time

• nature of time › neither absolute nor infinite

1:7.7This con­cept of in­di­vis­i­bil­ity in as­so­ci­a­tion with the con­cept of unity im­plies tran­scen­dence of both time and space by the Ul­ti­macy of De­ity; there­fore nei­ther space nor time can be ab­so­lute or in­fi­nite. The First Source and Cen­ter is that in­fin­ity who un­qual­i­fiedly tran­scends all mind, all mat­ter, and all spirit.

• nature of time › to God, all t. is present at any given moment

2:1.5No thing is new to God, and no cos­mic event ever comes as a sur­prise; he in­hab­its the cir­cle of eter­nity. He is with­out be­gin­ning or end of days. To God there is no past, pres­ent, or fu­ture; all time is pres­ent at any given mo­ment. He is the great and only I AM.

• function of time › t. lag of mercy before fruition of evil and judgment

2:3.5In any uni­verse con­test be­tween ac­tual lev­els of re­al­ity, the per­son­al­ity of the higher level will ul­ti­mately tri­umph over the per­son­al­ity of the lower level. This in­ev­i­ta­ble out­come of uni­verse con­tro­versy is in­her­ent in the fact that di­vin­ity of qual­ity equals the de­gree of re­al­ity or ac­tu­al­ity of any will crea­ture. Undi­luted evil, com­plete er­ror, will­ful sin, and un­mit­i­gated in­iq­uity are in­her­ently and au­to­mat­i­cally sui­ci­dal. Such at­ti­tudes of cos­mic un­re­al­ity can sur­vive in the uni­verse only be­cause of tran­sient mercy-tol­er­ance pend­ing the ac­tion of the jus­tice-de­ter­min­ing and fair­ness-find­ing mech­a­nisms of the uni­verse tri­bu­nals of righ­teous ad­ju­di­ca­tion.

• days and years › Paradise cycle is 2 billion Urantia years

11:6.5For a bil­lion years of Uran­tia time the space reser­voirs con­tract while the mas­ter uni­verse and the force ac­tiv­i­ties of all hor­i­zon­tal space ex­pand. It thus re­quires a lit­tle over two bil­lion Uran­tia years to com­plete the en­tire ex­pan­sion-con­trac­tion cy­cle.

• gravity responses of spirit, mind, and matter are independent of

12:3.6These four cir­cuits are not re­lated to the nether Par­a­dise force cen­ter; they are nei­ther force, en­ergy, nor power cir­cuits. They are ab­so­lute pres­ence cir­cuits and like God are in­de­pen­dent of time and space.

• nature of time › exists by virtue of motion and mind awareness of sequentiality
• nature of time › indirect bestowal of Paradise

12:5.1Like space, time is a be­stowal of Par­a­dise, but not in the same sense, only in­di­rectly. Time comes by virtue of mo­tion and be­cause mind is in­her­ently aware of se­quen­tial­ity. From a prac­ti­cal view­point, mo­tion is es­sen­tial to time, but there is no uni­ver­sal time unit based on mo­tion ex­cept in so far as the Par­a­dise-Ha­vona stan­dard day is ar­bi­trar­ily so rec­og­nized. The to­tal­ity of space res­pi­ra­tion de­stroys its lo­cal value as a time source.

• absolute of t. is eternity

12:5.2Space is not in­fi­nite, even though it takes ori­gin from Par­a­dise; not ab­so­lute, for it is per­vaded by the Un­qual­i­fied Ab­so­lute. We do not know the ab­so­lute lim­its of space, but we do know that the ab­so­lute of time is eter­nity.

• nature of time › time and space inseparable in superuniverses; vital factor

12:5.3Time and space are in­sep­a­ra­ble only in the time-space cre­ations, the seven super­uni­verses. Non­tem­po­ral space (space with­out time) the­o­ret­i­cally ex­ists, but the only truly non­tem­po­ral place is Par­a­dise area. Non­spa­tial time (time with­out space) ex­ists in mind of the Par­a­dise level of func­tion.

12:5.4The rel­a­tively mo­tion­less midspace zones im­ping­ing on Par­a­dise and sep­a­rat­ing per­vaded from un­per­vaded space are the tran­si­tion zones from time to eter­nity, hence the ne­ces­sity of Par­a­dise pil­grims be­com­ing un­con­scious dur­ing this tran­sit when it is to cul­mi­nate in Par­a­dise cit­i­zen­ship. Time-con­scious vis­i­tors can go to Par­a­dise with­out thus sleep­ing, but they re­main crea­tures of time.

• nature of time › exists by virtue of motion and mind awareness of sequentiality

12:5.5Re­la­tion­ships to time do not ex­ist with­out mo­tion in space, but con­scious­ness of time does. Se­quen­tial­ity can con­sciou­size time even in the ab­sence of mo­tion. Man’s mind is less time-bound than space-bound be­cause of the in­her­ent na­ture of mind. Even dur­ing the days of the earth life in the flesh, though man’s mind is rigidly space-bound, the cre­ative hu­man imag­i­na­tion is com­par­a­tively time free. But time it­self is not ge­net­i­cally a qual­ity of mind.

• nature of time › cognizance by mind, spirit, and personality

12:5.6There are three dif­fer­ent lev­els of time cog­nizance:

12:5.71. Mind-per­ceived time—con­scious­ness of se­quence, mo­tion, and a sense of du­ra­tion.

12:5.82. Spirit-per­ceived time—in­sight into mo­tion God­ward and the aware­ness of the mo­tion of as­cent to lev­els of in­creas­ing di­vin­ity.

12:5.93. Per­son­al­ity cre­ates a unique time sense out of in­sight into Re­al­ity plus a con­scious­ness of pres­ence and an aware­ness of du­ra­tion.

12:5.10Un­spir­i­tual an­i­mals know only the past and live in the pres­ent. Spirit-in­dwelt man has pow­ers of pre­vi­sion (in­sight); he may vi­su­al­ize the fu­ture. Only for­ward-look­ing and pro­gres­sive at­ti­tudes are per­son­ally real. Static ethics and tra­di­tional moral­ity are just slightly super­an­i­mal. Nor is sto­icism a high or­der of self-re­al­iza­tion. Ethics and morals be­come truly hu­man when they are dy­namic and pro­gres­sive, alive with uni­verse re­al­ity.

12:5.11The hu­man per­son­al­ity is not merely a con­comi­tant of time-and-space events; the hu­man per­son­al­ity can also act as the cos­mic cause of such events.

• days and years › Paradise cycle is 2 billion Urantia years

13:3.2Per­son­al­ity is not pres­ent on these Par­a­dise satel­lites; there­fore is there lit­tle con­cern­ing these pure-spirit abodes which can be pre­sented to the mor­tal and ma­te­rial per­son­al­ity. We are taught that these worlds teem with the oth­er­wise-than-per­sonal life of the be­ings of the Eter­nal Son. We in­fer that these en­ti­ties are be­ing as­sem­bled for min­istry in the pro­jected new uni­verses of outer space. The Par­a­dise philoso­phers main­tain that each Par­a­dise cy­cle, about two bil­lion years of Uran­tia time, wit­nesses the cre­ation of ad­di­tional re­serves of these or­ders on the se­cret worlds of the Eter­nal Son.

• days and years › Paradise-Havona standard day is about 1000 Urantia years
• nature of time › nonexistent on Paradise

14:1.11Time is not reck­oned on Par­a­dise; the se­quence of suc­ces­sive events is in­her­ent in the con­cept of those who are in­dige­nous to the cen­tral Isle. But time is ger­mane to the Ha­vona cir­cuits and to nu­mer­ous be­ings of both ce­les­tial and ter­res­trial ori­gin so­journ­ing thereon. Each Ha­vona world has its own lo­cal time, de­ter­mined by its cir­cuit. All worlds in a given cir­cuit have the same length of year since they uni­formly swing around Par­a­dise, and the length of these plan­e­tary years de­creases from the out­er­most to the in­ner­most cir­cuit.

• days and years › Havona day is 1000 Urantia years

14:1.12Be­sides Ha­vona-cir­cuit time, there is the Par­a­dise-Ha­vona stan­dard day and other time des­ig­na­tions which are de­ter­mined on, and are sent out from, the seven Par­a­dise satel­lites of the In­fi­nite Spirit. The Par­a­dise-Ha­vona stan­dard day is based on the length of time re­quired for the plan­e­tary abodes of the first or in­ner Ha­vona cir­cuit to com­plete one rev­o­lu­tion around the Isle of Par­a­dise; and though their ve­loc­ity is enor­mous, ow­ing to their sit­u­a­tion be­tween the dark grav­ity bod­ies and gi­gan­tic Par­a­dise, it re­quires al­most one thou­sand years for these spheres to com­plete their cir­cuit. You have un­wit­tingly read the truth when your eyes rested on the state­ment “A day is as a thou­sand years with God, as but a watch in the night.” One Par­a­dise-Ha­vona day is just seven min­utes, three and one-eighth sec­onds less than one thou­sand years of the pres­ent Uran­tia leap-year cal­en­dar.

