­dise in a much shorter time than mor­tals. But no mat­ter how fit­ted any se­raphic pair may be, they can­not ini­ti­ate de­par­ture for Seraph­ing­ton or else­where. None but suc­cess­ful des­tiny guard­i­ans can be sure of pro­ceed­ing to Par­a­dise by a pro­gres­sive path of evo­lu­tion­ary as­cent. All oth­ers must pa­tiently await the ar­rival of the Par­a­dise mes­sen­gers of the ter­tiary super­na­phim who come with the sum­mons com­mand­ing them to ap­pear on high.

39:8.53. To at­tain Par­a­dise by the evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tal tech­nique. The su­preme choice of ser­a­phim in the ca­reer of time is the post of guard­ian an­gel in or­der that they may at­tain the ca­reer of fi­nal­ity and be qual­i­fied for as­sign­ment to the eter­nal spheres of se­raphic ser­vice. Such per­sonal guides of the chil­dren of time are called guard­i­ans of des­tiny, sig­ni­fy­ing that they guard mor­tal crea­tures in the path of di­vine des­tiny, and that in so do­ing they are de­ter­min­ing their own high des­tiny.

39:8.6Guard­i­ans of des­tiny are drawn from the ranks of the more ex­pe­ri­enced an­gelic per­son­al­i­ties of all or­ders of ser­a­phim who have qual­i­fied for this ser­vice. All sur­viv­ing mor­tals of Ad­juster-fu­sion des­tiny have tem­po­rary guard­i­ans as­signed, and these as­so­ciates may be­come per­ma­nently at­tached when mor­tal sur­vivors at­tain the req­ui­site in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment. Be­fore mor­tal as­cend­ers leave the man­sion worlds, they all have per­ma­nent se­raphic as­so­ciates. This group of min­is­ter­ing spir­its is dis­cussed in con­nec­tion with the Uran­tia nar­ra­tives.

• Seraphington is eternal goal of all angels

39:8.7It is not pos­si­ble for an­gels to at­tain God from the hu­man level of ori­gin, for they are cre­ated a “lit­tle higher than you”; but it has been wisely ar­ranged that, while they can­not pos­si­bly start up from the very bot­tom, the spir­i­tual low­lands of mor­tal ex­is­tence, they may go down to those who do start from the bot­tom and pi­lot such crea­tures, step by step, world by world, to the por­tals of Ha­vona. When mor­tal as­cend­ers leave Uversa to be­gin the cir­cles of Ha­vona, those guard­i­ans of at­tach­ment sub­se­quent to the life in the flesh will bid their pil­grim as­so­ciates a tem­po­rary farewell while they jour­ney to Seraph­ing­ton, the an­gelic des­ti­na­tion of the grand uni­verse. Here will these guard­i­ans at­tempt, and un­doubt­edly achieve, the seven cir­cles of se­raphic light.

39:8.8Many, but not all, of those ser­a­phim as­signed as des­tiny guard­i­ans dur­ing the ma­te­rial life ac­com­pany their mor­tal as­so­ciates through the Ha­vona cir­cles, and cer­tain other ser­a­phim pass through the cir­cuits of the cen­tral uni­verse in a way that is wholly dif­fer­ent from the mor­tal as­cent. But ir­re­spec­tive of the route of as­cent, all evo­lu­tion­ary ser­a­phim tra­verse Seraph­ing­ton, and the ma­jor­ity pass through this ex­pe­ri­ence in­stead of the Ha­vona cir­cuits.

• may become › completion seraphim

39:8.10The grad­u­ates of Seraph­ing­ton are var­i­ously as­signed: Des­tiny guard­i­ans of Ha­vona-cir­cle ex­pe­ri­ence usu­ally en­ter the Mor­tal Fi­nal­i­ter Corps. Other guard­i­ans, hav­ing passed their Ha­vona sep­a­ra­tion tests, fre­quently re­join their mor­tal as­so­ciates on Par­a­dise, and some be­come the ev­er­last­ing as­so­ciates of the mor­tal fi­nal­i­ters, while oth­ers en­ter the var­i­ous non­mor­tal fi­nal­i­ter corps, and many are mus­tered into the Corps of Se­raphic Com­ple­tion.

39:9.1Af­ter at­tain­ment of the Fa­ther of spir­its and ad­mis­sion to the se­raphic ser­vice of com­ple­tion, an­gels are some­times as­signed to the min­istry of worlds set­tled in light and life. They gain at­tach­ment to the high trin­i­tized be­ings of the uni­verses and to the ex­alted ser­vices of Par­a­dise and Ha­vona. These ser­a­phim of the lo­cal uni­verses have ex­pe­ri­en­tially com­pen­sated the dif­fer­en­tial in di­vin­ity po­ten­tial for­merly set­ting them apart from the min­is­ter­ing spir­its of the cen­tral and super­uni­verses. An­gels of the Se­raphic Corps of Com­ple­tion serve as as­so­ciates of the super­uni­verse se­con­a­phim and as as­sis­tants to the high Par­a­dise-Ha­vona or­ders of super­na­phim. For such an­gels the ca­reer of time is fin­ished; hence­forth and for­ever they are the ser­vants of God, the con­sorts of di­vine per­son­al­i­ties, and the peers of the Par­a­dise fi­nal­i­ters.

39:9.2Large num­bers of the com­ple­tion ser­a­phim re­turn to their na­tive uni­verses, there to com­ple­ment the min­istry of di­vine en­dow­ment by the min­istry of ex­pe­ri­en­tial per­fec­tion. Neb­a­don is, com­par­a­tively speak­ing, one of the younger uni­verses and there­fore does not have so many of these re­turned Seraph­ing­ton grad­u­ates as would be found in an older realm; nonethe­less our lo­cal uni­verse is ad­e­quately sup­plied with the com­ple­tion ser­a­phim, for it is sig­nif­i­cant that the evo­lu­tion­ary realms dis­close in­creas­ing need for their ser­vices as they near the sta­tus of light and life. Com­ple­tion ser­a­phim now serve more ex­ten­sively with the su­preme or­ders of ser­a­phim, but some serve with each of the other an­gelic or­ders. Even your world en­joys the ex­ten­sive min­istry of twelve spe­cial­ized groups of the Se­raphic Corps of Com­ple­tion; these mas­ter ser­a­phim of plan­e­tary super­vi­sion ac­com­pany each newly com­mis­sioned Plan­e­tary Prince to the in­hab­ited worlds.

39:9.3Many fas­ci­nat­ing av­enues of min­istry are open to the com­ple­tion ser­a­phim, but just as they all craved as­sign­ment as des­tiny guard­i­ans in the pre-Par­a­dise days, so in the post-Par­a­dise ex­pe­ri­ence they most de­sire to serve as be­stowal at­ten­dants of the in­car­nated Par­a­dise Sons. They are still su­premely de­voted to that uni­ver­sal plan of start­ing the mor­tal crea­tures of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds out upon the long and en­tic­ing jour­ney to­wards the Par­a­dise goal of di­vin­ity and eter­nity. Through­out the whole mor­tal ad­ven­ture of find­ing God and of achiev­ing di­vine per­fec­tion, these spirit min­is­ters of se­raphic com­ple­tion, to­gether with the faith­ful min­is­ter­ing spir­its of time, are al­ways and for­ever your true friends and un­fail­ing helpers.

39:9.4[Pre­sented by a Mel­chiz­e­dek act­ing by re­quest of the Chief of the Se­raphic Hosts of Neb­a­don.]

• may become › finaliters (are Father-indwelt before admission to Corps of Mortal Finaliters)

55:4.31On the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds a be­ing must hu­man­ize to re­ceive a Thought Ad­juster. All as­cen­dant mem­bers of the Mor­tal Corps of Fi­nal­i­ters have been Ad­juster in­dwelt and fused ex­cept ser­a­phim, and they are Fa­ther in­dwelt by an­other type of spirit at the time of be­ing mus­tered into this corps.

35:9.5The Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns are true to their names; they are well-nigh sov­er­eign in the lo­cal af­fairs of the in­hab­ited worlds. They are al­most pa­ter­nal in their di­rec­tion of the Plan­e­tary Princes, the Ma­te­rial Sons, and the min­is­ter­ing spir­its. The per­sonal grasp of the sov­er­eign is all but com­plete. These rulers are not super­vised by Trin­ity ob­servers from the cen­tral uni­verse. They are the ex­ec­u­tive di­vi­sion of the lo­cal uni­verse, and as cus­to­di­ans of the en­force­ment of leg­isla­tive man­dates and as ex­ec­u­tives for the ap­pli­ca­tion of ju­di­cial ver­dicts, they pre­sent the one place in all uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion where per­sonal dis­loy­alty to the will of the Mi­chael Son could most eas­ily and read­ily in­trench it­self and seek to as­sert it­self.

30:1.673. Evo­lu­tion­ary Ser­a­phim.

30:1.8515. Ser­a­phim.

30:2.504. Evo­lu­tion­ary Ser­a­phim.

30:2.875. Ser­a­phim.

• Loyalatia

38:2.5You do well to love them, but you should not adore them; an­gels are not ob­jects of wor­ship. The great ser­a­phim, Loy­ala­tia, when your seer “fell down to wor­ship be­fore the feet of the an­gel,” said: “See that you do it not; I am a fel­low ser­vant with you and with your races, who are all en­joined to wor­ship God.”

53:6.1There were many no­ble and in­spir­ing acts of de­vo­tion and loy­alty which were per­formed by nu­mer­ous per­son­al­i­ties dur­ing the in­terim be­tween the out­break of hos­til­i­ties and the ar­rival of the new sys­tem ruler and his staff. But the most thrilling of all these dar­ing feats of de­vo­tion was the coura­geous con­duct of Man­otia, the sec­ond in com­mand of the Sa­ta­nia head­quar­ters’ ser­a­phim.

53:6.2At the out­break of re­bel­lion on Je­ru­sem the head of the se­raphic hosts joined the Lu­cifer cause. This no doubt ex­plains why such a large num­ber of the fourth or­der, the sys­tem ad­min­is­tra­tor ser­a­phim, went astray. The se­raphic leader was spir­i­tu­ally blinded by the bril­liant per­son­al­ity of Lu­cifer; his charm­ing ways fas­ci­nated the lower or­ders of ce­les­tial be­ings. They sim­ply could not com­pre­hend that it was pos­si­ble for such a daz­zling per­son­al­ity to go wrong.

53:6.3Not long since, in de­scrib­ing the ex­pe­ri­ences as­so­ci­ated with the on­set of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion, Man­otia said: “But my most ex­hil­a­rat­ing mo­ment was the thrilling ad­ven­ture con­nected with the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion when, as sec­ond se­raphic com­man­der, I re­fused to par­tic­i­pate in the pro­jected in­sult to Mi­chael; and the pow­er­ful rebels sought my de­struc­tion by means of the li­ai­son forces they had ar­ranged. There was a tremen­dous up­heaval on Je­ru­sem, but not a sin­gle loyal ser­a­phim was harmed.

53:6.4“Upon the de­fault of my im­me­di­ate su­pe­rior it de­volved upon me to as­sume com­mand of the an­gelic hosts of Je­ru­sem as the tit­u­lar di­rec­tor of the con­fused se­raphic af­fairs of the sys­tem. I was morally up­held by the Mel­chiz­e­deks, ably as­sisted by a ma­jor­ity of the Ma­te­rial Sons, de­serted by a tremen­dous group of my own or­der, but mag­nif­i­cently sup­ported by the as­cen­dant mor­tals on Je­ru­sem.

53:6.5“Hav­ing been au­to­mat­i­cally thrown out of the con­stel­la­tion cir­cuits by the se­ces­sion of Lu­cifer, we were de­pen­dent on the loy­alty of our in­tel­li­gence corps, who for­warded calls for help to Eden­tia from the near-by sys­tem of Rantu­lia; and we found that the king­dom of or­der, the in­tel­lect of loy­alty, and the spirit of truth were in­her­ently tri­umphant over re­bel­lion, self-as­ser­tion, and so-called per­sonal lib­erty; we were able to carry on un­til the ar­rival of the new Sys­tem Sov­er­eign, the wor­thy suc­ces­sor of Lu­cifer. And im­me­di­ately there­after I was as­signed to the corps of the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceiver­ship of Uran­tia, as­sum­ing ju­ris­dic­tion over the loyal se­raphic or­ders on the world of the traitorous Cali­gas­tia, who had pro­claimed his sphere a mem­ber of the newly pro­jected sys­tem of ‘lib­er­ated worlds and eman­ci­pated per­son­al­i­ties’ pro­posed in the in­fa­mous Dec­la­ra­tion of Lib­erty is­sued by Lu­cifer in his call to the ‘lib­erty-lov­ing, free-think­ing, and for­ward-look­ing in­tel­li­gences of the mis­ruled and mal­ad­min­is­tered worlds of Sa­ta­nia.’”

53:6.6This an­gel is still in ser­vice on Uran­tia, func­tion­ing as as­so­ciate chief of ser­a­phim.

138:5.3The next day Je­sus left his twelve apos­tles quite alone; he wanted them to be­come ac­quainted and de­sired that they be alone to talk over what he had taught them. The Mas­ter re­turned for the evening meal, and dur­ing the af­ter-sup­per hours he talked to them about the min­istry of ser­a­phim, and some of the apos­tles com­pre­hended his teach­ing. They rested for a night and the next day de­parted by boat for Ca­per­naum.

39:5.12The er­ro­neous idea that an­gels pos­sess wings is not wholly due to olden no­tions that they must have wings to fly through the air. Hu­man be­ings have some­times been per­mit­ted to ob­serve ser­a­phim that were be­ing pre­pared for trans­port ser­vice, and the tra­di­tions of these ex­pe­ri­ences have largely de­ter­mined the Uran­tian con­cept of an­gels. In ob­serv­ing a trans­port ser­a­phim be­ing made ready to re­ceive a pas­sen­ger for in­ter­plan­e­tary tran­sit, there may be seen what are ap­par­ently dou­ble sets of wings ex­tend­ing from the head to the foot of the an­gel. In re­al­ity these wings are en­ergy in­su­la­tors—fric­tion shields.

50:2.7The con­trol­lers and trans­form­ers of plan­e­tary as­sign­ment are also able to col­lab­o­rate with an­gels and other or­ders of ce­les­tial be­ings in ren­der­ing these lat­ter per­son­al­i­ties vis­i­ble to mor­tal crea­tures. On spe­cial oc­ca­sions the se­raphic helpers and even the Mel­chiz­e­deks can and do make them­selves vis­i­ble to the in­hab­i­tants of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds. The prin­ci­pal rea­son for bring­ing mor­tal as­cend­ers from the sys­tem cap­i­tal as a part of the staff of the Plan­e­tary Prince is to fa­cil­i­tate com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the in­hab­i­tants of the realm.

119:4.1It was at the end of one of the pe­ri­odic mil­len­nial roll calls of Uversa that Mi­chael pro­ceeded to place the gov­ern­ment of Neb­a­don in the hands of Im­manuel and Ga­briel; and, of course, re­call­ing what had hap­pened in times past fol­low­ing such ac­tion, we all pre­pared to wit­ness Mi­chael’s dis­ap­pear­ance on his fourth mis­sion of be­stowal, and we were not long kept wait­ing, for he shortly went out upon the Sal­ving­ton dis­patch­ing field and was lost to our view.

119:4.2On the third day af­ter this be­stowal dis­ap­pear­ance we ob­served, in the uni­verse broad­casts to Uversa, this sig­nif­i­cant news item from the se­raphic head­quar­ters of Neb­a­don: “Re­port­ing the unan­nounced ar­rival of an un­known ser­a­phim, ac­com­pa­nied by a soli­tary super­na­phim and Ga­briel of Sal­ving­ton. This un­reg­is­tered ser­a­phim qual­i­fies as of the Neb­a­don or­der and bears cre­den­tials from the Uversa An­cients of Days, cer­ti­fied by Im­manuel of Sal­ving­ton. This ser­a­phim tests out as be­long­ing to the su­preme or­der of the an­gels of a lo­cal uni­verse and has al­ready been as­signed to the corps of the teach­ing coun­selors.”

119:4.3Mi­chael was ab­sent from Sal­ving­ton dur­ing this, the se­raphic be­stowal, for a pe­riod of over forty stan­dard uni­verse years. Dur­ing this time he was at­tached as a se­raphic teach­ing coun­selor, what you might de­nom­i­nate a pri­vate sec­re­tary, to twenty-six dif­fer­ent mas­ter teach­ers, func­tion­ing on twenty-two dif­fer­ent worlds. His last or ter­mi­nal as­sign­ment was as coun­selor and helper at­tached to a be­stowal mis­sion of a Trin­ity Teacher Son on world 462 in sys­tem 84 of con­stel­la­tion 3 in the uni­verse of Neb­a­don.

119:4.4Never, through­out the seven years of this as­sign­ment, was this Trin­ity Teacher Son wholly per­suaded as to the iden­tity of his se­raphic as­so­ciate. True, all ser­a­phim dur­ing that age were re­garded with pe­cu­liar in­ter­est and scrutiny. Full well we all knew that our beloved Sov­er­eign was abroad in the uni­verse, dis­guised as a ser­a­phim, but never could we be cer­tain of his iden­tity. Never was he pos­i­tively iden­ti­fied un­til the time of his at­tach­ment to the be­stowal mis­sion of this Trin­ity Teacher Son. But al­ways through­out this era were the su­preme ser­a­phim re­garded with spe­cial so­lic­i­tude, lest any of us should find that we had un­awares been host to the Sov­er­eign of the uni­verse on a mis­sion of crea­ture be­stowal. And so it has be­come for­ever true, con­cern­ing an­gels, that their Cre­ator and Ruler has been “in all points tried and tested in the like­ness of se­raphic per­son­al­ity.”

119:4.5As these suc­ces­sive be­stowals par­took in­creas­ingly of the na­ture of the lower forms of uni­verse life, Ga­briel be­came more and more an as­so­ciate of these in­car­na­tion ad­ven­tures, func­tion­ing as the uni­verse li­ai­son be­tween the be­stowed Mi­chael and the act­ing uni­verse ruler, Im­manuel.

119:4.6Now has Mi­chael passed through the be­stowal ex­pe­ri­ence of three or­ders of his cre­ated uni­verse Sons: the Mel­chiz­e­deks, the La­non­an­deks, and the Ma­te­rial Sons. Next he con­de­scends to per­son­al­ize in the like­ness of an­gelic life as a su­preme ser­a­phim be­fore turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the var­i­ous phases of the as­cend­ing ca­reers of his low­est form of will crea­tures, the evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals of time and space.

38:4.4Be­sides des­ig­nated homes, ser­a­phim also have group, com­pany, bat­tal­ion, and unit head­quar­ters. They for­gather for re­unions ev­ery mil­len­nium and are all pres­ent in ac­cor­dance with the time of their cre­ation. If a ser­a­phim bears re­spon­si­bil­i­ties which for­bid ab­sence from duty, she al­ter­nates at­ten­dance with her com­ple­ment, be­ing re­lieved by a ser­a­phim of an­other birth date. Each se­raphic part­ner is thereby pres­ent at least ev­ery other re­union.