14:1.13This Par­a­dise-Ha­vona day is the stan­dard time mea­sure­ment for the seven super­uni­verses, al­though each main­tains its own in­ter­nal time stan­dards.

• wisely using time › life is a day’s work; do it well

14:5.1On Uran­tia you pass through a short and in­tense test dur­ing your ini­tial life of ma­te­rial ex­is­tence. On the man­sion worlds and up through your sys­tem, con­stel­la­tion, and lo­cal uni­verse, you tra­verse the mor­ontia phases of as­cen­sion. On the train­ing worlds of the super­uni­verse you pass through the true spirit stages of pro­gres­sion and are pre­pared for even­tual tran­sit to Ha­vona. On the seven cir­cuits of Ha­vona your at­tain­ment is in­tel­lec­tual, spir­i­tual, and ex­pe­ri­en­tial. And there is a def­i­nite task to be achieved on each of the worlds of each of these cir­cuits.

• days and years › Uversa day is 30 Urantia days; year is 100 days

15:7.2Time is stan­dard­ized on the head­quar­ters of the super­uni­verses. The stan­dard day of the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton is equal to al­most thirty days of Uran­tia time, and the Or­von­ton year equals one hun­dred stan­dard days. This Uversa year is stan­dard in the sev­enth super­uni­verse, and it is twenty-two min­utes short of three thou­sand days of Uran­tia time, about eight and one fifth of your years.

• reflectivity independent of

17:3.10Dur­ing the pres­ent uni­verse age the space range of the ex­tra-Par­a­dise re­flec­tiv­ity ser­vice seems to be lim­ited by the pe­riph­ery of the seven super­uni­verses. Oth­er­wise, the func­tion of this ser­vice seems to be in­de­pen­dent of time and space. It ap­pears to be in­de­pen­dent of all known sub­ab­so­lute uni­verse cir­cuits.

• nature of time › of little consequence in Havona

26:5.5Time is of lit­tle con­se­quence on the Ha­vona cir­cles. In a lim­ited man­ner it en­ters into the pos­si­bil­i­ties of ad­vance­ment, but achieve­ment is the fi­nal and su­preme test. The very mo­ment your super­aphic as­so­ciate deems you to be com­pe­tent to pass in­ward to the next cir­cle, you will be taken be­fore the twelve ad­ju­tants of the sev­enth Cir­cuit Spirit. Here you will be re­quired to pass the tests of the cir­cle de­ter­mined by the super­uni­verse of your ori­gin and by the sys­tem of your na­tiv­ity. The di­vin­ity at­tain­ment of this cir­cle takes place on the pi­lot world and con­sists in the spir­i­tual rec­og­ni­tion and re­al­iza­tion of the Mas­ter Spirit of the as­cend­ing pil­grim’s super­uni­verse.

• wisely using time › fatally squandered only when buried in neglect
• wisely using time › t. is the one universal endowment

28:6.93. The Im­port of Time. Time is the one uni­ver­sal en­dow­ment of all will crea­tures; it is the “one tal­ent” in­trusted to all in­tel­li­gent be­ings. You all have time in which to in­sure your sur­vival; and time is fa­tally squan­dered only when it is buried in ne­glect, when you fail so to uti­lize it as to make cer­tain the sur­vival of your soul. Fail­ure to im­prove one’s time to the fullest ex­tent pos­si­ble does not im­pose fa­tal penal­ties; it merely re­tards the pil­grim of time in his jour­ney of as­cent. If sur­vival is gained, all other losses can be re­trieved.

• nature of time › time and space inseparable in superuniverses; vital factor

28:6.10In the as­sign­ment of trusts the coun­sel of the Im­ports of Time is in­valu­able. Time is a vi­tal fac­tor in ev­ery­thing this side of Ha­vona and Par­a­dise. In the fi­nal judg­ment be­fore the An­cients of Days, time is an el­e­ment of ev­i­dence. The Im­ports of Time must al­ways af­ford tes­ti­mony to show that ev­ery de­fen­dant has had am­ple time for mak­ing de­ci­sions, achiev­ing choice.

• Imports of Time portray t. necessary to complete task

28:6.11These time eval­u­a­tors are also the se­cret of prophecy; they por­tray the el­e­ment of time which will be re­quired in the com­ple­tion of any un­der­tak­ing, and they are just as de­pend­able as in­di­ca­tors as are the fran­dalanks and chro­nol­deks of other liv­ing or­ders. The Gods fore­see, hence fore­know; but the as­cen­dant au­thor­i­ties of the uni­verses of time must con­sult the Im­ports of Time to be able to fore­cast events of the fu­ture.

• nature of time › rest is negative utilization of

28:6.12You will first en­counter these be­ings on the man­sion worlds, and they will there in­struct you in the ad­van­ta­geous use of that which you call “time,” both in its pos­i­tive em­ploy­ment, work, and in its neg­a­tive uti­liza­tion, rest. Both uses of time are im­por­tant.

• nature of time › relationship to eternity

32:5.2The eter­nal pur­pose of the eter­nal God is a high spir­i­tual ideal. The events of time and the strug­gles of ma­te­rial ex­is­tence are but the tran­sient scaf­fold­ing which bridges over to the other side, to the prom­ised land of spir­i­tual re­al­ity and su­per­nal ex­is­tence. Of course, you mor­tals find it dif­fi­cult to grasp the idea of an eter­nal pur­pose; you are vir­tu­ally un­able to com­pre­hend the thought of eter­nity, some­thing never be­gin­ning and never end­ing. Ev­ery­thing fa­mil­iar to you has an end.

32:5.3As re­gards an in­di­vid­ual life, the du­ra­tion of a realm, or the chronol­ogy of any con­nected se­ries of events, it would seem that we are deal­ing with an iso­lated stretch of time; ev­ery­thing seems to have a be­gin­ning and an end. And it would ap­pear that a se­ries of such ex­pe­ri­ences, lives, ages, or epochs, when suc­ces­sively ar­ranged, con­sti­tutes a straight­away drive, an iso­lated event of time flash­ing mo­men­tar­ily across the in­fi­nite face of eter­nity. But when we look at all this from be­hind the scenes, a more com­pre­hen­sive view and a more com­plete un­der­stand­ing sug­gest that such an ex­pla­na­tion is in­ad­e­quate, dis­con­nected, and wholly un­suited prop­erly to ac­count for, and oth­er­wise to cor­re­late, the trans­ac­tions of time with the un­der­ly­ing pur­poses and ba­sic re­ac­tions of eter­nity.

32:5.4To me it seems more fit­ting, for pur­poses of ex­pla­na­tion to the mor­tal mind, to con­ceive of eter­nity as a cy­cle and the eter­nal pur­pose as an end­less cir­cle, a cy­cle of eter­nity in some way syn­chro­nized with the tran­sient ma­te­rial cy­cles of time. As re­gards the sec­tors of time con­nected with, and form­ing a part of, the cy­cle of eter­nity, we are forced to rec­og­nize that such tem­po­rary epochs are born, live, and die just as the tem­po­rary be­ings of time are born, live, and die. Most hu­man be­ings die be­cause, hav­ing failed to achieve the spirit level of Ad­juster fu­sion, the meta­mor­pho­sis of death con­sti­tutes the only pos­si­ble pro­ce­dure whereby they may es­cape the fet­ters of time and the bonds of ma­te­rial cre­ation, thereby be­ing en­abled to strike spir­i­tual step with the pro­gres­sive pro­ces­sion of eter­nity. Hav­ing sur­vived the trial life of time and ma­te­rial ex­is­tence, it be­comes pos­si­ble for you to con­tinue on in touch with, even as a part of, eter­nity, swing­ing on for­ever with the worlds of space around the cir­cle of the eter­nal ages.

32:5.5The sec­tors of time are like the flashes of per­son­al­ity in tem­po­ral form; they ap­pear for a sea­son, and then they are lost to hu­man sight, only to reap­pear as new ac­tors and con­tin­u­ing fac­tors in the higher life of the end­less swing around the eter­nal cir­cle. Eter­nity can hardly be con­ceived as a straight­away drive, in view of our be­lief in a de­lim­ited uni­verse mov­ing over a vast, elon­gated cir­cle around the cen­tral dwell­ing place of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

32:5.6Frankly, eter­nity is in­com­pre­hen­si­ble to the fi­nite mind of time. You sim­ply can­not grasp it; you can­not com­pre­hend it. I do not com­pletely vi­su­al­ize it, and even if I did, it would be im­pos­si­ble for me to con­vey my con­cept to the hu­man mind. Nev­er­the­less, I have done my best to por­tray some­thing of our view­point, to tell you some­what of our un­der­stand­ing of things eter­nal. I am en­deav­or­ing to aid you in the crys­tal­liza­tion of your thoughts about these val­ues which are of in­fi­nite na­ture and eter­nal im­port.

• days and years › Nebadon day is 18 Urantia days, 6 hours
• days and years › Nebadon year is 100 days; 5 Urantia years
• days and years › standard time is local universe, Salvington time

33:6.7Chronol­ogy is reck­oned, com­puted, and rec­ti­fied by a spe­cial group of be­ings on Sal­ving­ton. The stan­dard day of Neb­a­don is equal to eigh­teen days and six hours of Uran­tia time, plus two and one-half min­utes. The Neb­a­don year con­sists of a seg­ment of the time of uni­verse swing in re­la­tion to the Uversa cir­cuit and is equal to one hun­dred days of stan­dard uni­verse time, about five years of Uran­tia time.

33:6.8Neb­a­don time, broad­cast from Sal­ving­ton, is the stan­dard for all con­stel­la­tions and sys­tems in this lo­cal uni­verse. Each con­stel­la­tion con­ducts its af­fairs by Neb­a­don time, but the sys­tems main­tain their own chronol­ogy, as do the in­di­vid­ual plan­ets.

• days and years › Satania-Jerusem day is 3 Urantia days; week is 10 Jerusem days; year is 100 days

33:6.9The day in Sa­ta­nia, as reck­oned on Je­ru­sem, is a lit­tle less (1 hour, 4 min­utes, 15 sec­onds) than three days of Uran­tia time. These times are gen­er­ally known as Sal­ving­ton or uni­verse time, and Sa­ta­nia or sys­tem time. Stan­dard time is uni­verse time.

• Jesus’ Creator prerogatives not limited by t.; his miracles abridged t.

34:3.5Though the spirit-grav­ity cir­cuit of the Eter­nal Son op­er­ates in­de­pen­dently of both time and space, all func­tions of the Cre­ator Sons are not ex­empt from space lim­i­ta­tions. If the trans­ac­tions of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds are ex­cepted, these Mi­chael Sons seem to be able to op­er­ate rel­a­tively in­de­pen­dent of time. A Cre­ator Son is not hand­i­capped by time, but he is con­di­tioned by space; he can­not per­son­ally be in two places at the same time. Mi­chael of Neb­a­don acts time­lessly within his own uni­verse and by re­flec­tiv­ity prac­ti­cally so in the super­uni­verse. He com­mu­ni­cates time­lessly with the Eter­nal Son di­rectly.

• gravity responses of spirit, mind, and matter are independent of

42:11.4Mo­tion and uni­verse grav­i­ta­tion are twin facets of the im­per­sonal time-space mech­a­nism of the uni­verse of uni­verses. The lev­els of grav­ity re­sponse for spirit, mind, and mat­ter are quite in­de­pen­dent of time, but only true spirit lev­els of re­al­ity are in­de­pen­dent of space (non­spa­tial). The higher mind lev­els of the uni­verse—the spirit-mind lev­els—may also be non­spa­tial, but the lev­els of ma­te­rial mind, such as hu­man mind, are re­spon­sive to the in­ter­ac­tions of uni­verse grav­i­ta­tion, los­ing this re­sponse only in pro­por­tion to spirit iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Spirit-re­al­ity lev­els are rec­og­nized by their spirit con­tent, and spir­i­tu­al­ity in time and space is mea­sured in­versely to the lin­ear-grav­ity re­sponse.

• constellations use local universe t.

43:0.3Eden­tia time reck­on­ing and dis­tance mea­sure­ment are those of Sal­ving­ton, and like the spheres of the uni­verse cap­i­tal, the con­stel­la­tion head­quar­ters worlds are fully sup­plied with all or­ders of ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gences. In gen­eral, these per­son­al­i­ties are not very dif­fer­ent from those de­scribed in con­nec­tion with the uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion.

• days and years › Nebadon year is 100 days; 5 Urantia years

43:3.2At least three Vo­ron­da­dek Sons are com­mis­sioned by Ga­briel as the Most Highs of each of the Neb­a­don con­stel­la­tions. The pre­sid­ing mem­ber of this trio is known as the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­ther and his two as­so­ciates as the se­nior Most High and the ju­nior Most High. A Con­stel­la­tion Fa­ther reigns for ten thou­sand stan­dard years (about 50,000 Uran­tia years), hav­ing pre­vi­ously served as ju­nior as­so­ciate and as se­nior as­so­ciate for equal pe­ri­ods.

• days and years › Satania-Jerusem day is 3 Urantia days; week is 10 Jerusem days; year is 100 days

45:2.5Once a week, ev­ery ten days on Je­ru­sem, the Sov­er­eign holds a con­clave with some one group of the var­i­ous or­ders of per­son­al­i­ties domi­ciled on the head­quar­ters world. These are the charm­ingly in­for­mal hours of Je­ru­sem, and they are never-to-be-for­got­ten oc­ca­sions. On Je­ru­sem there ex­ists the ut­most fra­ter­nity be­tween all the var­i­ous or­ders of be­ings and be­tween each of these groups and the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign.

• days and years › Satania-Jerusem day is 3 Urantia days; week is 10 Jerusem days; year is 100 days

46:1.2The stan­dard mile of Je­ru­sem is equiv­a­lent to about seven Uran­tia miles. The stan­dard weight, the “gradant,” is built up through the dec­i­mal sys­tem from the ma­ture ul­ti­ma­ton and rep­re­sents al­most ex­actly ten ounces of your weight. The Sa­ta­nia day equals three days of Uran­tia time, less one hour, four min­utes, and fif­teen sec­onds, that be­ing the time of the ax­ial rev­o­lu­tion of Je­ru­sem. The sys­tem year con­sists of one hun­dred Je­ru­sem days. The time of the sys­tem is broad­cast by the mas­ter chro­nol­deks.

• wisely using time › in morontia, no longer available to circumvent disagreeable obligations

48:5.8One of the pur­poses of the mor­ontia ca­reer is to ef­fect the per­ma­nent erad­i­ca­tion from the mor­tal sur­vivors of such an­i­mal ves­ti­gial traits as pro­cras­ti­na­tion, equiv­o­ca­tion, in­sin­cer­ity, prob­lem avoid­ance, un­fair­ness, and ease seek­ing. The man­so­nia life early teaches the young mor­ontia pupils that post­pone­ment is in no sense avoid­ance. Af­ter the life in the flesh, time is no longer avail­able as a tech­nique of dodg­ing sit­u­a­tions or of cir­cum­vent­ing dis­agree­able obli­ga­tions.

• wisely using time › life is a day’s work; do it well

48:7.1311. The weak in­dulge in res­o­lu­tions, but the strong act. Life is but a day’s work—do it well. The act is ours; the con­se­quences God’s.

• Lucifer attempted to short-circuit

54:2.3Lu­cifer’s folly was the at­tempt to do the non­doable, to short-cir­cuit time in an ex­pe­ri­en­tial uni­verse. Lu­cifer’s crime was the at­tempted cre­ative dis­en­fran­chise­ment of ev­ery per­son­al­ity in Sa­ta­nia, the un­rec­og­nized abridg­ment of the crea­ture’s per­sonal par­tic­i­pa­tion—free­will par­tic­i­pa­tion—in the long evo­lu­tion­ary strug­gle to at­tain the sta­tus of light and life both in­di­vid­u­ally and col­lec­tively. In so do­ing this one­time Sov­er­eign of your sys­tem set the tem­po­ral pur­pose of his own will di­rectly athwart the eter­nal pur­pose of God’s will as it is re­vealed in the be­stowal of free will upon all per­sonal crea­tures. The Lu­cifer re­bel­lion thus threat­ened the max­i­mum pos­si­ble in­fringe­ment of the free­will choice of the as­cend­ers and servers of the sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia—a threat forever­more to de­prive ev­ery one of these be­ings of the thrilling ex­pe­ri­ence of con­tribut­ing some­thing per­sonal and unique to the slowly erect­ing mon­u­ment to ex­pe­ri­en­tial wis­dom which will some­time ex­ist as the per­fected sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia. Thus does the Lu­cifer man­i­festo, mas­querad­ing in the ha­bil­i­ments of lib­erty, stand forth in the clear light of rea­son as a mon­u­men­tal threat to con­sum­mate the theft of per­sonal lib­erty and to do it on a scale that has been ap­proached only twice in all the his­tory of Neb­a­don.

54:4.1An­other prob­lem some­what dif­fi­cult of ex­pla­na­tion in the con­stel­la­tion of Nor­la­ti­adek per­tains to the rea­sons for per­mit­ting Lu­cifer, Sa­tan, and the fallen princes to work mis­chief so long be­fore be­ing ap­pre­hended, in­terned, and ad­ju­di­cated.