43:9.2This en­tire so­journ on the con­stel­la­tion train­ing worlds, cul­mi­nat­ing in Eden­tia cit­i­zen­ship, is a pe­riod of true and heav­enly bliss for the mor­ontia pro­gres­sors. Through­out your so­journ on the sys­tem worlds you were evolv­ing from a near-an­i­mal to a mor­ontia crea­ture; you were more ma­te­rial than spir­i­tual. On the Sal­ving­ton spheres you will be evolv­ing from a mor­ontia be­ing to the sta­tus of a true spirit; you will be more spir­i­tual than ma­te­rial. But on Eden­tia, as­cend­ers are mid­way be­tween their for­mer and their fu­ture es­tates, mid­way in their pas­sage from evo­lu­tion­ary an­i­mal to as­cend­ing spirit. Dur­ing your whole stay on Eden­tia and its worlds you are “as the an­gels”; you are con­stantly pro­gress­ing but all the while main­tain­ing a gen­eral and a typ­i­cal mor­ontia sta­tus.

• lowest expression of Infinite Spirit

8:4.5As the Sons of God are en­gaged in the gi­gan­tic task of re­veal­ing the Fa­ther’s per­son­al­ity of love to a uni­verse, so is the In­fi­nite Spirit ded­i­cated to the un­end­ing min­istry of re­veal­ing the com­bined love of the Fa­ther and the Son to the in­di­vid­ual minds of all the chil­dren of each uni­verse. In these lo­cal cre­ations the Spirit does not come down to the ma­te­rial races in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh as do cer­tain of the Sons of God, but the In­fi­nite Spirit and his co-or­di­nate Spir­its do down­step them­selves, do joy­fully un­dergo an amaz­ing se­ries of di­vin­ity at­ten­u­a­tions, un­til they ap­pear as an­gels to stand by your side and guide you through the lowly paths of earthly ex­is­tence.

8:4.6By this very di­min­ish­ing se­ries the In­fi­nite Spirit does ac­tu­ally, and as a per­son, draw very near to ev­ery be­ing of the an­i­mal-ori­gin spheres. And all this the Spirit does with­out in the least in­val­i­dat­ing his ex­is­tence as the Third Per­son of De­ity at the cen­ter of all things.

• created by local universe Mother Spirit

17:8.2To­gether with their In­fi­nite Mother Spirit, the Su­preme Spirit groups are the im­me­di­ate cre­ators of the vast crea­ture fam­ily of the Third Source and Cen­ter. All or­ders of the min­is­ter­ing spir­its spring from this as­so­ci­a­tion. Pri­mary super­na­phim orig­i­nate in the In­fi­nite Spirit; sec­ondary be­ings of this or­der are cre­ated by the Mas­ter Spir­its; ter­tiary super­na­phim by the Seven Spir­its of the Cir­cuits. The Re­flec­tive Spir­its, col­lec­tively, are the mother-mak­ers of a mar­velous or­der of the an­gelic hosts, the mighty se­con­a­phim of the super­uni­verse ser­vices. A Cre­ative Spirit is the mother of the an­gelic or­ders of a lo­cal cre­ation; such se­raphic min­is­ters are orig­i­nal in each lo­cal uni­verse, though they are fash­ioned af­ter the pat­terns of the cen­tral uni­verse. All these cre­ators of min­is­ter­ing spir­its are only in­di­rectly as­sisted by the cen­tral lodg­ment of the In­fi­nite Spirit, the orig­i­nal and eter­nal mother of all the an­gelic min­is­ters.

• top speed is 558,840 miles per second

23:3.2The uni­verse is well sup­plied with spir­its who uti­lize grav­ity for pur­poses of tran­sit; they can go any­where any time—in­stan­ter—but they are not per­sons. Cer­tain other grav­ity tra­versers are per­sonal be­ings, such as Grav­ity Mes­sen­gers and Tran­scen­den­tal Re­cord­ers, but they are not avail­able to the su­per- and the lo­cal uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tors. The worlds teem with an­gels and men and other highly per­sonal be­ings, but they are hand­i­capped by time and space: The limit of ve­loc­ity for most nonenseraphimed be­ings is 186,280 miles of your world per sec­ond of your time; the mid­way crea­tures and cer­tain oth­ers can, of­ten do, at­tain dou­ble ve­loc­ity—372,560 miles per sec­ond—while the ser­a­phim and oth­ers can tra­verse space at triple ve­loc­ity, about 558,840 miles per sec­ond. There are, how­ever, no tran­sit or mes­sen­ger per­son­al­i­ties who func­tion be­tween the in­stan­ta­neous ve­loc­i­ties of the grav­ity tra­versers and the com­par­a­tively slow speeds of the ser­a­phim, ex­cept the Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers.

• highly individualized personalities

26:1.1An­gels are the min­is­ter­ing-spirit as­so­ciates of the evo­lu­tion­ary and as­cend­ing will crea­tures of all space; they are also the col­leagues and work­ing as­so­ciates of the higher hosts of the di­vine per­son­al­i­ties of the spheres. The an­gels of all or­ders are dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ties and are highly in­di­vid­u­al­ized. They all have a large ca­pac­ity for ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the min­is­tra­tions of the re­ver­sion di­rec­tors. To­gether with the Mes­sen­ger Hosts of Space, the min­is­ter­ing spir­its en­joy sea­sons of rest and change; they pos­sess very so­cial na­tures and have an as­so­cia­tive ca­pac­ity far tran­scend­ing that of hu­man be­ings.

• can work individually, but pair required for communication, service on higher circuits

26:1.16Super­na­phim are lim­ited in “spirit po­lar­ity” re­gard­ing only one phase of ac­tion, that with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. They can work singly ex­cept when di­rectly em­ploy­ing the ex­clu­sive cir­cuits of the Fa­ther. When they are in power re­cep­tion on the Fa­ther’s di­rect min­istry, super­na­phim must vol­un­tar­ily as­so­ciate in pairs to be able to func­tion. Se­con­a­phim are like­wise lim­ited and in ad­di­tion must work in pairs in or­der to syn­chro­nize with the cir­cuits of the Eter­nal Son. Ser­a­phim can work singly as dis­crete and lo­cal­ized per­son­al­i­ties, but they are able to en­cir­cuit only when po­lar­ized as li­ai­son pairs. When such spirit be­ings are as­so­ci­ated as pairs, the one is spo­ken of as com­ple­men­tal to the other. Com­ple­men­tal re­la­tion­ships may be tran­sient; they are not nec­es­sar­ily of a per­ma­nent na­ture.

• partake of circulating teachings of Teacher Sons
• sustained by spirit energy of primary circuits

26:1.17These bril­liant crea­tures of light are sus­tained di­rectly by the in­take of the spir­i­tual en­ergy of the pri­mary cir­cuits of the uni­verse. Uran­tia mor­tals must ob­tain light-en­ergy through the veg­e­ta­tive in­car­na­tion, but the an­gelic hosts are en­cir­cuited; they “have food that you know not.” They also par­take of the cir­cu­lat­ing teach­ings of the mar­velous Trin­ity Teacher Sons; they have a re­cep­tion of knowl­edge and an in­take of wis­dom much re­sem­bling their tech­nique of as­sim­i­lat­ing the life en­er­gies.

• fairly uniform in design

38:0.3The ser­a­phim are all fairly uni­form in de­sign. From uni­verse to uni­verse, through­out all seven of the super­uni­verses, they show a min­i­mum of vari­a­tion; they are the most nearly stan­dard of all spirit types of per­sonal be­ings. Their var­i­ous or­ders con­sti­tute the corps of the skilled and com­mon min­is­ters of the lo­cal cre­ations.

• created by local universe Mother Spirit

38:1.2These an­gelic or­ders are pro­jected at the time of plan­ning for the evo­lu­tion of mor­tal will crea­tures. The cre­ation of ser­a­phim dates from the at­tain­ment of rel­a­tive per­son­al­ity by the Uni­verse Mother Spirit, not as the later co-or­di­nate of the Mas­ter Son, but as the early cre­ative helper of the Cre­ator Son. Pre­vi­ous to this event the ser­a­phim on duty in Neb­a­don were tem­porar­ily loaned by a neigh­bor­ing uni­verse.

• still being created

38:1.3Ser­a­phim are still be­ing pe­ri­od­i­cally cre­ated; the uni­verse of Neb­a­don is still in the mak­ing. The Uni­verse Mother Spirit never ceases cre­ative ac­tiv­ity in a grow­ing and per­fect­ing uni­verse.

• do not have material bodies

38:2.1An­gels do not have ma­te­rial bod­ies, but they are def­i­nite and dis­crete be­ings; they are of spirit na­ture and ori­gin. Though in­vis­i­ble to mor­tals, they per­ceive you as you are in the flesh with­out the aid of trans­form­ers or trans­la­tors; they in­tel­lec­tu­ally un­der­stand the mode of mor­tal life, and they share all of man’s non­sen­su­ous emo­tions and sen­ti­ments. They ap­pre­ci­ate and greatly en­joy your ef­forts in mu­sic, art, and real hu­mor. They are fully cog­nizant of your moral strug­gles and spir­i­tual dif­fi­cul­ties. They love hu­man be­ings, and only good can re­sult from your ef­forts to un­der­stand and love them.

• referred to by feminine pronouns

38:2.2Though ser­a­phim are very af­fec­tion­ate and sym­pa­thetic be­ings, they are not sex-emo­tion crea­tures. They are much as you will be on the man­sion worlds, where you will “nei­ther marry nor be given in mar­riage but will be as the an­gels of heaven.” For all who “shall be ac­counted wor­thy to at­tain the man­sion worlds nei­ther marry nor are given in mar­riage; nei­ther do they die any more, for they are equal to the an­gels.” Nev­er­the­less, in deal­ing with sex crea­tures it is our cus­tom to speak of those be­ings of more di­rect de­scent from the Fa­ther and the Son as the sons of God, while re­fer­ring to the chil­dren of the Spirit as the daugh­ters of God. An­gels are, there­fore, com­monly des­ig­nated by fem­i­nine pro­nouns on the sex plan­ets.

• created but a little over humanity
• possess powers far beyond human comprehension – are mathematical prodigies

38:2.3The ser­a­phim are so cre­ated as to func­tion on both spir­i­tual and lit­eral lev­els. There are few phases of mor­ontia or spirit ac­tiv­ity which are not open to their min­is­tra­tions. While in per­sonal sta­tus an­gels are not so far re­moved from hu­man be­ings, in cer­tain func­tional per­for­mances ser­a­phim far tran­scend them. They pos­sess many pow­ers far be­yond hu­man com­pre­hen­sion. For ex­am­ple: You have been told that the “very hairs of your head are num­bered,” and it is true they are, but a ser­a­phim does not spend her time count­ing them and keep­ing the num­ber cor­rected up to date. An­gels pos­sess in­her­ent and au­to­matic (that is, au­to­matic as far as you could per­ceive) pow­ers of know­ing such things; you would truly re­gard a ser­a­phim as a math­e­mat­i­cal prodigy. There­fore, nu­mer­ous du­ties which would be tremen­dous tasks for mor­tals are per­formed with ex­ceed­ing ease by ser­a­phim.

38:2.4An­gels are su­pe­rior to you in spir­i­tual sta­tus, but they are not your judges or ac­cusers. No mat­ter what your faults, “the an­gels, al­though greater in power and might, bring no ac­cu­sa­tion against you.” An­gels do not sit in judg­ment on man­kind, nei­ther should in­di­vid­ual mor­tals pre­judge their fel­low crea­tures.

• created but a little over humanity

38:2.6In na­ture and per­son­al­ity en­dow­ment the ser­a­phim are just a tri­fle ahead of mor­tal races in the scale of crea­ture ex­is­tence. In­deed, when you are de­liv­ered from the flesh, you be­come very much like them. On the man­sion worlds you will be­gin to ap­pre­ci­ate the ser­a­phim, on the con­stel­la­tion spheres to en­joy them, while on Sal­ving­ton they will share their places of rest and wor­ship with you. Through­out the whole mor­ontia and sub­se­quent spirit as­cent, your fra­ter­nity with the ser­a­phim will be ideal; your com­pan­ion­ship will be su­perb.

• have homes, live in pairs

38:4.2These head­quar­ters worlds are among the mag­nif­i­cent realms of Neb­a­don; the se­raphic es­tates are char­ac­ter­ized by both beauty and vast­ness. Here each ser­a­phim has a real home, and “home” means the domi­cile of two ser­a­phim; they live in pairs.

• can work individually, but pair required for communication, service on higher circuits
• positive or aggressive and negative or retiring types
• usually retain original complement of being

38:4.3Though not male and fe­male as are the Ma­te­rial Sons and the mor­tal races, ser­a­phim are neg­a­tive and pos­i­tive. In the ma­jor­ity of as­sign­ments it re­quires two an­gels to ac­com­plish the task. When they are not en­cir­cuited, they can work alone; nei­ther do they re­quire com­ple­ments of be­ing when sta­tion­ary. Or­di­nar­ily they re­tain their orig­i­nal com­ple­ments of be­ing, but not nec­es­sar­ily. Such as­so­ci­a­tions are pri­mar­ily ne­ces­si­tated by func­tion; they are not char­ac­ter­ized by sex emo­tion, though they are ex­ceed­ingly per­sonal and truly af­fec­tion­ate.

• continuously engaged in self-improvement

38:7.5When as­signed to a planet, cheru­bim en­ter the lo­cal courses of train­ing, in­clud­ing a study of plan­e­tary us­ages and lan­guages. The min­is­ter­ing spir­its of time are all bilin­gual, speak­ing the lan­guage of the lo­cal uni­verse of their ori­gin and that of their na­tive super­uni­verse. By study in the schools of the realms they ac­quire ad­di­tional tongues. Cheru­bim and sa­no­bim, like ser­a­phim and all other or­ders of spirit be­ings, are con­tin­u­ously en­gaged in ef­forts at self-im­prove­ment. Only such as the sub­or­di­nate be­ings of power con­trol and en­ergy di­rec­tion are in­ca­pable of pro­gres­sion; all crea­tures hav­ing ac­tual or po­ten­tial per­son­al­ity vo­li­tion seek new achieve­ments.

• have no childhood

39:0.10Hu­man be­ings some­times find it hard to un­der­stand that a cre­ated ca­pac­ity for higher-level min­istry does not nec­es­sar­ily im­ply abil­ity to func­tion on rel­a­tively lower ser­vice lev­els. Man be­gins life as a help­less in­fant; hence ev­ery mor­tal at­tain­ment must em­brace all ex­pe­ri­en­tial pre­req­ui­sites; ser­a­phim have no such pread­ult life—no child­hood. They are, how­ever, ex­pe­ri­en­tial crea­tures, and by ex­pe­ri­ence and through ad­di­tional ed­u­ca­tion they can aug­ment their di­vine and in­her­ent en­dow­ment of abil­ity by the ex­pe­ri­en­tial ac­quire­ment of func­tional skill in one or more of the se­raphic ser­vices.

• acquire knowledge, language, as do humans

39:0.11Af­ter be­ing com­mis­sioned, ser­a­phim are as­signed to the re­serves of their in­her­ent group. Those of plan­e­tary and ad­min­is­tra­tor sta­tus of­ten serve for long pe­ri­ods as orig­i­nally clas­si­fied, but the higher the in­her­ent func­tion level, the more per­sis­tently do the an­gelic min­is­ters seek as­sign­ment to the lower or­ders of uni­verse ser­vice. Es­pe­cially do they de­sire as­sign­ment to the re­serves of the plan­e­tary helpers, and if suc­cess­ful they en­roll in the ce­les­tial schools at­tached to the head­quar­ters of the Plan­e­tary Prince of some evo­lu­tion­ary world. Here they be­gin the study of the lan­guages, his­tory, and lo­cal habits of the races of man­kind. Ser­a­phim must ac­quire knowl­edge and gain ex­pe­ri­ence much as do hu­man be­ings. They are not far re­moved from you in cer­tain per­son­al­ity at­tri­butes. And they all crave to start at the bot­tom, on the low­est pos­si­ble level of min­istry; thus may they hope to achieve the high­est pos­si­ble level of ex­pe­ri­en­tial des­tiny.

• energy range inadequate for journey from Uversa to Havona

39:2.9The “en­ergy range” of ser­a­phim is wholly ad­e­quate for lo­cal uni­verse and even for super­uni­verse re­quire­ments, but they could never with­stand the en­ergy de­mands en­tailed by such a long jour­ney as that from Uversa to Ha­vona. Such an ex­haus­tive jour­ney re­quires the spe­cial pow­ers of a pri­mary se­con­a­phim of trans­port en­dow­ments. Trans­port­ers take on en­ergy for flight while in tran­sit and re­cu­per­ate per­sonal power at the end of the jour­ney.

• lowest expression of Infinite Spirit

40:5.2Like­wise does the Orig­i­nal and In­fi­nite Spirit, by a long se­ries of de­creas­ingly di­vine and in­creas­ingly hu­man or­ders, draw nearer and nearer to the strug­gling crea­tures of the realms, reach­ing the limit of ex­pres­sion in the an­gels—than whom you were cre­ated but a lit­tle lower—who per­son­ally guard and guide you in the life jour­ney of the mor­tal ca­reer of time.

• discern both spirit and material beings

44:0.17There are cer­tain types of be­ings who are ca­pa­ble of dis­cern­ing the re­al­ity of the crea­tures of both the spirit and the ma­te­rial worlds. Be­long­ing to this class are the so-called fourth crea­tures of the Ha­vona Servi­tals and the fourth crea­tures of the con­cil­ia­tors. The an­gels of time and space are en­dowed with the abil­ity to dis­cern both spirit and ma­te­rial be­ings as also are the as­cend­ing mor­tals sub­se­quent to de­liv­er­ance from the life in the flesh. Af­ter at­tain­ment of the higher spirit lev­els the as­cend­ers are able to rec­og­nize ma­te­rial, mor­ontia, and spirit re­al­i­ties.

• nonreproducing

45:6.5The as­cend­ing mid­way crea­tures and the evo­lu­tion­ary ser­a­phim must pass through this par­ent­hood ex­pe­ri­ence in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Ma­te­rial Sons and Daugh­ters of the sys­tem head­quar­ters. Thus do such non­re­pro­duc­ing as­cend­ers ob­tain the ex­pe­ri­ence of par­ent­hood by as­sist­ing the Je­ru­sem Adams and Eves in rear­ing and train­ing their progeny.

• positive or aggressive and negative or retiring types

84:6.5The dif­fer­ences of na­ture, re­ac­tion, view­point, and think­ing be­tween men and women, far from oc­ca­sion­ing con­cern, should be re­garded as highly ben­e­fi­cial to man­kind, both in­di­vid­u­ally and col­lec­tively. Many or­ders of uni­verse crea­tures are cre­ated in dual phases of per­son­al­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion. Among mor­tals, Ma­te­rial Sons, and mid­soniters, this dif­fer­ence is de­scribed as male and fe­male; among ser­a­phim, cheru­bim, and Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions, it has been de­nom­i­nated pos­i­tive or ag­gres­sive and neg­a­tive or re­tir­ing. Such dual as­so­ci­a­tions greatly mul­ti­ply ver­sa­til­ity and over­come in­her­ent lim­i­ta­tions, even as do cer­tain tri­une as­so­ci­a­tions in the Par­a­dise-Ha­vona sys­tem.