54:4.2Par­ents, those who have borne and reared chil­dren, are bet­ter able to un­der­stand why Mi­chael, a Cre­ator-fa­ther, might be slow to con­demn and de­stroy his own Sons. Je­sus’ story of the prodi­gal son well il­lus­trates how a lov­ing fa­ther can long wait for the re­pen­tance of an erring child.

54:4.3The very fact that an evil-do­ing crea­ture can ac­tu­ally choose to do wrong—com­mit sin—es­tab­lishes the fact of free-will­ness and fully jus­ti­fies any length de­lay in the ex­e­cu­tion of jus­tice pro­vided the ex­tended mercy might con­duce to re­pen­tance and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

54:4.4Most of the lib­er­ties which Lu­cifer sought he al­ready had; oth­ers he was to re­ceive in the fu­ture. All these pre­cious en­dow­ments were lost by giv­ing way to im­pa­tience and yield­ing to a de­sire to pos­sess what one craves now and to pos­sess it in de­fi­ance of all obli­ga­tion to re­spect the rights and lib­er­ties of all other be­ings com­pos­ing the uni­verse of uni­verses. Eth­i­cal obli­ga­tions are in­nate, di­vine, and uni­ver­sal.

54:4.5There are many rea­sons known to us why the Su­preme Rulers did not im­me­di­ately de­stroy or in­tern the lead­ers of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. There are no doubt still other and pos­si­bly bet­ter rea­sons un­known to us. The mercy fea­tures of this de­lay in the ex­e­cu­tion of jus­tice were ex­tended per­son­ally by Mi­chael of Neb­a­don. Ex­cept for the af­fec­tion of this Cre­ator-fa­ther for his erring Sons, the su­preme jus­tice of the super­uni­verse would have acted. If such an episode as the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion had oc­curred in Neb­a­don while Mi­chael was in­car­nated on Uran­tia, the in­sti­ga­tors of such evil might have been in­stantly and ab­so­lutely an­ni­hi­lated.

54:4.6Su­preme jus­tice can act in­stantly when not re­strained by di­vine mercy. But the min­istry of mercy to the chil­dren of time and space al­ways pro­vides for this time lag, this sav­ing in­ter­val be­tween seed­time and har­vest. If the seed sow­ing is good, this in­ter­val pro­vides for the test­ing and up­build­ing of char­ac­ter; if the seed sow­ing is evil, this mer­ci­ful de­lay pro­vides time for re­pen­tance and rec­ti­fi­ca­tion. This time de­lay in the ad­ju­di­ca­tion and ex­e­cu­tion of evil­do­ers is in­her­ent in the mercy min­istry of the seven super­uni­verses. This re­straint of jus­tice by mercy proves that God is love, and that such a God of love dom­i­nates the uni­verses and in mercy con­trols the fate and judg­ment of all his crea­tures.

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

54:4.8But these mercy de­lays are not in­ter­minable. Not­with­stand­ing the long de­lay (as time is reck­oned on Uran­tia) in ad­ju­di­cat­ing the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion, we may re­cord that, dur­ing the time of ef­fect­ing this rev­e­la­tion, the first hear­ing in the pend­ing case of Ga­briel vs. Lu­cifer was held on Uversa, and soon there­after there is­sued the man­date of the An­cients of Days di­rect­ing that Sa­tan be hence­forth con­fined to the prison world with Lu­cifer. This ends the abil­ity of Sa­tan to pay fur­ther vis­its to any of the fallen worlds of Sa­ta­nia. Jus­tice in a mercy-dom­i­nated uni­verse may be slow, but it is cer­tain.

54:5.1Of the many rea­sons known to me as to why Lu­cifer and his con­fed­er­ates were not sooner in­terned or ad­ju­di­cated, I am per­mit­ted to re­cite the fol­low­ing:

54:5.21. Mercy re­quires that ev­ery wrong­doer have suf­fi­cient time in which to for­mu­late a de­lib­er­ate and fully cho­sen at­ti­tude re­gard­ing his evil thoughts and sin­ful acts.

54:5.32. Su­preme jus­tice is dom­i­nated by a Fa­ther’s love; there­fore will jus­tice never de­stroy that which mercy can save. Time to ac­cept sal­va­tion is vouch­safed ev­ery evil­doer.

54:5.43. No af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther is ever pre­cip­i­tate in vis­it­ing pun­ish­ment upon an erring mem­ber of his fam­ily. Pa­tience can­not func­tion in­de­pen­dently of time.

54:5.54. While wrong­do­ing is al­ways dele­te­ri­ous to a fam­ily, wis­dom and love ad­mon­ish the up­right chil­dren to bear with an erring brother dur­ing the time granted by the af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther in which the sin­ner may see the er­ror of his way and em­brace sal­va­tion.

54:5.65. Re­gard­less of Mi­chael’s at­ti­tude to­ward Lu­cifer, not­with­stand­ing his be­ing Lu­cifer’s Cre­ator-fa­ther, it was not in the prov­ince of the Cre­ator Son to ex­er­cise sum­mary ju­ris­dic­tion over the apos­tate Sys­tem Sov­er­eign be­cause he had not then com­pleted his be­stowal ca­reer, thereby at­tain­ing un­qual­i­fied sov­er­eignty of Neb­a­don.

54:5.76. The An­cients of Days could have im­me­di­ately an­ni­hi­lated these rebels, but they sel­dom ex­e­cute wrong­do­ers with­out a full hear­ing. In this in­stance they re­fused to over­rule the Mi­chael de­ci­sions.

54:5.87. It is ev­i­dent that Im­manuel coun­seled Mi­chael to re­main aloof from the rebels and al­low re­bel­lion to pur­sue a nat­u­ral course of self-oblit­er­a­tion. And the wis­dom of the Union of Days is the time re­flec­tion of the united wis­dom of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity.

54:5.98. The Faith­ful of Days on Eden­tia ad­vised the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers to al­low the rebels free course to the end that all sym­pa­thy for these evil­do­ers should be the sooner up­rooted in the hearts of ev­ery pres­ent and fu­ture cit­i­zen of Nor­la­ti­adek—ev­ery mor­tal, mor­ontia, or spirit crea­ture.

54:5.109. On Je­ru­sem the per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Su­preme Ex­ec­u­tive of Or­von­ton coun­seled Ga­briel to fos­ter full op­por­tu­nity for ev­ery liv­ing crea­ture to ma­ture a de­lib­er­ate choice in those mat­ters in­volved in the Lu­cifer Dec­la­ra­tion of Lib­erty. The is­sues of re­bel­lion hav­ing been raised, the Par­a­dise emer­gency ad­viser of Ga­briel por­trayed that, if such full and free op­por­tu­nity were not given all Nor­la­ti­adek crea­tures, then would the Par­a­dise quar­an­tine against all such pos­si­ble half­hearted or doubt-stricken crea­tures be ex­tended in self-pro­tec­tion against the en­tire con­stel­la­tion. To keep open the Par­a­dise doors of as­cen­sion to the be­ings of Nor­la­ti­adek, it was nec­es­sary to pro­vide for the full de­vel­op­ment of re­bel­lion and to in­sure the com­plete de­ter­mi­na­tion of at­ti­tude on the part of all be­ings in any way con­cerned there­with.

54:5.1110. The Di­vine Min­is­ter of Sal­ving­ton is­sued as her third in­de­pen­dent procla­ma­tion a man­date di­rect­ing that noth­ing be done to half cure, cow­ardly sup­press, or oth­er­wise hide the hideous vis­age of rebels and re­bel­lion. The an­gelic hosts were di­rected to work for full dis­clo­sure and un­lim­ited op­por­tu­nity for sin-ex­pres­sion as the quick­est tech­nique of achiev­ing the per­fect and fi­nal cure of the plague of evil and sin.

54:5.1211. An emer­gency coun­cil of ex-mor­tals con­sist­ing of Mighty Mes­sen­gers, glo­ri­fied mor­tals who had had per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with like sit­u­a­tions, to­gether with their col­leagues, was or­ga­nized on Je­ru­sem. They ad­vised Ga­briel that at least three times the num­ber of be­ings would be led astray if ar­bi­trary or sum­mary meth­ods of sup­pres­sion were at­tempted. The en­tire Uversa corps of coun­selors con­curred in ad­vis­ing Ga­briel to per­mit the re­bel­lion to take its full and nat­u­ral course, even if it should re­quire a mil­lion years to wind up the con­se­quences.

• nature of time › is relative
• nature of time › nonexistent on Paradise

54:5.1312. Time, even in a uni­verse of time, is rel­a­tive: If a Uran­tia mor­tal of av­er­age length of life should com­mit a crime which pre­cip­i­tated world-wide pan­de­mo­nium, and if he were ap­pre­hended, tried, and ex­e­cuted within two or three days of the com­mis­sion of the crime, would it seem a long time to you? And yet that would be nearer a com­par­i­son with the length of Lu­cifer’s life even if his ad­ju­di­ca­tion, now be­gun, should not be com­pleted for a hun­dred thou­sand Uran­tia years. The rel­a­tive lapse of time from the view­point of Uversa, where the lit­i­ga­tion is pend­ing, could be in­di­cated by say­ing that the crime of Lu­cifer was be­ing brought to trial within two and a half sec­onds of its com­mis­sion. From the Par­a­dise view­point the ad­ju­di­ca­tion is si­mul­ta­ne­ous with the en­act­ment.

54:5.14There are an equal num­ber of rea­sons for not ar­bi­trar­ily stop­ping the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion which would be par­tially com­pre­hen­si­ble to you, but which I am not per­mit­ted to nar­rate. I may in­form you that on Uversa we teach forty-eight rea­sons for per­mit­ting evil to run the full course of its own moral bankruptcy and spir­i­tual ex­tinc­tion. I doubt not that there are just as many ad­di­tional rea­sons not known to me.

• days and years › Satania-Jerusem day is 3 Urantia days; week is 10 Jerusem days; year is 100 days

54:6.6At first the Lu­cifer up­heaval ap­peared to be an un­mit­i­gated calamity to the sys­tem and to the uni­verse. Grad­u­ally ben­e­fits be­gan to ac­crue. With the pass­ing of twenty-five thou­sand years of sys­tem time (twenty thou­sand years of Uran­tia time), the Mel­chiz­e­deks be­gan to teach that the good re­sult­ing from Lu­cifer’s folly had come to equal the evil in­curred. The sum of evil had by that time be­come al­most sta­tion­ary, con­tin­u­ing to in­crease only on cer­tain iso­lated worlds, while the ben­e­fi­cial reper­cus­sions con­tin­ued to mul­ti­ply and ex­tend out through the uni­verse and super­uni­verse, even to Ha­vona. The Mel­chiz­e­deks now teach that the good re­sult­ing from the Sa­ta­nia re­bel­lion is more than a thou­sand times the sum of all the evil.

• days and years › on Urantia › Urantia Papers use current usage

57:0.1In pre­sent­ing ex­cerpts from the ar­chives of Je­ru­sem for the rec­ords of Uran­tia re­spect­ing its an­tecedents and early his­tory, we are di­rected to reckon time in terms of cur­rent us­age—the pres­ent leap-year cal­en­dar of 365¼ days to the year. As a rule, no at­tempt will be made to give ex­act years, though they are of rec­ord. We will use the near­est whole num­bers as the bet­ter method of pre­sent­ing these his­toric facts.

• nature of time › time and space inseparable in superuniverses; vital factor

65:8.1Time and space are in­dis­sol­ubly linked; there is an in­nate as­so­ci­a­tion. The de­lays of time are in­ev­i­ta­ble in the pres­ence of cer­tain space con­di­tions.

• nature of time › nonexistent on Paradise

65:8.2If spend­ing so much time in ef­fect­ing the evo­lu­tion­ary changes of life de­vel­op­ment oc­ca­sions per­plex­ity, I would say that we can­not time the life pro­cesses to un­fold any faster than the phys­i­cal meta­mor­phoses of a planet will per­mit. We must wait upon the nat­u­ral, phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of a planet; we have ab­so­lutely no con­trol over ge­o­logic evo­lu­tion. If the phys­i­cal con­di­tions would al­low, we could ar­range for the com­pleted evo­lu­tion of life in con­sid­er­ably less than one mil­lion years. But we are all un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Su­preme Rulers of Par­a­dise, and time is nonex­is­tent on Par­a­dise.

• wisely using time › maturity directly related to length of t. consciousness

65:8.3The in­di­vid­ual’s yard­stick for time mea­sure­ment is the length of his life. All crea­tures are thus time con­di­tioned, and there­fore do they re­gard evo­lu­tion as be­ing a long-drawn-out pro­cess. To those of us whose life span is not lim­ited by a tem­po­ral ex­is­tence, evo­lu­tion does not seem to be such a pro­tracted trans­ac­tion. On Par­a­dise, where time is nonex­is­tent, these things are all pres­ent in the mind of In­fin­ity and the acts of Eter­nity.

• days and years › on Urantia › 7-day week because 7 was 1/4 of 28
• days and years › on Urantia › primitive time based on lunar month

66:7.17The time mea­sure­ment of these days was the lu­nar month, this pe­riod be­ing reck­oned as twenty-eight days. That, with the ex­cep­tion of day and night, was the only time reck­on­ing known to the early peo­ples. The seven-day week was in­tro­duced by the Dala­ma­tia teach­ers and grew out of the fact that seven was one fourth of twenty-eight. The sig­nif­i­cance of the num­ber seven in the super­uni­verse un­doubt­edly af­forded them op­por­tu­nity to in­tro­duce a spir­i­tual re­minder into the com­mon reck­on­ing of time. But there is no nat­u­ral ori­gin for the weekly pe­riod.

• days and years › on Urantia › origin of almost sacred sanction of 7-day week

74:8.1The story of the cre­ation of Uran­tia in six days was based on the tra­di­tion that Adam and Eve had spent just six days in their ini­tial sur­vey of the Gar­den. This cir­cum­stance lent al­most sa­cred sanc­tion to the time pe­riod of the week, which had been orig­i­nally in­tro­duced by the Dala­ma­tians. Adam’s spend­ing six days in­spect­ing the Gar­den and for­mu­lat­ing pre­lim­i­nary plans for or­ga­ni­za­tion was not pre­ar­ranged; it was worked out from day to day. The choos­ing of the sev­enth day for wor­ship was wholly in­ci­den­tal to the facts here­with nar­rated.

• days and years › on Urantia › Old Testament confusion on months, years

77:2.11The rec­ords of such long-lived in­di­vid­u­als are also due to the con­fu­sion of months and years as time pe­ri­ods. This may also be ob­served in the Bib­li­cal ge­neal­ogy of Abra­ham and in the early rec­ords of the Chi­nese. The con­fu­sion of the twenty-eight-day month, or sea­son, with the later in­tro­duced year of more than three hun­dred and fifty days is re­spon­si­ble for the tra­di­tions of such long hu­man lives. There are rec­ords of a man who lived over nine hun­dred “years.” This pe­riod rep­re­sents not quite sev­enty years, and such lives were re­garded for ages as very long, “three­score years and ten” as such a life span was later des­ig­nated.

• wisely using time › essential to all human adjustment, except moral and spiritual

81:6.40Man should be un­afraid to ex­per­i­ment with the mech­a­nisms of so­ci­ety. But al­ways should these ad­ven­tures in cul­tural ad­just­ment be con­trolled by those who are fully con­ver­sant with the his­tory of so­cial evo­lu­tion; and al­ways should these in­no­va­tors be coun­seled by the wis­dom of those who have had prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in the do­mains of con­tem­plated so­cial or eco­nomic ex­per­i­ment. No great so­cial or eco­nomic change should be at­tempted sud­denly. Time is es­sen­tial to all types of hu­man ad­just­ment—phys­i­cal, so­cial, or eco­nomic. Only moral and spir­i­tual ad­just­ments can be made on the spur of the mo­ment, and even these re­quire the pass­ing of time for the full out­work­ing of their ma­te­rial and so­cial reper­cus­sions. The ide­als of the race are the chief sup­port and as­sur­ance dur­ing the crit­i­cal times when civ­i­liza­tion is in tran­sit from one level to an­other.

• wisely using time › always difficult suddenly to accept advanced truth

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

• faith in Jesus provides salvation from t.

101:6.146. Sal­va­tion from time, the achieve­ment of an eter­nal life of un­end­ing pro­gres­sion in God-rec­og­ni­tion and God-ser­vice.

• nature of time › shadow of eternity on moving panoply of space

101:10.9Now, rather, are the sons of God en­listed to­gether in fight­ing the bat­tle of re­al­ity’s tri­umph over the par­tial shad­ows of ex­is­tence. At last all crea­tures be­come con­scious of the fact that God and all the di­vine hosts of a well-nigh lim­it­less uni­verse are on their side in the su­per­nal strug­gle to at­tain eter­nity of life and di­vin­ity of sta­tus. Such faith-lib­er­ated sons have cer­tainly en­listed in the strug­gles of time on the side of the su­preme forces and di­vine per­son­al­i­ties of eter­nity; even the stars in their courses are now do­ing bat­tle for them; at last they gaze upon the uni­verse from within, from God’s view­point, and all is trans­formed from the un­cer­tain­ties of ma­te­rial iso­la­tion to the sureties of eter­nal spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion. Even time it­self be­comes but the shadow of eter­nity cast by Par­a­dise re­al­i­ties upon the mov­ing panoply of space.

• nature of time › coming into existence of t.