• can sometimes discern Adjusters’ spirit luminosity

107:4.4Non­per­son­al­ized Ad­justers are vis­i­ble only to Per­son­al­ized Ad­justers. My or­der, the Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers, to­gether with In­spired Trin­ity Spir­its, can de­tect the pres­ence of Ad­justers by means of spir­i­tual re­ac­tive phe­nom­ena; and even ser­a­phim can some­times dis­cern the spirit lu­mi­nos­ity of sup­posed as­so­ci­a­tion with the pres­ence of Mon­i­tors in the ma­te­rial minds of men; but none of us are able ac­tu­ally to dis­cern the real pres­ence of Ad­justers, not un­less they have been per­son­al­ized, al­beit their na­tures are per­ceiv­able in union with the fused per­son­al­i­ties of the as­cend­ing mor­tals from the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds. The uni­ver­sal in­vis­i­bil­ity of the Ad­justers is strongly sug­ges­tive of their high and ex­clu­sive di­vine ori­gin and na­ture.

• have individual names, numbers

113:2.6All ser­a­phim have in­di­vid­ual names, but in the rec­ords of as­sign­ment to world ser­vice they are fre­quently des­ig­nated by their plan­e­tary num­bers. At the uni­verse head­quar­ters they are reg­is­tered by name and num­ber. The des­tiny guard­ian of the hu­man sub­ject used in this con­tac­tual com­mu­ni­ca­tion is num­ber 3 of group 17, of com­pany 126, of bat­tal­ion 4, of unit 384, of le­gion 6, of host 37, of the 182,314^th se­raphic army of Neb­a­don. The cur­rent plan­e­tary as­sign­ment num­ber of this ser­a­phim on Uran­tia and to this hu­man sub­ject is 3,641,852.

• can work individually, but pair required for communication, service on higher circuits

113:2.8Se­raphic tasks may be un­remit­ting, but ei­ther of the an­gelic pair can dis­charge all min­is­ter­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. Like cheru­bim, ser­a­phim usu­ally serve in pairs, but un­like their less ad­vanced as­so­ciates, the ser­a­phim some­times work singly. In prac­ti­cally all their con­tacts with hu­man be­ings they can func­tion as in­di­vid­u­als. Both an­gels are re­quired only for com­mu­ni­ca­tion and ser­vice on the higher cir­cuits of the uni­verses.

• sustained by spirit energy of primary circuits

113:2.10For pur­poses of rest and recharg­ing with the life en­ergy of the uni­verse cir­cuits, the guard­ian is pe­ri­od­i­cally re­lieved by her com­ple­ment, and dur­ing her ab­sence the as­so­ci­ated cheru­bim func­tions as the re­corder, as is also the case when the com­ple­men­tal ser­a­phim is sim­i­larly ab­sent.

• created but a little over humanity

113:3.6This is a recital of the man­i­fold and in­tri­cate func­tion of an at­tend­ing ser­a­phim; but how does such a sub­or­di­nate an­gelic per­son­al­ity, cre­ated but a lit­tle above the uni­verse level of hu­man­ity, do such dif­fi­cult and com­plex things? We do not re­ally know, but we con­jec­ture that this phe­nom­e­nal min­istry is in some undis­closed man­ner fa­cil­i­tated by the un­rec­og­nized and un­re­vealed work­ing of the Su­preme Be­ing, the ac­tu­al­iz­ing De­ity of the evolv­ing uni­verses of time and space. Through­out the en­tire realm of pro­gres­sive sur­vival in and through the Su­preme Be­ing, ser­a­phim are an es­sen­tial part of con­tin­u­ing mor­tal pro­gres­sion.

• created but a little over humanity

113:7.3The hu­man race was cre­ated just a lit­tle lower than the more sim­ple types of the an­gelic or­ders. There­fore will your first as­sign­ment of the mor­ontia life be as as­sis­tants to the ser­a­phim in the im­me­di­ate work await­ing at the time you at­tain per­son­al­ity con­scious­ness sub­se­quent to your lib­er­a­tion from the bonds of the flesh.

• neither all-wise nor all-powerful

167:7.3“The an­gels never die, as man does. The an­gels are im­mor­tal un­less, per­chance, they be­come in­volved in sin as did some of them with the de­cep­tions of Lu­cifer. The an­gels are the spirit ser­vants in heaven, and they are nei­ther all-wise nor all-pow­er­ful. But all of the loyal an­gels are truly pure and holy.

• sure heavenly guides of souls of man

167:7.6“Also are these an­gels very much con­cerned with the means whereby man’s spirit is re­leased from the taber­na­cles of the flesh and his soul es­corted to the man­sions in heaven. An­gels are the sure and heav­enly guides of the soul of man dur­ing that un­charted and in­def­i­nite pe­riod of time which in­ter­venes be­tween the death of the flesh and the new life in the spirit abodes.”

38:6.1Af­ter the sec­ond mil­len­nium of so­journ at se­raphic head­quar­ters the ser­a­phim are or­ga­nized un­der chiefs into groups of twelve (12 pairs, 24 ser­a­phim), and twelve such groups con­sti­tute a com­pany (144 pairs, 288 ser­a­phim), which is com­manded by a leader. Twelve com­pa­nies un­der a com­man­der con­sti­tute a bat­tal­ion (1,728 pairs or 3,456 ser­a­phim), and twelve bat­tal­ions un­der a di­rec­tor equal a se­raphic unit (20,736 pairs or 41,472 in­di­vid­u­als), while twelve units, sub­ject to the com­mand of a super­vi­sor, con­sti­tute a le­gion num­ber­ing 248,832 pairs or 497,664 in­di­vid­u­als. Je­sus al­luded to such a group of an­gels that night in the gar­den of Geth­sem­ane when he said: “I can even now ask my Fa­ther, and he will pres­ently give me more than twelve le­gions of an­gels.”

38:6.2Twelve le­gions of an­gels com­prise a host num­ber­ing 2,985,984 pairs or 5,971,968 in­di­vid­u­als, and twelve such hosts (35,831,808 pairs or 71,663,616 in­di­vid­u­als) make up the largest op­er­at­ing or­ga­ni­za­tion of ser­a­phim, an an­gelic army. A se­raphic host is com­manded by an arch­an­gel or by some other per­son­al­ity of co-or­di­nate sta­tus, while the an­gelic armies are di­rected by the Bril­liant Evening Stars or by other im­me­di­ate lieu­tenants of Ga­briel. And Ga­briel is the “su­preme com­man­der of the armies of heaven,” the chief ex­ec­u­tive of the Sov­er­eign of Neb­a­don, “the Lord God of hosts.”

38:6.3Though serv­ing un­der the di­rect super­vi­sion of the In­fi­nite Spirit as per­son­al­ized on Sal­ving­ton, since the be­stowal of Mi­chael on Uran­tia, ser­a­phim and all other lo­cal uni­verse or­ders have be­come sub­ject to the sov­er­eignty of the Mas­ter Son. Even when Mi­chael was born of the flesh on Uran­tia, there is­sued the super­uni­verse broad­cast to all Neb­a­don which pro­claimed, “And let all the an­gels wor­ship him.” All ranks of an­gels are sub­ject to his sov­er­eignty; they are a part of that group which has been de­nom­i­nated “his mighty an­gels.”

39:1.1These ser­a­phim are the high­est of the seven re­vealed or­ders of lo­cal uni­verse an­gels. They func­tion in seven groups, each of which is closely as­so­ci­ated with the an­gelic min­is­ters of the Se­raphic Corps of Com­ple­tion.

39:1.21. Son-Spirit Min­is­ters. The first group of the su­preme ser­a­phim are as­signed to the ser­vice of the high Sons and Spirit-ori­gin be­ings res­i­dent and func­tion­ing in the lo­cal uni­verse. This group of an­gelic min­is­ters also serve the Uni­verse Son and the Uni­verse Spirit and are closely af­fil­i­ated with the in­tel­li­gence corps of the Bright and Morn­ing Star, the uni­verse chief ex­ec­u­tive of the united wills of the Cre­ator Son and the Cre­ative Spirit.

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

39:1.4Be­stowal At­ten­dants. Par­a­dise Avo­nals, but not Cre­ator Sons, when on a be­stowal mis­sion are al­ways ac­com­pa­nied by a corps of 144 be­stowal at­ten­dants. These 144 an­gels are the chiefs of all other Son-Spirit min­is­ters who may be as­so­ci­ated with a be­stowal mis­sion. There might pos­si­bly be le­gions of an­gels sub­ject to the com­mand of an in­car­nated Son of God on a plan­e­tary be­stowal, but all these ser­a­phim would be or­ga­nized and di­rected by the 144 be­stowal at­ten­dants. Higher or­ders of an­gels, super­na­phim and se­con­a­phim, might also form a part of the at­tend­ing host, and though their mis­sions are dis­tinct from those of the ser­a­phim, all these ac­tiv­i­ties would be co-or­di­nated by the be­stowal at­ten­dants.

39:1.5These be­stowal at­ten­dants are com­ple­tion ser­a­phim; they have all tra­versed the cir­cles of Seraph­ing­ton and have at­tained the Se­raphic Corps of Com­ple­tion. And they have been fur­ther es­pe­cially trained to meet the dif­fi­cul­ties and to cope with the emer­gen­cies as­so­ci­ated with the be­stowals of the Sons of God for the ad­vance­ment of the chil­dren of time. Such ser­a­phim have all achieved Par­a­dise and the per­sonal em­brace of the Sec­ond Source and Cen­ter, the Eter­nal Son.

39:1.6Ser­a­phim equally crave as­sign­ment to the mis­sions of the in­car­nated Sons and at­tach­ment as des­tiny guard­i­ans to the mor­tals of the realms; the lat­ter is the surest se­raphic pass­port to Par­a­dise, while the be­stowal at­ten­dants have achieved the high­est lo­cal uni­verse ser­vice of the com­ple­tion ser­a­phim of Par­a­dise at­tain­ment.

39:1.72. Court Ad­vis­ers. These are the se­raphic ad­vis­ers and helpers at­tached to all or­ders of ad­ju­di­ca­tion, from the con­cil­ia­tors up to the high­est tri­bu­nals of the realm. It is not the pur­pose of such tri­bu­nals to de­ter­mine puni­tive sen­tences but rather to ad­ju­di­cate hon­est dif­fer­ences of opin­ion and to de­cree the ev­er­last­ing sur­vival of as­cend­ing mor­tals. Herein lies the duty of the court ad­vis­ers: to see that all charges against mor­tal crea­tures are stated in jus­tice and ad­ju­di­cated in mercy. In this work they are closely as­so­ci­ated with the High Com­mis­sion­ers, Spirit-fused as­cen­dant mor­tals serv­ing in the lo­cal uni­verse.

39:1.8The se­raphic court ad­vis­ers serve ex­ten­sively as de­fend­ers of mor­tals. Not that there ever ex­ists any dis­po­si­tion to be un­fair to the lowly crea­tures of the realms, but while jus­tice de­mands the ad­ju­di­ca­tion of ev­ery de­fault in the climb to­wards di­vine per­fec­tion, mercy re­quires that ev­ery such mis­step be fairly ad­judged in ac­cor­dance with the crea­ture na­ture and the di­vine pur­pose. These an­gels are the ex­po­nents and ex­em­pli­fi­ca­tion of the el­e­ment of mercy in­her­ent in di­vine jus­tice—of fair­ness based on the knowl­edge of the un­der­ly­ing facts of per­sonal mo­tives and racial ten­den­cies.

39:1.9This or­der of an­gels serves from the coun­cils of the Plan­e­tary Princes to the high­est tri­bu­nals of the lo­cal uni­verse, while their as­so­ciates of the Se­raphic Corps of Com­ple­tion func­tion in the higher realms of Or­von­ton, even to the courts of the An­cients of Days on Uversa.

39:1.103. Uni­verse Ori­en­ta­tors. These are the true friends and post­grad­u­ate coun­selors of all those as­cend­ing crea­tures who are paus­ing for the last time on Sal­ving­ton, in their uni­verse of ori­gin, as they stand on the brink of the spirit ad­ven­ture stretch­ing out be­fore them in the vast super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton. And at such a time many an as­cender has a feel­ing which mor­tals could un­der­stand only by com­par­i­son with the hu­man emo­tion of nos­tal­gia. Be­hind lie the realms of achieve­ment, realms grown fa­mil­iar by long ser­vice and mor­ontia at­tain­ment; ahead lies the chal­leng­ing mys­tery of a greater and vaster uni­verse.

39:1.11It is the task of the uni­verse ori­en­ta­tors to fa­cil­i­tate the pas­sage of the as­cend­ing pil­grims from the at­tained to the un­attained level of uni­verse ser­vice, to help these pil­grims in mak­ing those kalei­do­scopic ad­just­ments in the com­pre­hen­sion of mean­ings and val­ues in­her­ent in the re­al­iza­tion that a first-stage spirit be­ing stands, not at the end and cli­max of the lo­cal uni­verse mor­ontia as­cent, but rather at the very bot­tom of the long lad­der of spir­i­tual as­cent to the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther on Par­a­dise.

39:1.12Many of the Seraph­ing­ton grad­u­ates, mem­bers of the Se­raphic Corps of Com­ple­tion who are as­so­ci­ated with these ser­a­phim, en­gage in ex­ten­sive teach­ing in cer­tain Sal­ving­ton schools con­cerned with the prepa­ra­tion of the crea­tures of Neb­a­don for the re­la­tion­ships of the next uni­verse age.

39:1.134. The Teach­ing Coun­selors. These an­gels are the in­valu­able as­sis­tants of the spir­i­tual teach­ing corps of the lo­cal uni­verse. Teach­ing coun­selors are sec­re­taries to all or­ders of teach­ers, from the Mel­chiz­e­deks and the Trin­ity Teacher Sons down to the mor­ontia mor­tals who are as­signed as helpers to those of their kind who are just be­hind them in the scale of as­cen­dant life. You will first see these as­so­ciate teach­ing ser­a­phim on some one of the seven man­sion worlds sur­round­ing Je­ru­sem.

39:1.14These ser­a­phim be­come as­so­ciates of the di­vi­sion chiefs of the nu­mer­ous ed­u­ca­tional and train­ing in­sti­tu­tions of the lo­cal uni­verses, and they are at­tached in large num­bers to the fac­ul­ties of the seven train­ing worlds of the lo­cal sys­tems and of the sev­enty ed­u­ca­tional spheres of the con­stel­la­tions. These min­is­tra­tions ex­tend on down to the in­di­vid­ual worlds. Even the true and con­se­crated teach­ers of time are as­sisted, and of­ten at­tended, by these coun­selors of the su­preme ser­a­phim.

39:1.15The fourth crea­ture be­stowal of the Cre­ator Son was in the like­ness of a teach­ing coun­selor of the su­preme ser­a­phim of Neb­a­don.

39:1.165. Di­rec­tors of As­sign­ment. A body of 144 su­preme ser­a­phim is elected from time to time by the an­gels serv­ing on the evo­lu­tion­ary and on the ar­chi­tec­tural spheres of crea­ture habi­ta­tion. This is the high­est an­gelic coun­cil on any sphere, and it co-or­di­nates the self-di­rected phases of se­raphic ser­vice and as­sign­ment. These an­gels pre­side over all se­raphic as­sem­blies per­tain­ing to the line of duty or the call to wor­ship.

• 1st. order, supreme seraphim › 6. recorders

39:1.176. The Re­cord­ers. These are the of­fi­cial re­cord­ers for the su­preme ser­a­phim. Many of these high an­gels were born with their gifts fully de­vel­oped; oth­ers have qual­i­fied for their po­si­tions of trust and re­spon­si­bil­ity by dili­gent ap­pli­ca­tion to study and faith­ful per­for­mance of sim­i­lar du­ties while at­tached to lower or less re­spon­si­ble or­ders.

• 1st. order, supreme seraphim › 7. unattached ministers

39:1.187. Un­at­tached Min­is­ters. Large num­bers of un­at­tached ser­a­phim of the su­preme or­der are self-di­rected servers on the ar­chi­tec­tural spheres and on the in­hab­ited plan­ets. Such min­is­ters vol­un­tar­ily meet the dif­fer­en­tial of de­mand for the ser­vice of the su­preme ser­a­phim, thus con­sti­tut­ing the gen­eral re­serve of this or­der.

39:2.1Su­pe­rior ser­a­phim re­ceive their name, not be­cause they are in any sense qual­i­ta­tively su­pe­rior to other or­ders of an­gels, but be­cause they are in charge of the higher ac­tiv­i­ties of a lo­cal uni­verse. Very many of the first two groups of this se­raphic corps are at­tain­ment ser­a­phim, an­gels who have served in all phases of train­ing and have re­turned to a glo­ri­fied as­sign­ment as di­rec­tors of their kind in the spheres of their ear­lier ac­tiv­i­ties. Be­ing a young uni­verse, Neb­a­don does not have many of this or­der.

39:2.2The su­pe­rior ser­a­phim func­tion in the fol­low­ing seven groups:

39:2.31. The In­tel­li­gence Corps. These ser­a­phim be­long to the per­sonal staff of Ga­briel, the Bright and Morn­ing Star. They range the lo­cal uni­verse gath­er­ing the in­for­ma­tion of the realms for his guid­ance in the coun­cils of Neb­a­don. They are the in­tel­li­gence corps of the mighty hosts over which Ga­briel pre­sides as vicegerent of the Mas­ter Son. These ser­a­phim are not di­rectly af­fil­i­ated with ei­ther the sys­tems or the con­stel­la­tions, and their in­for­ma­tion pours in di­rect to Sal­ving­ton upon a con­tin­u­ous, di­rect, and in­de­pen­dent cir­cuit.

39:2.4The in­tel­li­gence corps of the var­i­ous lo­cal uni­verses can and do in­ter­com­mu­ni­cate but only within a given super­uni­verse. There is a dif­fer­en­tial of en­ergy which ef­fec­tively seg­re­gates the busi­ness and trans­ac­tions of the var­i­ous super­gov­ern­ments. One super­uni­verse can or­di­nar­ily com­mu­ni­cate with an­other super­uni­verse only through the pro­vi­sions and fa­cil­i­ties of the Par­a­dise clear­ing­house.

39:2.52. The Voice of Mercy. Mercy is the keynote of se­raphic ser­vice and an­gelic min­istry. It is there­fore fit­ting that there should be a corps of an­gels who, in a spe­cial man­ner, por­tray mercy. These ser­a­phim are the real mercy min­is­ters of the lo­cal uni­verses. They are the in­spired lead­ers who fos­ter the higher im­pulses and holier emo­tions of men and an­gels. The di­rec­tors of these le­gions are now al­ways com­ple­tion ser­a­phim who are also grad­u­ate guard­i­ans of mor­tal des­tiny; that is, each an­gelic pair has guided at least one soul of an­i­mal ori­gin dur­ing the life in the flesh and has sub­se­quently tra­versed the cir­cles of Seraph­ing­ton and has been mus­tered into the Se­raphic Corps of Com­ple­tion.

39:2.63. Spirit Co-or­di­na­tors. The third group of su­pe­rior ser­a­phim are based on Sal­ving­ton but func­tion in the lo­cal uni­verse any­where they can be of fruit­ful ser­vice. While their tasks are es­sen­tially spir­i­tual and there­fore be­yond the real un­der­stand­ing of hu­man minds, you will per­haps grasp some­thing of their min­istry to mor­tals if it is ex­plained that these an­gels are in­trusted with the task of prepar­ing the as­cen­dant so­journ­ers on Sal­ving­ton for their last tran­si­tion in the lo­cal uni­verse—from the high­est mor­ontia level to the sta­tus of new­born spirit be­ings. As the mind plan­ners on the man­sion worlds help the sur­viv­ing crea­ture to ad­just to, and make ef­fec­tive use of, the po­ten­tials of mor­ontia mind, so do these ser­a­phim in­struct the mor­ontia grad­u­ates on Sal­ving­ton re­gard­ing the newly at­tained ca­pac­i­ties of the mind of the spirit. And they serve the as­cen­dant mor­tals in many other ways.