105:5.6These in­con­ceiv­able trans­ac­tions mark the be­gin­ning of uni­verse his­tory, mark the com­ing into ex­is­tence of time it­self. To a crea­ture, the be­gin­ning of the fi­nite is the gen­e­sis of re­al­ity; as viewed by crea­ture mind, there is no ac­tu­al­ity con­ceiv­able prior to the fi­nite. This newly ap­pear­ing fi­nite re­al­ity ex­ists in two orig­i­nal phases:

• function of time › permits growth for that which grows

105:5.9These, then, are the two orig­i­nal man­i­fes­ta­tions: the con­sti­tu­tively per­fect and the evo­lu­tion­ally per­fected. The two are co-or­di­nate in eter­nity re­la­tion­ships, but within the lim­its of time they are seem­ingly dif­fer­ent. A time fac­tor means growth to that which grows; sec­ondary finites grow; hence those that are grow­ing must ap­pear as in­com­plete in time. But these dif­fer­ences, which are so im­por­tant this side of Par­a­dise, are nonex­is­tent in eter­nity.

• function of time › enables finite to coexist with Infinite

105:6.54. The di­vin­ity re­sponse to the im­per­fec­tion in­her­ent in the time lag of evo­lu­tion is dis­closed in the com­pen­sat­ing pres­ence of God the Sev­en­fold, by whose ac­tiv­i­ties that which is per­fect­ing is in­te­grated with both the per­fect and the per­fected. This time lag is in­sep­a­ra­ble from evo­lu­tion, which is cre­ativ­ity in time. Be­cause of it, as well as for other rea­sons, the al­mighty power of the Su­preme is pred­i­cated on the di­vin­ity suc­cesses of God the Sev­en­fold. This time lag makes pos­si­ble crea­ture par­tic­i­pa­tion in di­vine cre­ation by per­mit­ting crea­ture per­son­al­i­ties to be­come part­ners with De­ity in the at­tain­ment of max­i­mum de­vel­op­ment. Even the ma­te­rial mind of the mor­tal crea­ture thus be­comes part­ner with the di­vine Ad­juster in the du­al­iza­tion of the im­mor­tal soul. God the Sev­en­fold also pro­vides tech­niques of com­pen­sa­tion for the ex­pe­ri­en­tial lim­i­ta­tions of in­her­ent per­fec­tion as well as com­pen­sat­ing the preas­cen­sion lim­i­ta­tions of im­per­fec­tion.

• function of time › permits growth for that which grows

106:1.2This super­uni­verse time lag, this ob­sta­cle to per­fec­tion at­tain­ment, pro­vides for crea­ture par­tic­i­pa­tion in evo­lu­tion­ary growth. It thus makes it pos­si­ble for the crea­ture to en­ter into part­ner­ship with the Cre­ator in the evo­lu­tion of that self­same crea­ture. And dur­ing these times of ex­pand­ing growth the in­com­plete is cor­re­lated with the per­fect through the min­istry of God the Sev­en­fold.

• function of time › greatest aid and most formidable obstacle to reality perception

106:9.2When fi­nite crea­tures at­tempt to con­ceive of in­fi­nite uni­fi­ca­tion on the fi­nal­ity lev­els of con­sum­mated eter­nity, they are face to face with in­tel­lect lim­i­ta­tions in­her­ent in their fi­nite ex­is­tences. Time, space, and ex­pe­ri­ence con­sti­tute bar­ri­ers to crea­ture con­cept; and yet, with­out time, apart from space, and ex­cept for ex­pe­ri­ence, no crea­ture could achieve even a lim­ited com­pre­hen­sion of uni­verse re­al­ity. With­out time sen­si­tiv­ity, no evo­lu­tion­ary crea­ture could pos­si­bly per­ceive the re­la­tions of se­quence. With­out space per­cep­tion, no crea­ture could fathom the re­la­tions of si­mul­tane­ity. With­out ex­pe­ri­ence, no evo­lu­tion­ary crea­ture could even ex­ist; only the Seven Ab­so­lutes of In­fin­ity re­ally tran­scend ex­pe­ri­ence, and even these may be ex­pe­ri­en­tial in cer­tain phases.

106:9.3Time, space, and ex­pe­ri­ence are man’s great­est aids to rel­a­tive re­al­ity per­cep­tion and yet his most formidable ob­sta­cles to com­plete re­al­ity per­cep­tion. Mor­tals and many other uni­verse crea­tures find it nec­es­sary to think of po­ten­tials as be­ing ac­tu­al­ized in space and evolv­ing to fruition in time, but this en­tire pro­cess is a time-space phe­nom­e­non which does not ac­tu­ally take place on Par­a­dise and in eter­nity. On the ab­so­lute level there is nei­ther time nor space; all po­ten­tials may be there per­ceived as ac­tu­als.

• nature of time › cognizance by mind, spirit, and personality

112:0.1614. Per­son­al­ity is uniquely con­scious of time, and this is some­thing other than the time per­cep­tion of mind or spirit.

• wisely using time › humans are born, live, and die in an instant of t.

112:5.4Hu­man be­ings pos­sess iden­tity only in the ma­te­rial sense. Such qual­i­ties of the self are ex­pressed by the ma­te­rial mind as it func­tions in the en­ergy sys­tem of the in­tel­lect. When it is said that man has iden­tity, it is rec­og­nized that he is in pos­ses­sion of a mind cir­cuit which has been placed in sub­or­di­na­tion to the acts and choos­ing of the will of the hu­man per­son­al­ity. But this is a ma­te­rial and purely tem­po­rary man­i­fes­ta­tion, just as the hu­man em­bryo is a tran­sient par­a­sitic stage of hu­man life. Hu­man be­ings, from a cos­mic per­spec­tive, are born, live, and die in a rel­a­tive in­stant of time; they are not en­dur­ing. But mor­tal per­son­al­ity, through its own choos­ing, pos­sesses the power of trans­fer­ring its seat of iden­tity from the pass­ing ma­te­rial-in­tel­lect sys­tem to the higher mor­ontia-soul sys­tem which, in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Thought Ad­juster, is cre­ated as a new ve­hi­cle for per­son­al­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion.

• wisely using time › life is a day’s work; do it well

112:7.4When fu­sion with the Ad­juster has been ef­fected, there can be no fu­ture dan­ger to the eter­nal ca­reer of such a per­son­al­ity. Ce­les­tial be­ings are tested through­out a long ex­pe­ri­ence, but mor­tals pass through a rel­a­tively short and in­ten­sive test­ing on the evo­lu­tion­ary and mor­ontia worlds.

• nature of time › motions of t. are currents in stream of eternity

117:4.11The great strug­gle of this uni­verse age is be­tween the po­ten­tial and the ac­tual—the seek­ing for ac­tu­al­iza­tion by all that is as yet un­ex­pressed. If mor­tal man pro­ceeds upon the Par­a­dise ad­ven­ture, he is fol­low­ing the mo­tions of time, which flow as cur­rents within the stream of eter­nity; if mor­tal man re­jects the eter­nal ca­reer, he is mov­ing counter to the stream of events in the fi­nite uni­verses. The me­chan­i­cal cre­ation moves on in­ex­orably in ac­cor­dance with the un­fold­ing pur­pose of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, but the vo­li­tional cre­ation has the choice of ac­cept­ing or of re­ject­ing the role of per­son­al­ity par­tic­i­pa­tion in the ad­ven­ture of eter­nity. Mor­tal man can­not de­stroy the su­preme val­ues of hu­man ex­is­tence, but he can very def­i­nitely pre­vent the evo­lu­tion of these val­ues in his own per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. To the ex­tent that the hu­man self thus re­fuses to take part in the Par­a­dise as­cent, to just that ex­tent is the Su­preme de­layed in achiev­ing di­vin­ity ex­pres­sion in the grand uni­verse.

• nature of time › sequence blurs at upper limits of finite

117:7.6It may be that on the up­per lim­its of the fi­nite, where time con­joins tran­scended time, there is some sort of blur­ring and blend­ing of se­quence. It may be that the Su­preme is able to fore­cast his uni­verse pres­ence onto these super­time lev­els and then to a lim­ited de­gree an­tic­i­pate fu­ture evo­lu­tion by re­flect­ing this fu­ture fore­cast back to the cre­ated lev­els as the Im­ma­nence of the Pro­jected In­com­plete. Such phe­nom­ena may be ob­served wher­ever fi­nite makes con­tact with super­fi­nite, as in the ex­pe­ri­ences of hu­man be­ings who are in­dwelt by Thought Ad­justers that are ver­i­ta­ble pre­dic­tions of man’s fu­ture uni­verse at­tain­ments through­out all eter­nity.

• nature of time › experience in eternity

118:1.1It is help­ful to man’s cos­mic ori­en­ta­tion to at­tain all pos­si­ble com­pre­hen­sion of De­ity’s re­la­tion to the cos­mos. While ab­so­lute De­ity is eter­nal in na­ture, the Gods are re­lated to time as an ex­pe­ri­ence in eter­nity. In the evo­lu­tion­ary uni­verses eter­nity is tem­po­ral ev­er­last­ing­ness—the ev­er­last­ing now.

118:1.2The per­son­al­ity of the mor­tal crea­ture may eter­nal­ize by self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the in­dwelling spirit through the tech­nique of choos­ing to do the will of the Fa­ther. Such a con­se­cra­tion of will is tan­ta­mount to the re­al­iza­tion of eter­nity-re­al­ity of pur­pose. This means that the pur­pose of the crea­ture has be­come fixed with re­gard to the suc­ces­sion of mo­ments; stated oth­er­wise, that the suc­ces­sion of mo­ments will wit­ness no change in crea­ture pur­pose. A mil­lion or a bil­lion mo­ments makes no dif­fer­ence. Num­ber has ceased to have mean­ing with re­gard to the crea­ture’s pur­pose. Thus does crea­ture choice plus God’s choice even­tu­ate in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of the never-end­ing union of the spirit of God and the na­ture of man in the ev­er­last­ing ser­vice of the chil­dren of God and of their Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

• function of time › criterion by which self evaluates life
• wisely using time › maturity directly related to length of t. consciousness

118:1.3There is a di­rect re­la­tion­ship be­tween ma­tu­rity and the unit of time con­scious­ness in any given in­tel­lect. The time unit may be a day, a year, or a longer pe­riod, but in­evitably it is the cri­te­rion by which the con­scious self eval­u­ates the cir­cum­stances of life, and by which the con­ceiv­ing in­tel­lect mea­sures and eval­u­ates the facts of tem­po­ral ex­is­tence.

118:1.4Ex­pe­ri­ence, wis­dom, and judg­ment are the con­comi­tants of the length­en­ing of the time unit in mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence. As the hu­man mind reck­ons back­ward into the past, it is eval­u­at­ing past ex­pe­ri­ence for the pur­pose of bring­ing it to bear on a pres­ent sit­u­a­tion. As mind reaches out into the fu­ture, it is at­tempt­ing to eval­u­ate the fu­ture sig­nif­i­cance of pos­si­ble ac­tion. And hav­ing thus reck­oned with both ex­pe­ri­ence and wis­dom, the hu­man will ex­er­cises judg­ment-de­ci­sion in the pres­ent, and the plan of ac­tion thus born of the past and the fu­ture be­comes ex­is­tent.

118:1.5In the ma­tu­rity of the de­vel­op­ing self, the past and fu­ture are brought to­gether to il­lu­mi­nate the true mean­ing of the pres­ent. As the self ma­tures, it reaches fur­ther and fur­ther back into the past for ex­pe­ri­ence, while its wis­dom fore­casts seek to pen­e­trate deeper and deeper into the un­known fu­ture. And as the con­ceiv­ing self ex­tends this reach ever fur­ther into both past and fu­ture, so does judg­ment be­come less and less de­pen­dent on the mo­men­tary pres­ent. In this way does de­ci­sion-ac­tion be­gin to es­cape from the fet­ters of the mov­ing pres­ent, while it be­gins to take on the as­pects of past-fu­ture sig­nif­i­cance.

118:1.6Pa­tience is ex­er­cised by those mor­tals whose time units are short; true ma­tu­rity tran­scends pa­tience by a for­bear­ance born of real un­der­stand­ing.

118:1.7To be­come ma­ture is to live more in­tensely in the pres­ent, at the same time es­cap­ing from the lim­i­ta­tions of the pres­ent. The plans of ma­tu­rity, founded on past ex­pe­ri­ence, are com­ing into be­ing in the pres­ent in such man­ner as to en­hance the val­ues of the fu­ture.

• nature of time › fragment of nonbeginning, nonending continuum

118:1.8The time unit of im­ma­tu­rity con­cen­trates mean­ing-value into the pres­ent mo­ment in such a way as to di­vorce the pres­ent of its true re­la­tion­ship to the not-pres­ent—the past-fu­ture. The time unit of ma­tu­rity is pro­por­tioned so to re­veal the co-or­di­nate re­la­tion­ship of past-pres­ent-fu­ture that the self be­gins to gain in­sight into the whole­ness of events, be­gins to view the land­scape of time from the panoramic per­spec­tive of broad­ened hori­zons, be­gins per­haps to sus­pect the non­be­gin­ning, non­end­ing eter­nal con­tin­uum, the frag­ments of which are called time.

118:1.9On the lev­els of the in­fi­nite and the ab­so­lute the mo­ment of the pres­ent con­tains all of the past as well as all of the fu­ture. I AM sig­ni­fies also I WAS and I WILL BE. And this rep­re­sents our best con­cept of eter­nity and the eter­nal.

118:1.10On the ab­so­lute and eter­nal level, po­ten­tial re­al­ity is just as mean­ing­ful as ac­tual re­al­ity. Only on the fi­nite level and to time-bound crea­tures does there ap­pear to be such a vast dif­fer­ence. To God, as ab­so­lute, an as­cend­ing mor­tal who has made the eter­nal de­ci­sion is al­ready a Par­a­dise fi­nal­i­ter. But the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, through the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster, is not thus lim­ited in aware­ness but can also know of, and par­tic­i­pate in, ev­ery tem­po­ral strug­gle with the prob­lems of the crea­ture as­cent from an­i­mallike to God­like lev­els of ex­is­tence.

• nature of time › succession-arrangement whereby events are perceived by analysis

118:3.1Only by ubiq­uity could De­ity unify time-space man­i­fes­ta­tions to the fi­nite con­cep­tion, for time is a suc­ces­sion of in­stants while space is a sys­tem of as­so­ci­ated points. You do, af­ter all, per­ceive time by anal­y­sis and space by syn­the­sis. You co-or­di­nate and as­so­ciate these two dis­sim­i­lar con­cep­tions by the in­te­grat­ing in­sight of per­son­al­ity. Of all the an­i­mal world only man pos­sesses this time-space per­cep­ti­bil­ity. To an an­i­mal, mo­tion has a mean­ing, but mo­tion ex­hibits value only to a crea­ture of per­son­al­ity sta­tus.

118:3.2Things are time con­di­tioned, but truth is time­less. The more truth you know, the more truth you are, the more of the past you can un­der­stand and of the fu­ture you can com­pre­hend.

118:3.3Truth is in­con­cus­si­ble—for­ever ex­empt from all tran­sient vi­cis­si­tudes, al­beit never dead and for­mal, al­ways vi­brant and adapt­able—ra­di­antly alive. But when truth be­comes linked with fact, then both time and space con­di­tion its mean­ings and cor­re­late its val­ues. Such re­al­i­ties of truth wed­ded to fact be­come con­cepts and are ac­cord­ingly rel­e­gated to the do­main of rel­a­tive cos­mic re­al­i­ties.

118:3.4The link­ing of the ab­so­lute and eter­nal truth of the Cre­ator with the fac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of the fi­nite and tem­po­ral crea­ture even­tu­ates a new and emerg­ing value of the Su­preme. The con­cept of the Su­preme is es­sen­tial to the co-or­di­na­tion of the di­vine and un­chang­ing over­world with the fi­nite and ever-chang­ing un­der­world.

118:3.5Space comes the near­est of all non­ab­so­lute things to be­ing ab­so­lute. Space is ap­par­ently ab­so­lutely ul­ti­mate. The real dif­fi­culty we have in un­der­stand­ing space on the ma­te­rial level is due to the fact that, while ma­te­rial bod­ies ex­ist in space, space also ex­ists in these same ma­te­rial bod­ies. While there is much about space that is ab­so­lute, that does not mean that space is ab­so­lute.

118:3.6It may help to an un­der­stand­ing of space re­la­tion­ships if you would con­jec­ture that, rel­a­tively speak­ing, space is af­ter all a prop­erty of all ma­te­rial bod­ies. Hence, when a body moves through space, it also takes all its prop­er­ties with it, even the space which is in and of such a mov­ing body.

118:3.7All pat­terns of re­al­ity oc­cupy space on the ma­te­rial lev­els, but spirit pat­terns only ex­ist in re­la­tion to space; they do not oc­cupy or dis­place space, nei­ther do they con­tain it. But to us the mas­ter rid­dle of space per­tains to the pat­tern of an idea. When we en­ter the mind do­main, we en­counter many a puz­zle. Does the pat­tern—the re­al­ity—of an idea oc­cupy space? We re­ally do not know, al­beit we are sure that an idea pat­tern does not con­tain space. But it would hardly be safe to pos­tu­late that the im­ma­te­rial is al­ways non­spa­tial.