39:2.74. As­sis­tant Teach­ers. The as­sis­tant teach­ers are the helpers and as­so­ciates of their fel­low ser­a­phim, the teach­ing coun­selors. They are also in­di­vid­u­ally con­nected with the ex­ten­sive ed­u­ca­tional en­ter­prises of the lo­cal uni­verse, es­pe­cially with the sev­en­fold scheme of train­ing op­er­a­tive on the man­sion worlds of the lo­cal sys­tems. A mar­velous corps of this or­der of ser­a­phim func­tions on Uran­tia for the pur­pose of fos­ter­ing and fur­ther­ing the cause of truth and righ­teous­ness.

• 2nd. order, superior seraphim › 5. transporters

39:2.85. The Trans­port­ers. All groups of min­is­ter­ing spir­its have their trans­port corps, an­gelic or­ders ded­i­cated to the min­istry of trans­port­ing those per­son­al­i­ties who are un­able, of them­selves, to jour­ney from one sphere to an­other. The fifth group of the su­pe­rior ser­a­phim are head­quar­tered on Sal­ving­ton and serve as space tra­versers to and from the head­quar­ters of the lo­cal uni­verse. Like other sub­di­vi­sions of the su­pe­rior ser­a­phim, some were cre­ated as such while oth­ers have risen from the lower or less en­dowed groups.

39:2.10Even on Sal­ving­ton as­cend­ing mor­tals do not pos­sess per­sonal tran­sit forms. As­cend­ers must de­pend upon se­raphic trans­port in ad­vanc­ing from world to world un­til af­ter the last rest of sleep on the in­ner cir­cle of Ha­vona and the eter­nal awak­en­ing on Par­a­dise. Sub­se­quently you will not be de­pen­dent on an­gels for trans­port from uni­verse to uni­verse.

39:2.11The pro­cess of be­ing en­ser­a­phimed is not un­like the ex­pe­ri­ence of death or sleep ex­cept that there is an au­to­matic time el­e­ment in the tran­sit slum­ber. You are con­sciously un­con­scious dur­ing se­raphic rest. But the Thought Ad­juster is wholly and fully con­scious, in fact, ex­cep­tion­ally ef­fi­cient since you are un­able to op­pose, re­sist, or oth­er­wise hin­der cre­ative and trans­form­ing work.

39:2.12When en­ser­a­phimed, you go to sleep for a spec­i­fied time, and you will awake at the des­ig­nated mo­ment. The length of a jour­ney when in tran­sit sleep is im­ma­te­rial. You are not di­rectly aware of the pass­ing of time. It is as if you went to sleep on a trans­port ve­hi­cle in one city and, af­ter rest­ing in peace­ful slum­ber all night, awak­ened in an­other and dis­tant metropo­lis. You jour­neyed while you slum­bered. And so you take flight through space, en­ser­a­phimed, while you rest—sleep. The tran­sit sleep is in­duced by the li­ai­son be­tween the Ad­justers and the se­raphic trans­port­ers.

39:2.13The an­gels can­not trans­port com­bus­tion bod­ies—flesh and blood—such as you now have, but they can trans­port all oth­ers, from the low­est mor­ontia to the higher spirit forms. They do not func­tion in the event of nat­u­ral death. When you fin­ish your earthly ca­reer, your body re­mains on this planet. Your Thought Ad­juster pro­ceeds to the bo­som of the Fa­ther, and these an­gels are not di­rectly con­cerned in your sub­se­quent per­son­al­ity re­assem­bly on the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion man­sion world. There your new body is a mor­ontia form, one that can en­seraphim. You “sow a mor­tal body” in the grave; you “reap a mor­ontia form” on the man­sion worlds.

• 2nd. order, superior seraphim › 6. recorders

39:2.146. The Re­cord­ers. These per­son­al­i­ties are es­pe­cially con­cerned with the re­cep­tion, fil­ing, and re­dis­patch of the rec­ords of Sal­ving­ton and its as­so­ci­ated worlds. They also serve as spe­cial re­cord­ers for res­i­dent groups of super­uni­verse and higher per­son­al­i­ties and as clerks of the courts of Sal­ving­ton and sec­re­taries to the rulers thereof.

• 2nd. order, superior seraphim › 6a. broadcasters

39:2.15Broad­cast­ers—re­ceivers and dis­patch­ers—are a spe­cial­ized sub­di­vi­sion of the se­raphic re­cord­ers, be­ing con­cerned with the dis­patch of rec­ords and with the dis­sem­i­na­tion of es­sen­tial in­for­ma­tion. Their work is of a high or­der, be­ing so mul­ti­cir­cuited that 144,000 mes­sages can si­mul­ta­ne­ously tra­verse the same lines of en­ergy. They adapt the higher ideo­graphic tech­niques of the super­aphic chief re­cord­ers and with these com­mon sym­bols main­tain re­cip­ro­cal con­tact with both the in­tel­li­gence co-or­di­na­tors of the ter­tiary super­na­phim and the glo­ri­fied in­tel­li­gence co-or­di­na­tors of the Se­raphic Corps of Com­ple­tion.

39:2.16Se­raphic re­cord­ers of the su­pe­rior or­der thus ef­fect a close li­ai­son with the in­tel­li­gence corps of their own or­der and with all sub­or­di­nate re­cord­ers, while the broad­casts en­able them to main­tain con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the higher re­cord­ers of the super­uni­verse and, through this chan­nel, with the re­cord­ers of Ha­vona and the cus­to­di­ans of knowl­edge on Par­a­dise. Many of the su­pe­rior or­der of re­cord­ers are ser­a­phim as­cended from sim­i­lar du­ties in lower sec­tions of the uni­verse.

• 2nd. order, superior seraphim › 7. reserves

39:2.177. The Re­serves. Large re­serves of all types of the su­pe­rior ser­a­phim are held on Sal­ving­ton, in­stantly avail­able for dis­patch to the far­ther­most worlds of Neb­a­don as they are req­ui­si­tioned by the di­rec­tors of as­sign­ment or upon the re­quest of the uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tors. The re­serves of su­pe­rior ser­a­phim also fur­nish mes­sen­ger aids upon req­ui­si­tion by the chief of the Bril­liant Evening Stars, who is in­trusted with the cus­tody and dis­patch of all per­sonal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. A lo­cal uni­verse is fully pro­vided with ad­e­quate means of in­ter­com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but there is al­ways a residue of mes­sages which re­quires dis­patch by per­sonal mes­sen­gers.

39:2.18The ba­sic re­serves for the en­tire lo­cal uni­verse are held on the se­raphic worlds of Sal­ving­ton. This corps in­cludes all types of all groups of an­gels.

39:3.1This ver­sa­tile or­der of uni­verse an­gels is as­signed to the ex­clu­sive ser­vice of the con­stel­la­tions. These able min­is­ters make their head­quar­ters on the con­stel­la­tion cap­i­tals but func­tion through­out all Neb­a­don in the in­ter­ests of their as­signed realms.

39:3.21. Super­vis­ing As­sis­tants. The first or­der of the super­vis­ing ser­a­phim are as­signed to the col­lec­tive work of the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers, and they are the ever-ef­fi­cient helpers of the Most Highs. These ser­a­phim are pri­mar­ily con­cerned with the uni­fi­ca­tion and sta­bi­liza­tion of a whole con­stel­la­tion.

39:3.32. Law Fore­cast­ers. The in­tel­lec­tual foun­da­tion of jus­tice is law, and in a lo­cal uni­verse law orig­i­nates in the leg­isla­tive as­sem­blies of the con­stel­la­tions. These de­lib­er­a­tive bod­ies cod­ify and for­mally pro­mul­gate the ba­sic laws of Neb­a­don, laws de­signed to af­ford the great­est pos­si­ble co-or­di­na­tion of a whole con­stel­la­tion con­sis­tent with the fixed pol­icy of non­in­fringe­ment of the moral free will of per­sonal crea­tures. It is the duty of the sec­ond or­der of super­vi­sor ser­a­phim to place be­fore the con­stel­la­tion law­mak­ers a fore­cast of how any pro­posed en­act­ment would af­fect the lives of free­will crea­tures. This ser­vice they are well qual­i­fied to per­form by virtue of long ex­pe­ri­ence in the lo­cal sys­tems and on the in­hab­ited worlds. These ser­a­phim seek no spe­cial fa­vors for one group or an­other, but they do ap­pear be­fore the ce­les­tial law­mak­ers to speak for those who can­not be pres­ent to speak for them­selves. Even mor­tal man may con­tribute to the evo­lu­tion of uni­verse law, for these very ser­a­phim do faith­fully and fully por­tray, not nec­es­sar­ily man’s tran­sient and con­scious de­sires, but rather the true long­ings of the in­ner man, the evolv­ing mor­ontia soul of the ma­te­rial mor­tal on the worlds of space.

39:3.43. So­cial Ar­chi­tects. From the in­di­vid­ual plan­ets up through the mor­ontia train­ing worlds, these ser­a­phim la­bor to en­hance all sin­cere so­cial con­tacts and to fur­ther the so­cial evo­lu­tion of uni­verse crea­tures. These are the an­gels who seek to di­vest the as­so­ci­a­tions of in­tel­li­gent be­ings of all ar­ti­fi­cial­ity while en­deav­or­ing to fa­cil­i­tate the in­teras­so­ci­a­tion of will crea­tures on a ba­sis of real self-un­der­stand­ing and gen­uine mu­tual ap­pre­ci­a­tion.

39:3.5So­cial ar­chi­tects do ev­ery­thing within their prov­ince and power to bring to­gether suit­able in­di­vid­u­als that they may con­sti­tute ef­fi­cient and agree­able work­ing groups on earth; and some­times such groups have found them­selves re­as­so­ci­ated on the man­sion worlds for con­tin­ued fruit­ful ser­vice. But not al­ways do these ser­a­phim at­tain their ends; not al­ways are they able to bring to­gether those who would form the most ideal group to achieve a given pur­pose or to ac­com­plish a cer­tain task; un­der these con­di­tions they must uti­lize the best of the ma­te­rial avail­able.

39:3.6These an­gels con­tinue their min­istry on the man­sion and higher mor­ontia worlds. They are con­cerned with any un­der­tak­ing hav­ing to do with prog­ress on the mor­ontia worlds and which con­cerns three or more per­sons. Two be­ings are re­garded as op­er­at­ing on the mat­ing, com­ple­men­tal, or part­ner­ship ba­sis, but when three or more are grouped for ser­vice, they con­sti­tute a so­cial prob­lem and there­fore fall within the ju­ris­dic­tion of the so­cial ar­chi­tects. These ef­fi­cient ser­a­phim are or­ga­nized in sev­enty di­vi­sions on Eden­tia, and these di­vi­sions min­is­ter on the sev­enty mor­ontia prog­ress worlds en­cir­cling the head­quar­ters sphere.

39:3.74. Eth­i­cal Sen­si­tiz­ers. It is the mis­sion of these ser­a­phim to fos­ter and to pro­mote the growth of crea­ture ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the moral­ity of in­ter­per­sonal re­la­tion­ships, for such is the seed and se­cret of the con­tin­ued and pur­pose­ful growth of so­ci­ety and gov­ern­ment, hu­man or super­hu­man. These en­hancers of eth­i­cal ap­pre­ci­a­tion func­tion any­where and ev­ery­where they may be of ser­vice, as vol­un­teer coun­selors to the plan­e­tary rulers and as ex­change teach­ers on the sys­tem train­ing worlds. You will not, how­ever, come un­der their full guid­ance un­til you reach the broth­er­hood schools on Eden­tia, where they will quicken your ap­pre­ci­a­tion of those very truths of fra­ter­nity which you will even then be so earnestly ex­plor­ing by the ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing with the uni­v­i­ta­tia in the so­cial lab­o­ra­to­ries of Eden­tia, the sev­enty satel­lites of the Nor­la­ti­adek cap­i­tal.

• 3rd. order, supervisor seraphim › 5. transporters

39:3.85. The Trans­port­ers. The fifth group of super­vi­sor ser­a­phim op­er­ate as per­son­al­ity trans­port­ers, car­ry­ing be­ings to and from the head­quar­ters of the con­stel­la­tions. Such trans­port ser­a­phim, while in flight from one sphere to an­other, are fully con­scious of their ve­loc­ity, di­rec­tion, and as­tro­nomic where­abouts. They are not travers­ing space as would an inan­i­mate pro­jec­tile. They may pass near one an­other dur­ing space flight with­out the least dan­ger of col­li­sion. They are fully able to vary speed of pro­gres­sion and to al­ter di­rec­tion of flight, even to change des­ti­na­tions if their di­rec­tors should so in­struct them at any space junc­tion of the uni­verse in­tel­li­gence cir­cuits.

39:3.9These tran­sit per­son­al­i­ties are so or­ga­nized that they can si­mul­ta­ne­ously uti­lize all three of the uni­ver­sally dis­tributed lines of en­ergy, each hav­ing a clear space ve­loc­ity of 186,280 miles per sec­ond. These trans­port­ers are thus able to super­im­pose ve­loc­ity of en­ergy upon ve­loc­ity of power un­til they at­tain an av­er­age speed on their long jour­neys vary­ing any­where from 555,000 to al­most 559,000 of your miles per sec­ond of your time. The ve­loc­ity is af­fected by the mass and prox­im­ity of neigh­bor­ing mat­ter and by the strength and di­rec­tion of the near-by main cir­cuits of uni­verse power. There are nu­mer­ous types of be­ings, sim­i­lar to the ser­a­phim, who are able to tra­verse space, and who also are able to trans­port other be­ings who have been prop­erly pre­pared.

• 3rd. order, supervisor seraphim › 6. recorders

39:3.106. The Re­cord­ers. The sixth or­der of super­vis­ing ser­a­phim act as the spe­cial re­cord­ers of con­stel­la­tion af­fairs. A large and ef­fi­cient corps func­tions on Eden­tia, the head­quar­ters of the con­stel­la­tion of Nor­la­ti­adek, to which your sys­tem and planet be­long.

• 3rd. order, supervisor seraphim › 7. reserves

39:3.117. The Re­serves. Gen­eral re­serves of the super­vi­sor ser­a­phim are held on the head­quar­ters of the con­stel­la­tions. Such an­gelic re­servists are in no sense in­ac­tive; many serve as mes­sen­ger aids to the con­stel­la­tion rulers; oth­ers are at­tached to the Sal­ving­ton re­serves of un­as­signed Voron­dadeks; still oth­ers may be at­tached to Vo­ron­da­dek Sons on spe­cial as­sign­ment, such as the Vo­ron­da­dek ob­server, and some­times Most High re­gent, of Uran­tia.

39:4.1The fourth or­der of ser­a­phim are as­signed to the ad­min­is­tra­tive du­ties of the lo­cal sys­tems. They are in­dige­nous to the sys­tem cap­i­tals but are sta­tioned in large num­bers on the man­sion and mor­ontia spheres and on the in­hab­ited worlds. Fourth-or­der ser­a­phim are by na­ture en­dowed with un­usual ad­min­is­tra­tive abil­ity. They are the able as­sis­tants of the di­rec­tors of the lower di­vi­sions of the uni­verse gov­ern­ment of a Cre­ator Son and are mainly oc­cu­pied with the af­fairs of the lo­cal sys­tems and their com­po­nent worlds. They are or­ga­nized for ser­vice as fol­lows:

39:4.21. Ad­min­is­tra­tive As­sis­tants. These able ser­a­phim are the im­me­di­ate as­sis­tants of a Sys­tem Sov­er­eign, a pri­mary La­non­an­dek Son. They are in­valu­able aids in the ex­e­cu­tion of the in­tri­cate de­tails of the ex­ec­u­tive work of the sys­tem head­quar­ters. They also serve as the per­sonal agents of the sys­tem rulers, jour­ney­ing back and forth in large num­bers to the var­i­ous tran­si­tion worlds and to the in­hab­ited plan­ets, ex­e­cut­ing many com­mis­sions for the wel­fare of the sys­tem and in the phys­i­cal and bi­o­logic in­ter­ests of its in­hab­ited worlds.

39:4.3These same se­raphic ad­min­is­tra­tors are also at­tached to the gov­ern­ments of the world rulers, the Plan­e­tary Princes. The ma­jor­ity of plan­ets in a given uni­verse are un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of a sec­ondary La­non­an­dek Son, but on cer­tain worlds, such as Uran­tia, there has been a mis­car­riage of the di­vine plan. In the event of the de­fec­tion of a Plan­e­tary Prince, these ser­a­phim be­come at­tached to the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers and their suc­ces­sors in plan­e­tary au­thor­ity. The pres­ent act­ing ruler of Uran­tia is as­sisted by a corps of one thou­sand of this ver­sa­tile or­der of ser­a­phim.

39:4.42. Jus­tice Guides. These are the an­gels who pre­sent the sum­mary of ev­i­dence con­cern­ing the eter­nal wel­fare of men and an­gels when such mat­ters come up for ad­ju­di­ca­tion in the tri­bu­nals of a sys­tem or a planet. They pre­pare the state­ments for all pre­lim­i­nary hear­ings in­volv­ing mor­tal sur­vival, state­ments which are sub­se­quently car­ried with the rec­ords of such cases to the higher tri­bu­nals of the uni­verse and the super­uni­verse. The de­fense of all cases of doubt­ful sur­vival is pre­pared by these ser­a­phim, who have a per­fect un­der­stand­ing of all the de­tails of ev­ery fea­ture of ev­ery count in the in­dict­ments drawn by the ad­min­is­tra­tors of uni­verse jus­tice.

39:4.5It is not the mis­sion of these an­gels to de­feat or to de­lay jus­tice but rather to in­sure that unerring jus­tice is dealt out with gen­er­ous mercy in fair­ness to all crea­tures. These ser­a­phim of­ten func­tion on the lo­cal worlds, com­monly ap­pear­ing be­fore the ref­eree trios of the con­cil­i­at­ing com­mis­sions—the courts for mi­nor mis­un­der­stand­ings. Many who at one time served as jus­tice guides in the lower realms later ap­pear as Voices of Mercy in the higher spheres and on Sal­ving­ton.

39:4.6In the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion in Sa­ta­nia very few of the jus­tice guides were lost, but more than one quar­ter of the other ad­min­is­tra­tor ser­a­phim and of the lower or­ders of se­raphic min­is­ters were mis­led and de­luded by the soph­ist­ries of un­bri­dled per­sonal lib­erty.

39:4.73. In­ter­preters of Cos­mic Cit­i­zen­ship. When as­cend­ing mor­tals have com­pleted the man­sion world train­ing, the first stu­dent ap­pren­tice­ship in the uni­verse ca­reer, they are per­mit­ted to en­joy the tran­sient sat­is­fac­tions of rel­a­tive ma­tu­rity—cit­i­zen­ship on the sys­tem cap­i­tal. While the at­tain­ment of each as­cen­dant goal is a fac­tual achieve­ment, in the larger sense such goals are sim­ply mile­stones on the long as­cend­ing path to Par­a­dise. But how­ever rel­a­tive such suc­cesses may be, no evo­lu­tion­ary crea­ture is ever de­nied the full though tran­sient sat­is­fac­tion of goal at­tain­ment. Ever and anon there is a pause in the Par­a­dise as­cent, a short breath­ing spell, dur­ing which uni­verse hori­zons stand still, crea­ture sta­tus is sta­tion­ary, and the per­son­al­ity tastes the sweet­ness of goal ful­fill­ment.

39:4.8The first of such pe­ri­ods in the ca­reer of a mor­tal as­cender oc­curs on the cap­i­tal of a lo­cal sys­tem. Dur­ing this pause you will, as a cit­i­zen of Je­ru­sem, at­tempt to ex­press in crea­ture life those things which you have ac­quired dur­ing the eight pre­ced­ing life ex­pe­ri­ences—em­brac­ing Uran­tia and the seven man­sion worlds.

39:4.9The se­raphic in­ter­preters of cos­mic cit­i­zen­ship guide the new cit­i­zens of the sys­tem cap­i­tals and quicken their ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of uni­verse gov­ern­ment. These ser­a­phim are also closely as­so­ci­ated with the Ma­te­rial Sons in the sys­tem ad­min­is­tra­tion, while they por­tray the re­spon­si­bil­ity and moral­ity of cos­mic cit­i­zen­ship to the ma­te­rial mor­tals on the in­hab­ited worlds.

39:4.104. Quick­en­ers of Moral­ity. On the man­sion worlds you be­gin to learn self-gov­ern­ment for the ben­e­fit of all con­cerned. Your mind learns co-op­er­a­tion, learns how to plan with other and wiser be­ings. On the sys­tem head­quar­ters the se­raphic teach­ers will fur­ther quicken your ap­pre­ci­a­tion of cos­mic moral­ity—of the in­ter­ac­tions of lib­erty and loy­alty.

39:4.11What is loy­alty? It is the fruit of an in­tel­li­gent ap­pre­ci­a­tion of uni­verse broth­er­hood; one could not take so much and give noth­ing. As you as­cend the per­son­al­ity scale, first you learn to be loyal, then to love, then to be fil­ial, and then may you be free; but not un­til you are a fi­nal­i­ter, not un­til you have at­tained per­fec­tion of loy­alty, can you self-re­al­ize fi­nal­ity of lib­erty.

39:4.12These ser­a­phim teach the fruit­ful­ness of pa­tience: That stag­na­tion is cer­tain death, but that over­rapid growth is equally sui­ci­dal; that as a drop of wa­ter from a higher level falls to a lower and, flow­ing on­ward, passes ever down­ward through a suc­ces­sion of short falls, so ever up­ward is prog­ress in the mor­ontia and spirit worlds—and just as slowly and by just such grad­ual stages.

39:4.13To the in­hab­ited worlds the quick­en­ers of moral­ity por­tray mor­tal life as an un­bro­ken chain of many links. Your short so­journ on Uran­tia, on this sphere of mor­tal in­fancy, is only a sin­gle link, the very first in the long chain that is to stretch across uni­verses and through the eter­nal ages. It is not so much what you learn in this first life; it is the ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing this life that is im­por­tant. Even the work of this world, paramount though it is, is not nearly so im­por­tant as the way in which you do this work. There is no ma­te­rial re­ward for righ­teous liv­ing, but there is pro­found sat­is­fac­tion—con­scious­ness of achieve­ment—and this tran­scends any con­ceiv­able ma­te­rial re­ward.

39:4.14The keys of the king­dom of heaven are: sin­cer­ity, more sin­cer­ity, and more sin­cer­ity. All men have these keys. Men use them—ad­vance in spirit sta­tus—by de­ci­sions, by more de­ci­sions, and by more de­ci­sions. The high­est moral choice is the choice of the high­est pos­si­ble value, and al­ways—in any sphere, in all of them—this is to choose to do the will of God. If man thus chooses, he is great, though he be the hum­blest cit­i­zen of Je­ru­sem or even the least of mor­tals on Uran­tia.

• 4th. order, administrator seraphim › 5. transporters

39:4.155. The Trans­port­ers. These are the trans­port ser­a­phim who func­tion in the lo­cal sys­tems. In Sa­ta­nia, your sys­tem, they carry pas­sen­gers back and forth from Je­ru­sem and oth­er­wise serve as in­ter­plan­e­tary trans­port­ers. Sel­dom does a day pass in which a trans­port ser­a­phim of Sa­ta­nia does not de­posit some stu­dent vis­i­tor or some other trav­eler of spirit or semispirit na­ture on the shores of Uran­tia. These very space tra­versers will some­time carry you to and from the var­i­ous worlds of the sys­tem head­quar­ters group, and when you have fin­ished the Je­ru­sem as­sign­ment, they will carry you for­ward to Eden­tia. But un­der no cir­cum­stances will they carry you back­ward to the world of hu­man ori­gin. A mor­tal never re­turns to his na­tive planet dur­ing the dis­pen­sa­tion of his tem­po­ral ex­is­tence, and if he should re­turn dur­ing a sub­se­quent dis­pen­sa­tion, he would be es­corted by a trans­port ser­a­phim of the uni­verse head­quar­ters group.

• 4th. order, administrator seraphim › 6. recorders

39:4.166. The Re­cord­ers. These ser­a­phim are the keep­ers of the three­fold rec­ords of the lo­cal sys­tems. The tem­ple of rec­ords on a sys­tem cap­i­tal is a unique struc­ture, one third ma­te­rial, con­structed of lu­mi­nous met­als and crys­tals; one third mor­ontial, fab­ri­cated of the li­ai­son of spir­i­tual and ma­te­rial en­ergy but be­yond the range of mor­tal vi­sion; and one third spir­i­tual. The re­cord­ers of this or­der pre­side over and main­tain this three­fold sys­tem of rec­ords. As­cend­ing mor­tals will at first con­sult the ma­te­rial ar­chives, Ma­te­rial Sons and the higher tran­si­tion be­ings con­sult those of the mor­ontia halls, while ser­a­phim and the higher spirit per­son­al­i­ties of the realm pe­ruse the rec­ords of the spirit sec­tion.

• 4th. order, administrator seraphim › 7. reserves

39:4.177. The Re­serves. The re­serve corps of ad­min­is­tra­tor ser­a­phim on Je­ru­sem spend much of their wait­ing time in vis­it­ing, as spirit com­pan­ions, with the newly ar­rived as­cend­ing mor­tals from the var­i­ous worlds of the sys­tem—the ac­cred­ited grad­u­ates of the man­sion worlds. One of the de­lights of your so­journ on Je­ru­sem will be to talk and visit, dur­ing re­cess pe­ri­ods, with these much-trav­eled and many-ex­pe­ri­enced ser­a­phim of the wait­ing re­serve corps.

39:4.18It is just such friendly re­la­tion­ships as these that so en­dear a sys­tem cap­i­tal to the as­cend­ing mor­tals. On Je­ru­sem you will find the first in­ter­min­gling of Ma­te­rial Sons, an­gels, and as­cend­ing pil­grims. Here frat­er­nize be­ings who are wholly spir­i­tual and semispir­i­tual and in­di­vid­u­als just emerg­ing from ma­te­rial ex­is­tence. Mor­tal forms are there so mod­i­fied and hu­man ranges of light re­ac­tion so ex­tended that all are able to en­joy mu­tual rec­og­ni­tion and sym­pa­thetic per­son­al­ity un­der­stand­ing.

39:5.1These ser­a­phim main­tain head­quar­ters on the sys­tem cap­i­tals and, though closely as­so­ci­ated with the res­i­dent Adamic cit­i­zens, are pri­mar­ily as­signed to the ser­vice of the Plan­e­tary Adams, the bi­o­logic or phys­i­cal up­lifters of the ma­te­rial races on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds. The min­is­ter­ing work of an­gels be­comes of in­creas­ing in­ter­est as it nears the in­hab­ited worlds, as it nears the ac­tual prob­lems faced by the men and women of time who are prepar­ing them­selves for the at­tempt to at­tain the goal of eter­nity.

39:5.2On Uran­tia the ma­jor­ity of the plan­e­tary helpers were re­moved upon the col­lapse of the Adamic regime, and the se­raphic super­vi­sion of your world de­volved to a greater ex­tent upon the ad­min­is­tra­tors, the tran­si­tion min­is­ters, and the guard­i­ans of des­tiny. But these se­raphic aids of your de­fault­ing Ma­te­rial Sons still serve Uran­tia in the fol­low­ing groups:

39:5.31. The Voices of the Gar­den. When the plan­e­tary course of hu­man evo­lu­tion is at­tain­ing its high­est bi­o­logic level, there al­ways ap­pear the Ma­te­rial Sons and Daugh­ters, the Adams and Eves, to aug­ment the fur­ther evo­lu­tion of the races by an ac­tual con­tri­bu­tion of their su­pe­rior life plasm. The plan­e­tary head­quar­ters of such an Adam and Eve is usu­ally de­nom­i­nated the Gar­den of Eden, and their per­sonal ser­a­phim are of­ten known as the “voices of the Gar­den.” These ser­a­phim are of in­valu­able ser­vice to the Plan­e­tary Adams in all their projects for the phys­i­cal and in­tel­lec­tual up­step­ping of the evo­lu­tion­ary races. Af­ter the Adamic de­fault on Uran­tia, some of these ser­a­phim were left on the planet and were as­signed to Adam’s suc­ces­sors in au­thor­ity.

39:5.42. The Spir­its of Broth­er­hood. It should be ap­par­ent that, when an Adam and Eve ar­rive on an evo­lu­tion­ary world, the task of achiev­ing racial har­mony and so­cial co-op­er­a­tion among its di­verse races is one of con­sid­er­able pro­por­tions. Sel­dom do these races of dif­fer­ent col­ors and var­ied na­tures take kindly to the plan of hu­man broth­er­hood. These prim­i­tive men only come to re­al­ize the wis­dom of peace­ful in­teras­so­ci­a­tion as a re­sult of ripened hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence and through the faith­ful min­istry of the se­raphic spir­its of broth­er­hood. With­out the work of these ser­a­phim the ef­forts of the Ma­te­rial Sons to har­mo­nize and ad­vance the races of an evolv­ing world would be greatly de­layed. And had your Adam ad­hered to the orig­i­nal plan for the ad­vance­ment of Uran­tia, by this time these spir­its of broth­er­hood would have worked un­be­liev­able trans­for­ma­tions in the hu­man race. In view of the Adamic de­fault, it is in­deed re­mark­able that these se­raphic or­ders have been able to fos­ter and bring to re­al­iza­tion even as much of broth­er­hood as you now have on Uran­tia.

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.”

39:5.6In the more ad­vanced epochs of plan­e­tary evo­lu­tion these ser­a­phim are in­stru­men­tal in sup­plant­ing the atone­ment idea by the con­cept of di­vine at­tune­ment as a phi­los­o­phy of mor­tal sur­vival.

39:5.74. The Spir­its of Trust. Sus­pi­cion is the in­her­ent re­ac­tion of prim­i­tive men; the sur­vival strug­gles of the early ages do not nat­u­rally breed trust. Trust is a new hu­man ac­qui­si­tion brought about by the min­istry of these plan­e­tary ser­a­phim of the Adamic regime. It is their mis­sion to in­cul­cate trust into the minds of evolv­ing men. The Gods are very trust­ful; the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is will­ing freely to trust him­self—the Ad­juster—to man’s as­so­ci­a­tion.

39:5.8This en­tire group of ser­a­phim was trans­ferred to the new regime af­ter the Adamic mis­car­riage, and they have ever since con­tin­ued their labors on Uran­tia. And they have not been wholly un­suc­cess­ful since a civ­i­liza­tion is now evolv­ing which em­bod­ies much of their ide­als of con­fi­dence and trust.

39:5.9In the more ad­vanced plan­e­tary ages these ser­a­phim en­hance man’s ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the truth that un­cer­tainty is the se­cret of con­tented con­ti­nu­ity. They help the mor­tal philoso­phers to re­al­ize that, when ig­no­rance is es­sen­tial to suc­cess, it would be a colos­sal blun­der for the crea­ture to know the fu­ture. They heighten man’s taste for the sweet­ness of un­cer­tainty, for the ro­mance and charm of the in­def­i­nite and un­known fu­ture.

• 5th. order, planetary helper seraphim › 5. transporters

39:5.105. The Trans­port­ers. The plan­e­tary trans­port­ers serve the in­di­vid­ual worlds. The ma­jor­ity of en­ser­a­phimed be­ings brought to this planet are in tran­sit; they merely stop over; they are in cus­tody of their own spe­cial se­raphic trans­port­ers; but there are a large num­ber of such ser­a­phim sta­tioned on Uran­tia. These are the trans­port per­son­al­i­ties op­er­at­ing from the lo­cal plan­ets, as from Uran­tia to Je­ru­sem.

39:5.11Your con­ven­tional idea of an­gels has been de­rived in the fol­low­ing way: Dur­ing mo­ments just prior to phys­i­cal death a re­flec­tive phe­nom­e­non some­times oc­curs in the hu­man mind, and this dim­ming con­scious­ness seems to vi­su­al­ize some­thing of the form of the at­tend­ing an­gel, and this is im­me­di­ately trans­lated into terms of the ha­bit­ual con­cept of an­gels held in that in­di­vid­ual’s mind.

39:5.13When ce­les­tial be­ings are to be en­ser­a­phimed for trans­fer from one world to an­other, they are brought to the head­quar­ters of the sphere and, af­ter due reg­istry, are in­ducted into the tran­sit sleep. Mean­time, the trans­port ser­a­phim moves into a hor­i­zon­tal po­si­tion im­me­di­ately above the uni­verse en­ergy pole of the planet. While the en­ergy shields are wide open, the sleep­ing per­son­al­ity is skill­fully de­posited, by the of­fi­ci­at­ing se­raphic as­sis­tants, di­rectly on top of the trans­port an­gel. Then both the up­per and lower pairs of shields are care­fully closed and ad­justed.

39:5.14And now, un­der the in­flu­ence of the trans­form­ers and the trans­mit­ters, a strange meta­mor­pho­sis be­gins as the ser­a­phim is made ready to swing into the en­ergy cur­rents of the uni­verse cir­cuits. To out­ward ap­pear­ance the ser­a­phim grows pointed at both ex­trem­i­ties and be­comes so en­shrouded in a queer light of am­ber hue that very soon it is im­pos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish the en­ser­a­phimed per­son­al­ity. When all is in readi­ness for de­par­ture, the chief of trans­port makes the proper in­spec­tion of the car­riage of life, car­ries out the rou­tine tests to as­cer­tain whether or not the an­gel is prop­erly en­cir­cuited, and then an­nounces that the trav­eler is prop­erly en­ser­a­phimed, that the en­er­gies are ad­justed, that the an­gel is in­su­lated, and that ev­ery­thing is in readi­ness for the de­part­ing flash. The me­chan­i­cal con­trol­lers, two of them, next take their po­si­tions. By this time the trans­port ser­a­phim has be­come an al­most trans­par­ent, vi­brat­ing, tor­pedo-shaped out­line of glis­ten­ing lu­mi­nos­ity. Now the trans­port dis­patcher of the realm sum­mons the aux­il­iary bat­ter­ies of the liv­ing en­ergy trans­mit­ters, usu­ally one thou­sand in num­ber; as he an­nounces the des­ti­na­tion of the trans­port, he reaches out and touches the near point of the se­raphic car­riage, which shoots for­ward with light­ning­like speed, leav­ing a trail of ce­les­tial lu­mi­nos­ity as far as the plan­e­tary at­mo­spheric in­vest­ment ex­tends. In less than ten min­utes the mar­velous spec­ta­cle will be lost even to re­in­forced se­raphic vi­sion.

39:5.15While plan­e­tary space re­ports are re­ceived at noon at the merid­ian of the des­ig­nated spir­i­tual head­quar­ters, the trans­port­ers are dis­patched from this same place at mid­night. That is the most fa­vor­able time for de­par­ture and is the stan­dard hour when not oth­er­wise spec­i­fied.

• 5th. order, planetary helper seraphim › 6. recorders

39:5.166. The Re­cord­ers. These are the cus­to­di­ans of the ma­jor af­fairs of the planet as it func­tions as a part of the sys­tem, and as it is re­lated to, and con­cerned in, the uni­verse gov­ern­ment. They func­tion in the record­ing of plan­e­tary af­fairs but are not con­cerned with mat­ters of in­di­vid­ual life and ex­is­tence.

• 5th. order, planetary helper seraphim › 7. reserves

39:5.177. The Re­serves. The Sa­ta­nia re­serve corps of the plan­e­tary ser­a­phim is main­tained on Je­ru­sem in close as­so­ci­a­tion with the re­serves of the Ma­te­rial Sons. These abun­dant re­serves re­pletely pro­vide for ev­ery phase of the man­i­fold ac­tiv­i­ties of this se­raphic or­der. These an­gels are also the per­sonal mes­sage bear­ers of the lo­cal sys­tems. They serve tran­si­tion mor­tals, an­gels, and the Ma­te­rial Sons as well as oth­ers domi­ciled on the sys­tem head­quar­ters. While Uran­tia is, at pres­ent, out­side the spir­i­tual cir­cuits of Sa­ta­nia and Nor­la­ti­adek, you are oth­er­wise in in­ti­mate touch with in­ter­plan­e­tary af­fairs, for these mes­sen­gers from Je­ru­sem fre­quently come to this world as to all the other spheres of the sys­tem.

39:6.1As their name might sug­gest, ser­a­phim of tran­si­tional min­istry serve wher­ever they can con­tribute to crea­ture tran­si­tion from the ma­te­rial to the spir­i­tual es­tate. These an­gels serve from the in­hab­ited worlds to the sys­tem cap­i­tals, but those in Sa­ta­nia at pres­ent di­rect their great­est ef­forts to­ward the ed­u­ca­tion of the sur­viv­ing mor­tals on the seven man­sion worlds. This min­istry is di­ver­si­fied in ac­cor­dance with the fol­low­ing seven or­ders of as­sign­ment:

39:6.21. Se­raphic Evan­gels.

39:6.32. Racial In­ter­preters.

39:6.43. Mind Plan­ners.

39:6.54. Mor­ontia Coun­selors.

39:6.65. Tech­ni­cians.

39:6.76. Re­corder-Teach­ers.

39:6.87. Min­is­ter­ing Re­serves.

39:6.9More about these se­raphic min­is­ters to tran­si­tional as­cend­ers you will learn in con­nec­tion with the nar­ra­tives deal­ing with the man­sion worlds and the mor­ontia life.

39:7.1These an­gels do not min­is­ter ex­ten­sively ex­cept in older realms and on the more ad­vanced plan­ets of Neb­a­don. Large num­bers of them are held in re­serve on the se­raphic worlds near Sal­ving­ton, where they are en­gaged in pur­suits rel­e­vant to the some­time dawn­ing of the age of light and life in Neb­a­don. These ser­a­phim do func­tion in con­nec­tion with the as­cen­dant-mor­tal ca­reer but min­is­ter al­most ex­clu­sively to those mor­tals who sur­vive by some one of the mod­i­fied or­ders of as­cen­sion.

39:7.2Inas­much as these an­gels are not now di­rectly con­cerned with ei­ther Uran­tia or Uran­tians, it is deemed best to with­hold the de­scrip­tion of their fas­ci­nat­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

48:6.1While all or­ders of an­gels, from the plan­e­tary helpers to the su­preme ser­a­phim, min­is­ter on the mor­ontia worlds, the tran­si­tion min­is­ters are more ex­clu­sively as­signed to these ac­tiv­i­ties. These an­gels are of the sixth or­der of se­raphic servers, and their min­istry is de­voted to fa­cil­i­tat­ing the tran­sit of ma­te­rial and mor­tal crea­tures from the tem­po­ral life in the flesh on into the early stages of mor­ontia ex­is­tence on the seven man­sion worlds.

48:6.2You should un­der­stand that the mor­ontia life of an as­cend­ing mor­tal is re­ally ini­ti­ated on the in­hab­ited worlds at the con­cep­tion of the soul, at that mo­ment when the crea­ture mind of moral sta­tus is in­dwelt by the spirit Ad­juster. And from that mo­ment on, the mor­tal soul has po­ten­tial ca­pac­ity for super­mor­tal func­tion, even for rec­og­ni­tion on the higher lev­els of the mor­ontia spheres of the lo­cal uni­verse.

48:6.3You will not, how­ever, be con­scious of the min­istry of the tran­si­tion ser­a­phim un­til you at­tain the man­sion worlds, where they la­bor un­tir­ingly for the ad­vance­ment of their mor­tal pupils, be­ing as­signed for ser­vice in the fol­low­ing seven di­vi­sions:

48:6.41. Se­raphic Evan­gels. The mo­ment you con­sciou­size on the man­sion worlds, you are clas­si­fied as evolv­ing spir­its in the rec­ords of the sys­tem. True, you are not yet spir­its in re­al­ity, but you are no longer mor­tal or ma­te­rial be­ings; you have em­barked upon the pre­spirit ca­reer and have been duly ad­mit­ted to the mor­ontia life.

48:6.5On the man­sion worlds the se­raphic evan­gels will help you to choose wisely among the op­tional routes to Eden­tia, Sal­ving­ton, Uversa, and Ha­vona. If there are a num­ber of equally ad­vis­able routes, these will be put be­fore you, and you will be per­mit­ted to se­lect the one that most ap­peals to you. These ser­a­phim then make rec­om­men­da­tions to the four and twenty ad­vis­ers on Je­ru­sem con­cern­ing that course which would be most ad­van­ta­geous for each as­cend­ing soul.

48:6.6You are not given un­re­stricted choice as to your fu­ture course; but you may choose within the lim­its of that which the tran­si­tion min­is­ters and their su­pe­ri­ors wisely de­ter­mine to be most suit­able for your fu­ture spirit at­tain­ment. The spirit world is gov­erned on the prin­ci­ple of re­spect­ing your free­will choice pro­vided the course you may choose is not detri­men­tal to you or in­ju­ri­ous to your fel­lows.

48:6.7These se­raphic evan­gels are ded­i­cated to the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of eter­nal pro­gres­sion, the tri­umph of per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. On the man­sion worlds they pro­claim the great law of the con­ser­va­tion and dom­i­nance of good­ness: No act of good is ever wholly lost; it may be long thwarted but never wholly an­nulled, and it is eter­nally po­tent in pro­por­tion to the di­vin­ity of its mo­ti­va­tion.

48:6.8Even on Uran­tia they coun­sel the hu­man teach­ers of truth and righ­teous­ness to ad­here to the preach­ing of “the good­ness of God, which leads to re­pen­tance,” to pro­claim “the love of God, which casts out all fear.” Even so have these truths been de­clared on your world:

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.

48:6.21These ser­a­phim are also the evan­gels of the gospel of per­fec­tion at­tain­ment for the whole sys­tem as well as for the in­di­vid­ual as­cender. Even now in the young sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia their teach­ings and plans en­com­pass pro­vi­sions for the fu­ture ages when the man­sion worlds will no longer serve the mor­tal as­cend­ers as step­ping­stones to the spheres on high.

48:6.222. Racial In­ter­preters. All races of mor­tal be­ings are not alike. True, there is a plan­e­tary pat­tern run­ning through the phys­i­cal, men­tal, and spir­i­tual na­tures and ten­den­cies of the var­i­ous races of a given world; but there are also dis­tinct racial types, and very def­i­nite so­cial ten­den­cies char­ac­ter­ize the off­spring of these dif­fer­ent ba­sic types of hu­man be­ings. On the worlds of time the se­raphic racial in­ter­preters fur­ther the ef­forts of the race com­mis­sion­ers to har­mo­nize the var­ied view­points of the races, and they con­tinue to func­tion on the man­sion worlds, where these same dif­fer­ences tend to per­sist in a mea­sure. On a con­fused planet, such as Uran­tia, these bril­liant be­ings have hardly had a fair op­por­tu­nity to func­tion, but they are the skill­ful so­ci­ol­o­gists and the wise eth­nic ad­vis­ers of the first heaven.

48:6.23You should con­sider the state­ment about “heaven” and the “heaven of heav­ens.” The heaven con­ceived by most of your proph­ets was the first of the man­sion worlds of the lo­cal sys­tem. When the apos­tle spoke of be­ing “caught up to the third heaven,” he re­ferred to that ex­pe­ri­ence in which his Ad­juster was de­tached dur­ing sleep and in this un­usual state made a pro­jec­tion to the third of the seven man­sion worlds. Some of your wise men saw the vi­sion of the greater heaven, “the heaven of heav­ens,” of which the sev­en­fold man­sion world ex­pe­ri­ence was but the first; the sec­ond be­ing Je­ru­sem; the third, Eden­tia and its satel­lites; the fourth, Sal­ving­ton and the sur­round­ing ed­u­ca­tional spheres; the fifth, Uversa; the sixth, Ha­vona; and the sev­enth, Par­a­dise.

48:6.243. Mind Plan­ners. These ser­a­phim are de­voted to the ef­fec­tive group­ing of mor­ontia be­ings and to or­ga­niz­ing their team­work on the man­sion worlds. They are the psy­chol­o­gists of the first heaven. The ma­jor­ity of this par­tic­u­lar di­vi­sion of se­raphic min­is­ters have had pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ence as guard­ian an­gels to the chil­dren of time, but their wards, for some rea­son, failed to per­son­al­ize on the man­sion worlds or else sur­vived by the tech­nique of Spirit fu­sion.

48:6.25It is the task of the mind plan­ners to study the na­ture, ex­pe­ri­ence, and sta­tus of the Ad­juster souls in tran­sit through the man­sion worlds and to fa­cil­i­tate their group­ing for as­sign­ment and ad­vance­ment. But these mind plan­ners do not scheme, ma­nip­u­late, or oth­er­wise take ad­van­tage of the ig­no­rance or other lim­i­ta­tions of man­sion world stu­dents. They are wholly fair and em­i­nently just. They re­spect your new­born mor­ontia will; they re­gard you as in­de­pen­dent vo­li­tional be­ings, and they seek to en­cour­age your speedy de­vel­op­ment and ad­vance­ment. Here you are face to face with true friends and un­der­stand­ing coun­selors, an­gels who are re­ally able to help you “to see your­self as oth­ers see you” and “to know your­self as an­gels know you.”

48:6.26Even on Uran­tia, these ser­a­phim teach the ev­er­last­ing truth: If your own mind does not serve you well, you can ex­change it for the mind of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, who al­ways serves you well.

48:6.274. Mor­ontia Coun­selors. These min­is­ters re­ceive their name be­cause they are as­signed to teach, di­rect, and coun­sel the sur­viv­ing mor­tals from the worlds of hu­man ori­gin, souls in tran­sit to the higher schools of the sys­tem head­quar­ters. They are the teach­ers of those who seek in­sight into the ex­pe­ri­en­tial unity of di­ver­gent life lev­els, those who are at­tempt­ing the in­te­gra­tion of mean­ings and the uni­fi­ca­tion of val­ues. This is the func­tion of phi­los­o­phy in mor­tal life, of mota on the mor­ontia spheres.

48:6.28Mota is more than a su­pe­rior phi­los­o­phy; it is to phi­los­o­phy as two eyes are to one; it has a stereo­scopic ef­fect on mean­ings and val­ues. Ma­te­rial man sees the uni­verse, as it were, with but one eye—flat. Man­sion world stu­dents achieve cos­mic per­spec­tive—depth—by super­im­pos­ing the per­cep­tions of the mor­ontia life upon the per­cep­tions of the phys­i­cal life. And they are en­abled to bring these ma­te­rial and mor­ontial view­points into true fo­cus largely through the un­tir­ing min­istry of their se­raphic coun­selors, who so pa­tiently teach the man­sion world stu­dents and the mor­ontia pro­gres­sors. Many of the teach­ing coun­selors of the su­preme or­der of ser­a­phim be­gan their ca­reers as ad­vis­ers of the newly lib­er­ated souls of the mor­tals of time.

• 6th. order, morontia world transition ministers › 5. technicians

48:6.295. Tech­ni­cians. These are the ser­a­phim who help new as­cend­ers ad­just them­selves to the new and com­par­a­tively strange en­vi­ron­ment of the mor­ontia spheres. Life on the tran­si­tion worlds en­tails real con­tact with the en­er­gies and ma­te­ri­als of both the phys­i­cal and mor­ontia lev­els and to a cer­tain ex­tent with spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. As­cend­ers must ac­cli­ma­tize to ev­ery new mor­ontia level, and in all of this they are greatly helped by the se­raphic tech­ni­cians. These ser­a­phim act as li­aisons with the Mor­ontia Power Super­vi­sors and with the Mas­ter Phys­i­cal Con­trol­lers and func­tion ex­ten­sively as in­struc­tors of the as­cend­ing pil­grims con­cern­ing the na­ture of those en­er­gies which are uti­lized on the tran­si­tion spheres. They serve as emer­gency space tra­versers and per­form nu­mer­ous other reg­u­lar and spe­cial du­ties.

• 6th. order, morontia world transition ministers › 6. recorder-teachers

48:6.306. Re­corder-Teach­ers. These ser­a­phim are the re­cord­ers of the bor­der­land trans­ac­tions of the spir­i­tual and the phys­i­cal, of the re­la­tion­ships of men and an­gels, of the mor­ontia trans­ac­tions of the lower uni­verse realms. They also serve as in­struc­tors re­gard­ing the ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive tech­niques of fact record­ing. There is an artistry in the in­tel­li­gent as­sem­bly and co-or­di­na­tion of re­lated data, and this art is height­ened in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the ce­les­tial ar­ti­sans, and even the as­cend­ing mor­tals be­come thus af­fil­i­ated with the record­ing ser­a­phim.

48:6.31The re­cord­ers of all the se­raphic or­ders de­vote a cer­tain amount of time to the ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing of the mor­ontia pro­gres­sors. These an­gelic cus­to­di­ans of the facts of time are the ideal in­struc­tors of all fact seek­ers. Be­fore leav­ing Je­ru­sem, you will be­come quite fa­mil­iar with the his­tory of Sa­ta­nia and its 619 in­hab­ited worlds, and much of this story will be im­parted by the se­raphic re­cord­ers.

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.

48:6.33Law is life it­self and not the rules of its con­duct. Evil is a trans­gres­sion of law, not a vi­o­la­tion of the rules of con­duct per­tain­ing to life, which is the law. False­hood is not a mat­ter of nar­ra­tion tech­nique but some­thing pre­med­i­tated as a per­ver­sion of truth. The cre­ation of new pic­tures out of old facts, the re­state­ment of pa­ren­tal life in the lives of off­spring—these are the artis­tic tri­umphs of truth. The shadow of a hair’s turn­ing, pre­med­i­tated for an un­true pur­pose, the slight­est twist­ing or per­ver­sion of that which is prin­ci­ple—these con­sti­tute false­ness. But the fe­tish of fac­tu­al­ized truth, fos­silized truth, the iron band of so-called un­chang­ing truth, holds one blindly in a closed cir­cle of cold fact. One can be tech­ni­cally right as to fact and ev­er­last­ingly wrong in the truth.

• 6th. order, morontia world transition ministers › 7. reserves

48:6.347. Min­is­ter­ing Re­serves. A large corps of all or­ders of the tran­si­tion ser­a­phim is held on the first man­sion world. Next to the des­tiny guard­i­ans, these tran­si­tion min­is­ters draw the near­est to hu­mans of all or­ders of ser­a­phim, and many of your leisure mo­ments will be spent with them. An­gels take de­light in ser­vice and, when un­as­signed, of­ten min­is­ter as vol­un­teers. The soul of many an as­cend­ing mor­tal has for the first time been kin­dled by the di­vine fire of the will-to-ser­vice through per­sonal friend­ship with the vol­un­teer servers of the se­raphic re­serves.

48:6.35From them you will learn to let pres­sure de­velop sta­bil­ity and cer­tainty; to be faith­ful and earnest and, withal, cheer­ful; to ac­cept chal­lenges with­out com­plaint and to face dif­fi­cul­ties and un­cer­tain­ties with­out fear. They will ask: If you fail, will you rise in­domitably to try anew? If you suc­ceed, will you main­tain a well-bal­anced poise—a sta­bi­lized and spir­i­tu­al­ized at­ti­tude—through­out ev­ery ef­fort in the long strug­gle to break the fet­ters of ma­te­rial in­er­tia, to at­tain the free­dom of spirit ex­is­tence?

48:6.36Even as mor­tals, so have these an­gels been fa­ther to many dis­ap­point­ments, and they will point out that some­times your most dis­ap­point­ing dis­ap­point­ments have be­come your great­est bless­ings. Some­times the plant­ing of a seed ne­ces­si­tates its death, the death of your fond­est hopes, be­fore it can be re­born to bear the fruits of new life and new op­por­tu­nity. And from them you will learn to suf­fer less through sor­row and dis­ap­point­ment, first, by mak­ing fewer per­sonal plans con­cern­ing other per­son­al­i­ties, and then, by ac­cept­ing your lot when you have faith­fully per­formed your duty.

48:6.37You will learn that you in­crease your bur­dens and de­crease the like­li­hood of suc­cess by tak­ing your­self too se­ri­ously. Noth­ing can take prece­dence over the work of your sta­tus sphere—this world or the next. Very im­por­tant is the work of prepa­ra­tion for the next higher sphere, but noth­ing equals the im­por­tance of the work of the world in which you are ac­tu­ally liv­ing. But though the work is im­por­tant, the self is not. When you feel im­por­tant, you lose en­ergy to the wear and tear of ego dig­nity so that there is lit­tle en­ergy left to do the work. Self-im­por­tance, not work-im­por­tance, ex­hausts im­ma­ture crea­tures; it is the self el­e­ment that ex­hausts, not the ef­fort to achieve. You can do im­por­tant work if you do not be­come self-im­por­tant; you can do sev­eral things as eas­ily as one if you leave your­self out. Va­ri­ety is rest­ful; mo­not­ony is what wears and ex­hausts. Day af­ter day is alike—just life or the al­ter­na­tive of death.

38:3.1Nu­mer­ous or­ders of spirit be­ings func­tion through­out the do­mains of the lo­cal uni­verse that are un­re­vealed to mor­tals be­cause they are in no man­ner con­nected with the evo­lu­tion­ary plan of Par­a­dise as­cen­sion. In this pa­per the word “an­gel” is pur­posely lim­ited to the des­ig­na­tion of those se­raphic and as­so­ci­ated off­spring of the Uni­verse Mother Spirit who are so largely con­cerned with the op­er­a­tion of the plans of mor­tal sur­vival. There serve in the lo­cal uni­verse six other or­ders of re­lated be­ings, the un­re­vealed an­gels, who are not in any spe­cific man­ner con­nected with those uni­verse ac­tiv­i­ties per­tain­ing to the Par­a­dise as­cent of evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals. These six groups of an­gelic as­so­ciates are never called ser­a­phim, nei­ther are they re­ferred to as min­is­ter­ing spir­its. These per­son­al­i­ties are wholly oc­cu­pied with the ad­min­is­tra­tive and other af­fairs of Neb­a­don, en­gage­ments which are in no way re­lated to man’s pro­gres­sive ca­reer of spir­i­tual as­cent and per­fec­tion at­tain­ment.

40:1.1Mor­tal crea­tures of an­i­mal ori­gin are not the only be­ings priv­i­leged to en­joy son­ship; the an­gelic hosts also share the su­per­nal op­por­tu­nity to at­tain Par­a­dise. Guard­ian ser­a­phim, through ex­pe­ri­ence and ser­vice with the as­cend­ing mor­tals of time, also achieve the sta­tus of as­cen­dant son­ship. Such an­gels at­tain Par­a­dise through Seraph­ing­ton, and many are even mus­tered into the Corps of Mor­tal Fi­nal­ity.

114:6.1When the first gov­er­nor gen­eral ar­rived on Uran­tia, con­cur­rent with the out­pour­ing of the Spirit of Truth, he was ac­com­pa­nied by twelve corps of spe­cial ser­a­phim, Seraph­ing­ton grad­u­ates, who were im­me­di­ately as­signed to cer­tain spe­cial plan­e­tary ser­vices. These ex­alted an­gels are known as the mas­ter ser­a­phim of plan­e­tary super­vi­sion and are, aside from the over­con­trol of the plan­e­tary Most High ob­server, un­der the im­me­di­ate di­rec­tion of the res­i­dent gov­er­nor gen­eral.

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.

114:6.3As plan­e­tary chief of ser­a­phim, I pre­side over this coun­cil of se­raphic chiefs, and I am a vol­un­teer super­na­phim of the pri­mary or­der serv­ing on Uran­tia as the suc­ces­sor of the one­time chief of the an­gelic hosts of the planet who de­faulted at the time of the Cali­gas­tia se­ces­sion.

114:6.4The twelve corps of the mas­ter ser­a­phim of plan­e­tary super­vi­sion are func­tional on Uran­tia as fol­lows:

• master seraphim of planetary supervision › 1. angels of the epochs

114:6.51. The ep­ochal an­gels. These are the an­gels of the cur­rent age, the dis­pen­sa­tional group. These ce­les­tial min­is­ters are in­trusted with the over­sight and di­rec­tion of the af­fairs of each gen­er­a­tion as they are de­signed to fit into the mo­saic of the age in which they oc­cur. The pres­ent corps of ep­ochal an­gels serv­ing on Uran­tia is the third group as­signed to the planet dur­ing the cur­rent dis­pen­sa­tion.

• master seraphim of planetary supervision › 2. angels of progress

114:6.62. The prog­ress an­gels. These ser­a­phim are in­trusted with the task of ini­ti­at­ing the evo­lu­tion­ary prog­ress of the suc­ces­sive so­cial ages. They fos­ter the de­vel­op­ment of the in­her­ent pro­gres­sive trend of evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures; they la­bor in­ces­santly to make things what they ought to be. The group now on duty is the sec­ond to be as­signed to the planet.

• master seraphim of planetary supervision › 3. angels of the churches

114:6.73. The re­li­gious guard­i­ans. These are the “an­gels of the churches,” the earnest con­tenders for that which is and has been. They en­deavor to main­tain the ide­als of that which has sur­vived for the sake of the safe tran­sit of moral val­ues from one epoch to an­other. They are the check­mates of the an­gels of prog­ress, all the while seek­ing to trans­late from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other the im­per­ish­able val­ues of the old and pass­ing forms into the new and there­fore less sta­bi­lized pat­terns of thought and con­duct. These an­gels do con­tend for spir­i­tual forms, but they are not the source of ul­tra­sec­tar­i­an­ism and mean­ing­less con­tro­ver­sial di­vi­sions of pro­fessed re­li­gion­ists. The corps now func­tion­ing on Uran­tia is the fifth thus to serve.

• master seraphim of planetary supervision › 4. angels of nation life

114:6.84. The an­gels of na­tion life. These are the “an­gels of the trum­pets,” di­rec­tors of the po­lit­i­cal per­for­mances of Uran­tia na­tional life. The group now func­tion­ing in the over­con­trol of in­ter­na­tional re­la­tions is the fourth corps to serve on the planet. It is par­tic­u­larly through the min­istry of this se­raphic di­vi­sion that “the Most Highs rule in the king­doms of men.”

• master seraphim of planetary supervision › 5. angels of the races

114:6.95. The an­gels of the races. Those who work for the con­ser­va­tion of the evo­lu­tion­ary races of time, re­gard­less of their po­lit­i­cal en­tan­gle­ments and re­li­gious group­ings. On Uran­tia there are rem­nants of nine hu­man races which have com­min­gled and com­bined into the peo­ple of mod­ern times. These ser­a­phim are closely as­so­ci­ated with the min­istry of the race com­mis­sion­ers, and the group now on Uran­tia is the orig­i­nal corps as­signed to the planet soon af­ter the day of Pen­te­cost.

• master seraphim of planetary supervision › 6. angels of the future

114:6.106. The an­gels of the fu­ture. These are the pro­jec­tion an­gels, who fore­cast a fu­ture age and plan for the re­al­iza­tion of the bet­ter things of a new and ad­vanc­ing dis­pen­sa­tion; they are the ar­chi­tects of the suc­ces­sive eras. The group now on the planet has thus func­tioned since the be­gin­ning of the cur­rent dis­pen­sa­tion.

• master seraphim of planetary supervision › 7. angels of enlightenment

114:6.117. The an­gels of en­light­en­ment. Uran­tia is now re­ceiv­ing the help of the third corps of ser­a­phim ded­i­cated to the fos­ter­ing of plan­e­tary ed­u­ca­tion. These an­gels are oc­cu­pied with men­tal and moral train­ing as it con­cerns in­di­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, groups, schools, com­mu­ni­ties, na­tions, and whole races.

• master seraphim of planetary supervision › 8. angels of health

114:6.128. The an­gels of health. These are the se­raphic min­is­ters as­signed to the as­sis­tance of those mor­tal agen­cies ded­i­cated to the pro­mo­tion of health and the pre­ven­tion of dis­ease. The pres­ent corps is the sixth group to serve dur­ing this dis­pen­sa­tion.

• master seraphim of planetary supervision › 9. angels of the home

114:6.139. The home ser­a­phim. Uran­tia now en­joys the ser­vices of the fifth group of an­gelic min­is­ters ded­i­cated to the preser­va­tion and ad­vance­ment of the home, the ba­sic in­sti­tu­tion of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion.

• master seraphim of planetary supervision › 10. angels of industry

114:6.1410. The an­gels of in­dus­try. This se­raphic group is con­cerned with fos­ter­ing in­dus­trial de­vel­op­ment and im­prov­ing eco­nomic con­di­tions among the Uran­tia peo­ples. This corps has been seven times changed since the be­stowal of Mi­chael.

• master seraphim of planetary supervision › 11. angels of diversion

114:6.1511. The an­gels of di­ver­sion. These are the ser­a­phim who fos­ter the val­ues of play, hu­mor, and rest. They ever seek to up­lift man’s recre­ational di­ver­sions and thus to pro­mote the more prof­itable uti­liza­tion of hu­man leisure. The pres­ent corps is the third of that or­der to min­is­ter on Uran­tia.

• master seraphim of planetary supervision › 12. angels of superhuman ministry

114:6.1612. The an­gels of super­hu­man min­istry. These are the an­gels of the an­gels, those ser­a­phim who are as­signed to the min­istry of all other super­hu­man life on the planet, tem­po­rary or per­ma­nent. This corps has served since the be­gin­ning of the cur­rent dis­pen­sa­tion.

114:6.17When these groups of mas­ter ser­a­phim dis­agree in mat­ters of plan­e­tary pol­icy or pro­ce­dure, their dif­fer­ences are usu­ally com­posed by the gov­er­nor gen­eral, but all his rul­ings are sub­ject to ap­peal in ac­cor­dance with the na­ture and grav­ity of the is­sues in­volved in the dis­agree­ment.

114:6.18None of these an­gelic groups ex­er­cise di­rect or ar­bi­trary con­trol over the do­mains of their as­sign­ment. They can­not fully con­trol the af­fairs of their re­spec­tive realms of ac­tion, but they can and do so ma­nip­u­late plan­e­tary con­di­tions and so as­so­ciate cir­cum­stances as fa­vor­ably to in­flu­ence the spheres of hu­man ac­tiv­ity to which they are at­tached.

114:6.19The mas­ter ser­a­phim of plan­e­tary super­vi­sion uti­lize many agen­cies for the pros­e­cu­tion of their mis­sions. They func­tion as ide­a­tional clear­ing­houses, mind fo­cal­iz­ers, and project pro­mot­ers. While un­able to in­ject new and higher con­cep­tions into hu­man minds, they of­ten act to in­ten­sify some higher ideal which has al­ready ap­peared within a hu­man in­tel­lect.

114:6.20But aside from these many means of pos­i­tive ac­tion, the mas­ter ser­a­phim in­sure plan­e­tary prog­ress against vi­tal jeop­ardy through the mo­bi­liza­tion, train­ing, and main­te­nance of the re­serve corps of des­tiny. The chief func­tion of these re­servists is to in­sure against break­down of evo­lu­tion­ary prog­ress; they are the pro­vi­sions which the ce­les­tial forces have made against sur­prise; they are the guar­an­tees against dis­as­ter.

26:4.11The pil­grims of time are trans­ported past the dark grav­ity bod­ies of Ha­vona to the outer plan­e­tary cir­cuit by the trans­port per­son­al­i­ties of the pri­mary or­der of se­con­a­phim, op­er­at­ing from the head­quar­ters of the seven super­uni­verses. A ma­jor­ity, but not all, of the ser­a­phim of plan­e­tary and lo­cal uni­verse ser­vice who have been ac­cred­ited for the Par­a­dise as­cent will part with their mor­tal as­so­ciates be­fore the long flight to Ha­vona and will at once be­gin a long and in­tense train­ing for su­per­nal as­sign­ment, ex­pect­ing to achieve, as ser­a­phim, per­fec­tion of ex­is­tence and su­prem­acy of ser­vice. And this they do, hop­ing to re­join the pil­grims of time, to be reck­oned among those who for­ever fol­low the course of such mor­tals as have at­tained the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and have re­ceived as­sign­ment to the undis­closed ser­vice of the Corps of the Fi­nal­ity.

• told Jesus to be about Father’s business

37:2.8One of the high du­ties of the Evening Stars is to ac­com­pany the Avo­nal be­stowal Sons on their plan­e­tary mis­sions, even as Ga­briel ac­com­pa­nied Mi­chael on his Uran­tia be­stowal. The two at­tend­ing super­an­gels are the rank­ing per­son­al­i­ties of such mis­sions, serv­ing as co­com­man­ders of the arch­an­gels and all oth­ers as­signed to these un­der­tak­ings. It is the se­nior of these super­an­gel com­man­ders who, at the sig­nif­i­cant time and age, bids the Avo­nal be­stowal Son, “Be about your brother’s busi­ness.”

• dispatched messages during rebellion quarantine

53:7.3All se­ces­sion pro­pa­ganda had to be car­ried on by per­sonal ef­fort be­cause the broad­cast ser­vice and all other av­enues of in­ter­plan­e­tary com­mu­ni­ca­tion were sus­pended by the ac­tion of the sys­tem cir­cuit super­vi­sors. Upon the ac­tual out­break of the in­sur­rec­tion the en­tire sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia was iso­lated in both the con­stel­la­tion and the uni­verse cir­cuits. Dur­ing this time all in­com­ing and out­go­ing mes­sages were dis­patched by se­raphic agents and Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers. The cir­cuits to the fallen worlds were also cut off, so that Lu­cifer could not uti­lize this av­enue for the fur­ther­ance of his ne­far­i­ous scheme. And these cir­cuits will not be re­stored so long as the arch­re­bel lives within the con­fines of Sa­ta­nia.

• assembled Andonic counterparts for Prince’s staff

66:2.7Ac­cord­ingly, fifty males and fifty fe­males of the An­don and Fonta pos­ter­ity, rep­re­sent­ing the sur­vival of the best strains of that unique race, were cho­sen by the Life Car­ri­ers. With one or two ex­cep­tions these An­don­ite con­trib­u­tors to the ad­vance­ment of the race were strangers to one an­other. They were as­sem­bled from widely sep­a­rated places by co-or­di­nated Thought Ad­juster di­rec­tion and se­raphic guid­ance at the thresh­old of the plan­e­tary head­quar­ters of the Prince. Here the one hun­dred hu­man sub­jects were given into the hands of the highly skilled vol­un­teer com­mis­sion from Avalon, who di­rected the ma­te­rial ex­trac­tion of a por­tion of the life plasm of these An­don de­scen­dants. This liv­ing ma­te­rial was then trans­ferred to the ma­te­rial bod­ies con­structed for the use of the one hun­dred Jerusemite mem­bers of the Prince’s staff. Mean­time, these newly ar­rived cit­i­zens of the sys­tem cap­i­tal were held in the sleep of se­raphic trans­port.

• 25% of lower orders lost in Lucifer rebellion

67:3.2On Uran­tia forty mem­bers of the cor­po­real staff of one hun­dred (in­clud­ing Van) re­fused to join the in­sur­rec­tion. Many of the staff’s hu­man as­sis­tants (mod­i­fied and oth­er­wise) were also brave and no­ble de­fend­ers of Mi­chael and his uni­verse gov­ern­ment. There was a ter­ri­ble loss of per­son­al­i­ties among ser­a­phim and cheru­bim. Al­most one half of the ad­min­is­tra­tor and tran­si­tion ser­a­phim as­signed to the planet joined their leader and Dali­gas­tia in sup­port of the cause of Lu­cifer. Forty thou­sand one hun­dred and nine­teen of the pri­mary mid­way crea­tures joined hands with Cali­gas­tia, but the re­main­der of these be­ings re­mained true to their trust.

• some rebel s. on earth up to Christ’s death

77:7.4These dis­loyal mid­way­ers were able to re­veal them­selves to mor­tal eyes un­der cer­tain cir­cum­stances, and es­pe­cially was this true of the as­so­ciates of Beelze­bub, the leader of the apos­tate sec­ondary mid­way­ers. But these unique crea­tures must not be con­fused with cer­tain of the rebel cheru­bim and ser­a­phim who also were on earth up to the time of Christ’s death and res­ur­rec­tion. Some of the older writ­ers des­ig­nated these re­bel­lious mid­way crea­tures as evil spir­its and demons, and the apos­tate ser­a­phim as evil an­gels.

• opened prison doors for early teachers of gospel

77:8.12Many of the more lit­eral phe­nom­ena as­cribed to an­gels have been per­formed by the sec­ondary mid­way crea­tures. When the early teach­ers of the gospel of Je­sus were thrown into prison by the ig­no­rant re­li­gious lead­ers of that day, an ac­tual “an­gel of the Lord” “by night opened the prison doors and brought them forth.” But in the case of Pe­ter’s de­liv­er­ance af­ter the killing of James by Herod’s or­der, it was a sec­ondary mid­wayer who per­formed the work as­cribed to an an­gel.

• accompanied Michael on morontia mortal bestowal

119:6.2Be­fore leav­ing Sal­ving­ton for the sixth be­stowal, Mi­chael ad­dressed the as­sem­bled in­hab­i­tants of the sphere and de­parted in full view of ev­ery­one, ac­com­pa­nied by a lone ser­a­phim and the Bright and Morn­ing Star of Neb­a­don. While the di­rec­tion of the uni­verse had again been in­trusted to Im­manuel, there was a wider dis­tri­bu­tion of ad­min­is­tra­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

• announced Jesus’ birth to Chaldean priests

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.

• sang anthems at birth of Jesus

122:8.5At the noon­tide birth of Je­sus the ser­a­phim of Uran­tia, as­sem­bled un­der their di­rec­tors, did sing an­thems of glory over the Beth­le­hem manger, but these ut­ter­ances of praise were not heard by hu­man ears. No shep­herds nor any other mor­tal crea­tures came to pay homage to the babe of Beth­le­hem un­til the day of the ar­rival of cer­tain priests from Ur, who were sent down from Je­ru­sa­lem by Zach­a­rias.

• told Jesus to be about Father’s business

124:6.15On the day be­fore the Pass­over Sab­bath, flood tides of spir­i­tual il­lu­mi­na­tion swept through the mor­tal mind of Je­sus and filled his hu­man heart to over­flow­ing with af­fec­tion­ate pity for the spir­i­tu­ally blind and morally ig­no­rant mul­ti­tudes as­sem­bled for the cel­e­bra­tion of the an­cient Pass­over com­mem­o­ra­tion. This was one of the most ex­traor­di­nary days that the Son of God spent in the flesh; and dur­ing the night, for the first time in his earth ca­reer, there ap­peared to him an as­signed mes­sen­ger from Sal­ving­ton, com­mis­sioned by Im­manuel, who said: “The hour has come. It is time that you be­gan to be about your Fa­ther’s busi­ness.”

• told Jesus to be about Father’s business

126:3.5This year Je­sus was much trou­bled with con­fused think­ing. Fam­ily re­spon­si­bil­ity had quite ef­fec­tively re­moved all thought of im­me­di­ately car­ry­ing out any plan for re­spond­ing to the Je­ru­sa­lem vis­i­ta­tion di­rect­ing him to “be about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness.” Je­sus rightly rea­soned that the watch­care of his earthly fa­ther’s fam­ily must take prece­dence of all du­ties; that the sup­port of his fam­ily must be­come his first obli­ga­tion.

• 12 legions attended Jesus

136:5.1On the third day af­ter be­gin­ning this con­fer­ence with him­self and his Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster, Je­sus was pre­sented with the vi­sion of the as­sem­bled ce­les­tial hosts of Neb­a­don sent by their com­man­ders to wait upon the will of their beloved Sov­er­eign. This mighty host em­braced twelve le­gions of ser­a­phim and pro­por­tion­ate num­bers of ev­ery or­der of uni­verse in­tel­li­gence. And the first great de­ci­sion of Je­sus’ iso­la­tion had to do with whether or not he would make use of these mighty per­son­al­i­ties in con­nec­tion with the en­su­ing pro­gram of his pub­lic work on Uran­tia.

136:5.2Je­sus de­cided that he would not uti­lize a sin­gle per­son­al­ity of this vast as­sem­blage un­less it should be­come ev­i­dent that this was his Fa­ther’s will. Not­with­stand­ing this gen­eral de­ci­sion, this vast host re­mained with him through­out the bal­ance of his earth life, al­ways in readi­ness to obey the least ex­pres­sion of their Sov­er­eign’s will. Al­though Je­sus did not con­stantly be­hold these at­ten­dant per­son­al­i­ties with his hu­man eyes, his as­so­ci­ated Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster did con­stantly be­hold, and could com­mu­ni­cate with, all of them.

• participated in healing at sundown

145:3.8A voice from the front yard ex­claimed: “Mas­ter, speak the word, re­store our health, heal our dis­eases, and save our souls.” No sooner had these words been ut­tered than a vast ret­inue of ser­a­phim, phys­i­cal con­trol­lers, Life Car­ri­ers, and mid­way­ers, such as al­ways at­tended this in­car­nated Cre­ator of a uni­verse, made them­selves ready to act with cre­ative power should their Sov­er­eign give the sig­nal. This was one of those mo­ments in the earth ca­reer of Je­sus in which di­vine wis­dom and hu­man com­pas­sion were so in­ter­locked in the judg­ment of the Son of Man that he sought refuge in ap­peal to his Fa­ther’s will.

• accompanied evangelists, messengers

175:1.8“This af­ter­noon my apos­tles stand here be­fore you in si­lence, but you shall soon hear their voices ring­ing out with the call to sal­va­tion and with the urge to unite with the heav­enly king­dom as the sons of the liv­ing God. And now I call to wit­ness these, my dis­ci­ples and be­liev­ers in the gospel of the king­dom, as well as the un­seen mes­sen­gers by their sides, that I have once more of­fered Is­rael and her rulers de­liv­er­ance and sal­va­tion. But you all be­hold how the Fa­ther’s mercy is slighted and how the mes­sen­gers of truth are re­jected. Nev­er­the­less, I ad­mon­ish you that these scribes and Phar­isees still sit in Moses’ seat, and there­fore, un­til the Most Highs who rule in the king­doms of men shall fi­nally over­throw this na­tion and de­stroy the place of these rulers, I bid you co-op­er­ate with these el­ders in Is­rael. You are not re­quired to unite with them in their plans to de­stroy the Son of Man, but in ev­ery­thing re­lated to the peace of Is­rael you are to be sub­ject to them. In all these mat­ters do what­so­ever they bid you and ob­serve the es­sen­tials of the law but do not pat­tern af­ter their evil works. Re­mem­ber, this is the sin of these rulers: They say that which is good, but they do it not. You well know how these lead­ers bind heavy bur­dens on your shoul­ders, bur­dens griev­ous to bear, and that they will not lift as much as one fin­ger to help you bear these weighty bur­dens. They have op­pressed you with cer­e­monies and en­slaved you by tra­di­tions.

• accompanied evangelists, messengers

182:2.5Af­ter the eight apos­tles had fi­nally gone to their tents, and while Pe­ter, James, and John were stand­ing by to re­ceive the Mas­ter’s or­ders, Je­sus called to David Zeb­e­dee, “Send to me your most fleet and trust­wor­thy mes­sen­ger.” When David brought to the Mas­ter one Ja­cob, once a run­ner on the overnight mes­sen­ger ser­vice be­tween Je­ru­sa­lem and Beth­saida, Je­sus, ad­dress­ing him, said: “In all haste, go to Ab­ner at Phil­a­del­phia and say: ‘The Mas­ter sends greet­ings of peace to you and says that the hour has come when he will be de­liv­ered into the hands of his en­e­mies, who will put him to death, but that he will rise from the dead and ap­pear to you shortly, be­fore he goes to the Fa­ther, and that he will then give you guid­ance to the time when the new teacher shall come to live in your hearts.’” And when Ja­cob had re­hearsed this mes­sage to the Mas­ter’s sat­is­fac­tion, Je­sus sent him on his way, say­ing: “Fear not what any man may do to you, Ja­cob, for this night an un­seen mes­sen­ger will run by your side.”

• one touched, strengthened Jesus in Gethsemane

182:3.2The Mas­ter re­mained in a prayer­ful at­ti­tude for a few mo­ments, and then, go­ing over to the three apos­tles, he found them sound asleep, for their eyes were heavy and they could not re­main awake. As Je­sus awoke them, he said: “What! can you not watch with me even for one hour? Can­not you see that my soul is ex­ceed­ingly sor­row­ful, even to death, and that I crave your com­pan­ion­ship?” Af­ter the three had aroused from their slum­ber, the Mas­ter again went apart by him­self and, falling down on the ground, again prayed: “Fa­ther, I know it is pos­si­ble to avoid this cup—all things are pos­si­ble with you—but I have come to do your will, and while this is a bit­ter cup, I would drink it if it is your will.” And when he had thus prayed, a mighty an­gel came down by his side and, speak­ing to him, touched him and strength­ened him.

• one touched, strengthened Jesus in Gethsemane

182:3.6Each time he prayed in the gar­den, his hu­man­ity laid a firmer faith-hold upon his di­vin­ity; his hu­man will more com­pletely be­came one with the di­vine will of his Fa­ther. Among other words spo­ken to him by the mighty an­gel was the mes­sage that the Fa­ther de­sired his Son to fin­ish his earth be­stowal by pass­ing through the crea­ture ex­pe­ri­ence of death just as all mor­tal crea­tures must ex­pe­ri­ence ma­te­rial dis­so­lu­tion in pass­ing from the ex­is­tence of time into the pro­gres­sion of eter­nity.

• 12 legions attended Jesus

183:3.7Je­sus was ready to go back to Je­ru­sa­lem with the guards, and the cap­tain of the sol­diers was al­to­gether will­ing to al­low the three apos­tles and their as­so­ciates to go their way in peace. But be­fore they were able to get started, as Je­sus stood there await­ing the cap­tain’s or­ders, one Malchus, the Syr­ian body­guard of the high priest, stepped up to Je­sus and made ready to bind his hands be­hind his back, al­though the Ro­man cap­tain had not di­rected that Je­sus should be thus bound. When Pe­ter and his as­so­ciates saw their Mas­ter be­ing sub­jected to this in­dig­nity, they were no longer able to re­strain them­selves. Pe­ter drew his sword and with the oth­ers rushed for­ward to smite Malchus. But be­fore the sol­diers could come to the de­fense of the high priest’s ser­vant, Je­sus raised a for­bid­ding hand to Pe­ter and, speak­ing sternly, said: “Pe­ter, put up your sword. They who take the sword shall per­ish by the sword. Do you not un­der­stand that it is the Fa­ther’s will that I drink this cup? And do you not fur­ther know that I could even now com­mand more than twelve le­gions of an­gels and their as­so­ciates, who would de­liver me from the hands of these few men?”

46:5.202. The cir­cles of the an­gels. Like the res­i­den­tial area of the Sons, these cir­cles of the an­gels con­sist of seven con­cen­tric and suc­ces­sively el­e­vated cir­cles, each over­look­ing the in­ner ar­eas.

46:5.21The first cir­cle of the an­gels is oc­cu­pied by the Higher Per­son­al­i­ties of the In­fi­nite Spirit who may be sta­tioned on the head­quar­ters world—Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers and their as­so­ciates. The sec­ond cir­cle is ded­i­cated to the mes­sen­ger hosts, Tech­ni­cal Ad­vis­ers, com­pan­ions, in­spec­tors, and re­cord­ers as they may chance to func­tion on Je­ru­sem from time to time. The third cir­cle is held by the min­is­ter­ing spir­its of the higher or­ders and group­ings.

46:5.22The fourth cir­cle is held by the ad­min­is­tra­tor ser­a­phim, and the ser­a­phim serv­ing in a lo­cal sys­tem like Sa­ta­nia are an “in­nu­mer­able host of an­gels.” The fifth cir­cle is oc­cu­pied by the plan­e­tary ser­a­phim, while the sixth is the home of the tran­si­tion min­is­ters. The sev­enth cir­cle is the tar­ry­ing sphere of cer­tain un­re­vealed or­ders of ser­a­phim. The re­cord­ers of all these groups of an­gels do not so­journ with their fel­lows, be­ing domi­ciled in the Je­ru­sem tem­ple of rec­ords. All rec­ords are pre­served in trip­li­cate in this three­fold hall of ar­chives. On a sys­tem head­quar­ters, rec­ords are al­ways pre­served in ma­te­rial, in mor­ontia, and in spirit form.

38:4.1The ninth group of seven pri­mary spheres in the Sal­ving­ton cir­cuit are the worlds of the ser­a­phim. Each of these worlds has six trib­u­tary satel­lites, whereon are the spe­cial schools de­voted to all phases of se­raphic train­ing. While the ser­a­phim have ac­cess to all forty-nine worlds com­pris­ing this group of Sal­ving­ton spheres, they ex­clu­sively oc­cupy only the first clus­ter of seven. The re­main­ing six clus­ters are oc­cu­pied by the six or­ders of an­gelic as­so­ciates un­re­vealed on Uran­tia; each such group main­tains head­quar­ters on one of these six pri­mary worlds and car­ries on spe­cial­ized ac­tiv­i­ties on the six trib­u­tary satel­lites. Each an­gelic or­der has free ac­cess to all the worlds of these seven di­verse groups.

• find fear hard to understand
• very near mortals in personality attributes

113:2.5The an­gels de­velop an abid­ing af­fec­tion for their hu­man as­so­ciates; and you would, if you could only vi­su­al­ize the ser­a­phim, de­velop a warm af­fec­tion for them. Di­vested of ma­te­rial bod­ies, given spirit forms, you would be very near the an­gels in many at­tri­butes of per­son­al­ity. They share most of your emo­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence some ad­di­tional ones. The only emo­tion ac­tu­at­ing you which is some­what dif­fi­cult for them to com­pre­hend is the legacy of an­i­mal fear that bulks so large in the men­tal life of the av­er­age in­hab­i­tant of Uran­tia. The an­gels re­ally find it hard to un­der­stand why you will so per­sis­tently al­low your higher in­tel­lec­tual pow­ers, even your re­li­gious faith, to be so dom­i­nated by fear, so thor­oughly de­mor­al­ized by the thought­less panic of dread and anx­i­ety.

• equally serve series 2 mortals

40:5.14In the as­cen­dant plan for up­step­ping the an­i­mal-ori­gin crea­tures, these be­ings en­joy the same de­voted ser­vice of the Sons of God as is ex­tended to the Uran­tia type of mor­tals. Se­raphic co-op­er­a­tion with Ad­justers on the non­fu­sion plan­ets is just as fully pro­vided as on the worlds of fu­sion po­ten­tial; the guard­i­ans of des­tiny min­is­ter on such spheres just as on Uran­tia and sim­i­larly func­tion at the time of mor­tal sur­vival, at which time the sur­viv­ing soul be­comes Spirit fused.

• help Spirit-fused survivors repossess mortal memory

40:9.5Such chil­dren of the lo­cal uni­verse are en­abled to re­pos­sess them­selves of much of their for­mer hu­man mem­ory ex­pe­ri­ence through hav­ing it re­told by the as­so­ci­ated ser­a­phim and cheru­bim and by con­sult­ing the rec­ords of the mor­tal ca­reer filed by the record­ing an­gels. This they can do with un­doubted as­sur­ance be­cause the sur­viv­ing soul, of ex­pe­ri­en­tial ori­gin in the ma­te­rial and mor­tal life, while hav­ing no mem­ory of mor­tal events, does have a resid­ual ex­pe­ri­en­tial-rec­og­ni­tion-re­sponse to these un­re­mem­bered events of past ex­pe­ri­ence.

• provide undifferentiated morontia material wherewith morontia life can begin

42:12.11The li­ai­son of the cos­mic mind and the min­istry of the ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its evolve a suit­able phys­i­cal taber­na­cle for the evolv­ing hu­man be­ing. Like­wise does the mor­ontia mind in­di­vid­u­al­ize the mor­ontia form for all mor­tal sur­vivors. As the mor­tal body is per­sonal and char­ac­ter­is­tic for ev­ery hu­man be­ing, so will the mor­ontia form be highly in­di­vid­ual and ad­e­quately char­ac­ter­is­tic of the cre­ative mind which dom­i­nates it. No two mor­ontia forms are any more alike than any two hu­man bod­ies. The Mor­ontia Power Super­vi­sors spon­sor, and the at­tend­ing ser­a­phim pro­vide, the un­dif­fer­en­ti­ated mor­ontia ma­te­rial where­with the mor­ontia life can be­gin to work. And af­ter the mor­ontia life it will be found that spirit forms are equally di­verse, per­sonal, and char­ac­ter­is­tic of their re­spec­tive spirit-mind in­dwellers.

• in constellation legislature

43:2.6The mid-cham­ber of leg­is­la­tors is com­posed of the se­raphic hosts and their as­so­ciates, other chil­dren of the lo­cal uni­verse Mother Spirit. This group num­bers one hun­dred and is nom­i­nated by the super­vis­ing per­son­al­i­ties who pre­side over the var­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties of such be­ings as they func­tion within the con­stel­la­tion.

• director serves on Jerusem executive council

45:3.178. The di­rec­tor of the Sa­ta­nia se­raphic hosts.

• forward drafts of ancestry and projected patterns of mortal life conduct to Divinington

108:1.2Al­though we do not def­i­nitely know, we firmly be­lieve that all Thought Ad­justers are vol­un­teers. But be­fore ever they vol­un­teer, they are in pos­ses­sion of full data re­spect­ing the can­di­date for in­dwelling. The se­raphic drafts of an­ces­try and pro­jected pat­terns of life con­duct are trans­mit­ted via Par­a­dise to the re­serve corps of Ad­justers on Di­vin­ing­ton by the re­flec­tiv­ity tech­nique ex­tend­ing in­ward from the cap­i­tals of the lo­cal uni­verses to the head­quar­ters of the super­uni­verses. This fore­cast cov­ers not only the hered­i­tary an­tecedents of the mor­tal can­di­date but also the es­ti­mate of prob­a­ble in­tel­lec­tual en­dow­ment and spir­i­tual ca­pac­ity. The Ad­justers thus vol­un­teer to in­dwell minds of whose in­ti­mate na­tures they have been fully ap­prised.

• indispensable to reassembly of mortal personality

112:3.6For those who do not have per­sonal se­raphic guard­i­ans, the group cus­to­di­ans faith­fully and ef­fi­ciently per­form the same ser­vice of iden­tity safe­keep­ing and per­son­al­ity res­ur­rec­tion. The ser­a­phim are in­dis­pens­able to the re­assem­bly of per­son­al­ity.

• retain records of human life as it was lived

112:6.4In the mor­ontia es­tate the as­cend­ing mor­tal is en­dowed with the Neb­a­don mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the cos­mic-mind en­dow­ment of the Mas­ter Spirit of Or­von­ton. The mor­tal in­tel­lect, as such, has per­ished, has ceased to ex­ist as a fo­cal­ized uni­verse en­tity apart from the un­dif­fer­en­ti­ated mind cir­cuits of the Cre­ative Spirit. But the mean­ings and val­ues of the mor­tal mind have not per­ished. Cer­tain phases of mind are con­tin­ued in the sur­viv­ing soul; cer­tain ex­pe­ri­en­tial val­ues of the for­mer hu­man mind are held by the Ad­juster; and there per­sist in the lo­cal uni­verse the rec­ords of the hu­man life as it was lived in the flesh, to­gether with cer­tain liv­ing reg­is­tra­tions in the nu­mer­ous be­ings who are con­cerned with the fi­nal eval­u­a­tion of the as­cend­ing mor­tal, be­ings ex­tend­ing in range from ser­a­phim to Uni­ver­sal Cen­sors and prob­a­bly on be­yond to the Su­preme.

• manipulate circumstances to influence human activity through liaison with Master Physical Controllers and midwayers

113:3.5On the spir­i­tual level, ser­a­phim make per­sonal many oth­er­wise im­per­sonal and preper­sonal min­istries of the uni­verse; they are co-or­di­na­tors. On the in­tel­lec­tual level they are the cor­re­la­tors of mind and mor­ontia; they are in­ter­preters. And on the phys­i­cal level they ma­nip­u­late ter­res­trial en­vi­ron­ment through their li­ai­son with the Mas­ter Phys­i­cal Con­trol­lers and through the co-op­er­a­tive min­istry of the mid­way crea­tures.

• continually promote circle-making decisions in mortals; work through social, ethical, and moral environment

113:4.1The guard­ian ser­a­phim are not mind, though they do spring from the same source that also gives ori­gin to mor­tal mind, the Cre­ative Spirit. Ser­a­phim are mind stim­u­la­tors; they con­tin­u­ally seek to pro­mote cir­cle-mak­ing de­ci­sions in hu­man mind. They do this, not as does the Ad­juster, op­er­at­ing from within and through the soul, but rather from the out­side in­ward, work­ing through the so­cial, eth­i­cal, and moral en­vi­ron­ment of hu­man be­ings. Ser­a­phim are not the di­vine Ad­juster lure of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, but they do func­tion as the per­sonal agency of the min­istry of the In­fi­nite Spirit.

113:4.2Mor­tal man, sub­ject to Ad­juster lead­ing, is also amenable to se­raphic guid­ance. The Ad­juster is the essence of man’s eter­nal na­ture; the ser­a­phim is the teacher of man’s evolv­ing na­ture—in this life the mor­tal mind, in the next the mor­ontia soul. On the man­sion worlds you will be con­scious and aware of se­raphic in­struc­tors, but in the first life men are usu­ally un­aware of them.

• continually promote circle-making decisions in mortals; work through social, ethical, and moral environment

113:4.3Ser­a­phim func­tion as teach­ers of men by guid­ing the foot­steps of the hu­man per­son­al­ity into paths of new and pro­gres­sive ex­pe­ri­ences. To ac­cept the guid­ance of a ser­a­phim rarely means at­tain­ing a life of ease. In fol­low­ing this lead­ing you are sure to en­counter, and if you have the cour­age, to tra­verse, the rugged hills of moral choos­ing and spir­i­tual prog­ress.

• manipulate circumstances to influence human activity through liaison with Master Physical Controllers and midwayers
• urge humans to pray

113:4.4The im­pulse of wor­ship largely orig­i­nates in the spirit prompt­ings of the higher mind ad­ju­tants, re­in­forced by the lead­ings of the Ad­juster. But the urge to pray so of­ten ex­pe­ri­enced by God-con­scious mor­tals very of­ten arises as the re­sult of se­raphic in­flu­ence. The guard­ing ser­a­phim is con­stantly ma­nip­u­lat­ing the mor­tal en­vi­ron­ment for the pur­pose of aug­ment­ing the cos­mic in­sight of the hu­man as­cender to the end that such a sur­vival can­di­date may ac­quire en­hanced re­al­iza­tion of the pres­ence of the in­dwelling Ad­juster and thus be en­abled to yield in­creased co-op­er­a­tion with the spir­i­tual mis­sion of the di­vine pres­ence.

113:4.5While there is ap­par­ently no com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the in­dwelling Ad­justers and the en­com­pass­ing ser­a­phim, they al­ways seem to work in per­fect har­mony and ex­qui­site ac­cord. The guard­i­ans are most ac­tive at those times when the Ad­justers are least ac­tive, but their min­istry is in some man­ner strangely cor­re­lated. Such su­perb co-op­er­a­tion could hardly be ei­ther ac­ci­den­tal or in­ci­den­tal.

113:4.6The min­is­ter­ing per­son­al­ity of the guard­ian ser­a­phim, the God pres­ence of the in­dwelling Ad­juster, the en­cir­cuited ac­tion of the Holy Spirit, and the Son-con­scious­ness of the Spirit of Truth are all di­vinely cor­re­lated into a mean­ing­ful unity of spir­i­tual min­istry in and to a mor­tal per­son­al­ity. Though hail­ing from dif­fer­ent sources and dif­fer­ent lev­els, these ce­les­tial in­flu­ences are all in­te­grated in the en­velop­ing and evolv­ing pres­ence of the Su­preme Be­ing.

• execute mandates of resident governor general

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.)

• keep worlds in touch with one other

167:7.4“And do you not re­mem­ber that I said to you once be­fore that, if you had your spir­i­tual eyes anointed, you would then see the heav­ens opened and be­hold the an­gels of God as­cend­ing and de­scend­ing? It is by the min­istry of the an­gels that one world may be kept in touch with other worlds, for have I not re­peat­edly told you that I have other sheep not of this fold? And these an­gels are not the spies of the spirit world who watch upon you and then go forth to tell the Fa­ther the thoughts of your heart and to re­port on the deeds of the flesh. The Fa­ther has no need of such ser­vice inas­much as his own spirit lives within you. But these an­gelic spir­its do func­tion to keep one part of the heav­enly cre­ation in­formed con­cern­ing the do­ings of other and re­mote parts of the uni­verse. And many of the an­gels, while func­tion­ing in the gov­ern­ment of the Fa­ther and the uni­verses of the Sons, are as­signed to the ser­vice of the hu­man races. When I taught you that many of these ser­a­phim are min­is­ter­ing spir­its, I spoke not in fig­u­ra­tive lan­guage nor in po­etic strains. And all this is true, re­gard­less of your dif­fi­culty in com­pre­hend­ing such mat­ters.

178:1.10Un­der the soon-com­ing per­se­cu­tions by those who hate this gospel of joy and lib­erty, you will thrive and the king­dom will pros­per. But you will stand in grave dan­ger in sub­se­quent times when most men will speak well of king­dom be­liev­ers and many in high places nom­i­nally ac­cept the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. Learn to be faith­ful to the king­dom even in times of peace and pros­per­ity. Tempt not the an­gels of your super­vi­sion to lead you in trou­blous ways as a lov­ing dis­ci­pline de­signed to save your ease-drift­ing souls.

38:5.1Ser­a­phim spend their first mil­len­nium as non­com­mis­sioned ob­servers on Sal­ving­ton and its as­so­ci­ated world schools. The sec­ond mil­len­nium is spent on the se­raphic worlds of the Sal­ving­ton cir­cuit. Their cen­tral train­ing school is now pre­sided over by the first one hun­dred thou­sand Neb­a­don ser­a­phim, and at their head is the orig­i­nal or first-born an­gel of this lo­cal uni­verse. The first cre­ated group of Neb­a­don ser­a­phim were trained by a corps of one thou­sand ser­a­phim from Avalon; sub­se­quently our an­gels have been taught by their own se­niors. The Mel­chiz­e­deks also have a large part in the ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing of all lo­cal uni­verse an­gels—ser­a­phim, cheru­bim, and sa­no­bim.

38:5.2At the ter­mi­na­tion of this pe­riod of train­ing on the se­raphic worlds of Sal­ving­ton, ser­a­phim are mo­bi­lized in the con­ven­tional groups and units of the an­gelic or­ga­ni­za­tion and are as­signed to some one of the con­stel­la­tions. They are not yet com­mis­sioned as min­is­ter­ing spir­its, al­though they have well en­tered upon the pre­com­mis­sioned phases of an­gelic train­ing.

38:5.3Ser­a­phim are ini­ti­ated as min­is­ter­ing spir­its by serv­ing as ob­servers on the low­est of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds. Af­ter this ex­pe­ri­ence they re­turn to the as­so­ciate worlds of the head­quar­ters of the as­signed con­stel­la­tion to be­gin their ad­vanced stud­ies and more def­i­nitely to pre­pare for ser­vice in some par­tic­u­lar lo­cal sys­tem. Fol­low­ing this gen­eral ed­u­ca­tion they are ad­vanced to the ser­vice of some one of the lo­cal sys­tems. On the ar­chi­tec­tural worlds as­so­ci­ated with the cap­i­tal of some Neb­a­don sys­tem our ser­a­phim com­plete their train­ing and are com­mis­sioned as min­is­ter­ing spir­its of time.

38:5.4When once ser­a­phim are com­mis­sioned, they may range all Neb­a­don, even Or­von­ton, on as­sign­ment. Their work in the uni­verse is with­out bounds and lim­i­ta­tions; they are closely as­so­ci­ated with the ma­te­rial crea­tures of the worlds and are ever in the ser­vice of the lower or­ders of spir­i­tual per­son­al­i­ties, mak­ing con­tact be­tween these be­ings of the spirit world and the mor­tals of the ma­te­rial realms.