• function of time › cushions premature escape from barriers to human action

118:8.6The slow­ness of evo­lu­tion, of hu­man cul­tural prog­ress, tes­ti­fies to the ef­fec­tive­ness of that brake—ma­te­rial in­er­tia—which so ef­fi­ciently op­er­ates to re­tard dan­ger­ous ve­loc­i­ties of prog­ress. Thus does time it­self cush­ion and dis­tribute the oth­er­wise lethal re­sults of pre­ma­ture es­cape from the next-en­com­pass­ing bar­ri­ers to hu­man ac­tion. For when cul­ture ad­vances over­fast, when ma­te­rial achieve­ment out­runs the evo­lu­tion of wor­ship-wis­dom, then does civ­i­liza­tion con­tain within it­self the seeds of ret­ro­gres­sion; and un­less but­tressed by the swift aug­men­ta­tion of ex­pe­ri­en­tial wis­dom, such hu­man so­ci­eties will re­cede from high but pre­ma­ture lev­els of at­tain­ment, and the “dark ages” of the in­ter­reg­num of wis­dom will bear wit­ness to the in­ex­orable restora­tion of the im­bal­ance be­tween self-lib­erty and self-con­trol.

• Lucifer attempted to short-circuit

118:8.7The in­iq­uity of Cali­gas­tia was the by-pass­ing of the time gov­er­nor of pro­gres­sive hu­man lib­er­a­tion—the gra­tu­itous de­struc­tion of re­strain­ing bar­ri­ers, bar­ri­ers which the mor­tal minds of those times had not ex­pe­ri­en­tially over­rid­den.

• Lucifer attempted to short-circuit

118:8.9Lu­cifer sim­i­larly sought to dis­rupt the time gov­er­nor op­er­at­ing in re­straint of the pre­ma­ture at­tain­ment of cer­tain lib­er­ties in the lo­cal sys­tem. A lo­cal sys­tem set­tled in light and life has ex­pe­ri­en­tially achieved those view­points and in­sights which make fea­si­ble the op­er­a­tion of many tech­niques that would be dis­rup­tive and de­struc­tive in the pre­set­tled eras of that very realm.

• function of time › enables finite to coexist with Infinite

118:9.1Time and space are a con­joined mech­a­nism of the mas­ter uni­verse. They are the de­vices whereby fi­nite crea­tures are en­abled to co­ex­ist in the cos­mos with the In­fi­nite. Fi­nite crea­tures are ef­fec­tively in­su­lated from the ab­so­lute lev­els by time and space. But these in­su­lat­ing me­dia, with­out which no mor­tal could ex­ist, op­er­ate di­rectly to limit the range of fi­nite ac­tion. With­out them no crea­ture could act, but by them the acts of ev­ery crea­ture are def­i­nitely lim­ited.

• days and years › on Urantia › Urantia Papers use current usage

126:3.1By the mid­dle of this fif­teenth year—and we are reck­on­ing time in ac­cor­dance with the twen­ti­eth-cen­tury cal­en­dar, not by the Jew­ish year—Je­sus had taken a firm grasp upon the man­age­ment of his fam­ily. Be­fore this year had passed, their sav­ings had about dis­ap­peared, and they were face to face with the ne­ces­sity of dis­pos­ing of one of the Naz­a­reth houses which Joseph and his neigh­bor Ja­cob owned in part­ner­ship.

• alone ripens fruit on tree

130:5.3One day when Ga­nid asked Je­sus why he had not de­voted him­self to the work of a pub­lic teacher, he said: “My son, ev­ery­thing must await the com­ing of its time. You are born into the world, but no amount of anx­i­ety and no man­i­fes­ta­tion of im­pa­tience will help you to grow up. You must, in all such mat­ters, wait upon time. Time alone will ripen the green fruit upon the tree. Sea­son fol­lows sea­son and sun­down fol­lows sun­rise only with the pass­ing of time. I am now on the way to Rome with you and your fa­ther, and that is suf­fi­cient for to­day. My to­mor­row is wholly in the hands of my Fa­ther in heaven.” And then he told Ga­nid the story of Moses and the forty years of watch­ful wait­ing and con­tin­ued prepa­ra­tion.

• nature of time › succession-arrangement whereby events are perceived by analysis

130:7.4Time is the stream of flow­ing tem­po­ral events per­ceived by crea­ture con­scious­ness. Time is a name given to the suc­ces­sion-ar­range­ment whereby events are rec­og­nized and seg­re­gated. The uni­verse of space is a time-re­lated phe­nom­e­non as it is viewed from any in­te­rior po­si­tion out­side of the fixed abode of Par­a­dise. The mo­tion of time is only re­vealed in re­la­tion to some­thing which does not move in space as a time phe­nom­e­non. In the uni­verse of uni­verses Par­a­dise and its De­i­ties tran­scend both time and space. On the in­hab­ited worlds, hu­man per­son­al­ity (in­dwelt and ori­ented by the Par­a­dise Fa­ther’s spirit) is the only phys­i­cally re­lated re­al­ity which can tran­scend the ma­te­rial se­quence of tem­po­ral events.

• animals possess no self-consciousness of
• nature of time › circular simultaneity displaces consciousness of linear sequence

130:7.5An­i­mals do not sense time as does man, and even to man, be­cause of his sec­tional and cir­cum­scribed view, time ap­pears as a suc­ces­sion of events; but as man as­cends, as he pro­gresses in­ward, the en­larg­ing view of this event pro­ces­sion is such that it is dis­cerned more and more in its whole­ness. That which for­merly ap­peared as a suc­ces­sion of events then will be viewed as a whole and per­fectly re­lated cy­cle; in this way will cir­cu­lar si­mul­tane­ity in­creas­ingly dis­place the one­time con­scious­ness of the lin­ear se­quence of events.

• nature of time › not measured by space

130:7.6There are seven dif­fer­ent con­cep­tions of space as it is con­di­tioned by time. Space is mea­sured by time, not time by space. The con­fu­sion of the sci­en­tist grows out of fail­ure to rec­og­nize the re­al­ity of space. Space is not merely an in­tel­lec­tual con­cept of the vari­a­tion in re­lat­ed­ness of uni­verse ob­jects. Space is not empty, and the only thing man knows which can even par­tially tran­scend space is mind. Mind can func­tion in­de­pen­dently of the con­cept of the space-re­lat­ed­ness of ma­te­rial ob­jects. Space is rel­a­tively and com­par­a­tively fi­nite to all be­ings of crea­ture sta­tus. The nearer con­scious­ness ap­proaches the aware­ness of seven cos­mic di­men­sions, the more does the con­cept of po­ten­tial space ap­proach ul­ti­macy. But the space po­ten­tial is truly ul­ti­mate only on the ab­so­lute level.

• function of time › t. lag of mercy before fruition of evil and judgment

131:3.5“No re­li­gion­ist may hope to at­tain the en­light­en­ment of im­mor­tal wis­dom who per­sists in be­ing sloth­ful, in­do­lent, fee­ble, idle, shame­less, and self­ish. But whoso is thought­ful, pru­dent, re­flec­tive, fer­vent, and earnest—even while he yet lives on earth—may at­tain the su­preme en­light­en­ment of the peace and lib­erty of di­vine wis­dom. Re­mem­ber, ev­ery act shall re­ceive its re­ward. Evil re­sults in sor­row and sin ends in pain. Joy and hap­pi­ness are the out­come of a good life. Even the evil­doer en­joys a sea­son of grace be­fore the time of the full ripen­ing of his evil deeds, but in­evitably there must come the full har­vest of evil-do­ing. Let no man think lightly of sin, say­ing in his heart: ‘The penalty of wrong­do­ing shall not come near me.’ What you do shall be done to you, in the judg­ment of wis­dom. In­jus­tice done to your fel­lows shall come back upon you. The crea­ture can­not es­cape the des­tiny of his deeds.

• animals possess no self-consciousness of

133:7.8No mere an­i­mal could pos­sess a time self-con­scious­ness. An­i­mals pos­sess a phys­i­o­log­i­cal co-or­di­na­tion of as­so­ci­ated sen­sa­tion-rec­og­ni­tion and mem­ory thereof, but none ex­pe­ri­ence a mean­ing­ful rec­og­ni­tion of sen­sa­tion or ex­hibit a pur­pose­ful as­so­ci­a­tion of these com­bined phys­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ences such as is man­i­fested in the con­clu­sions of in­tel­li­gent and re­flec­tive hu­man in­ter­pre­ta­tions. And this fact of self-con­scious ex­is­tence, as­so­ci­ated with the re­al­ity of his sub­se­quent spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, con­sti­tutes man a po­ten­tial son of the uni­verse and fore­shad­ows his even­tual at­tain­ment of the Su­preme Unity of the uni­verse.

• Jesus’ Creator prerogatives not limited by t.; his miracles abridged t.
• Personalized Adjusters not conscious of

136:5.4In ac­cept­ing this com­mand of the uni­verse hosts in at­ten­dance upon Christ Mi­chael, the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster took great pains to point out to Je­sus that, while such an as­sem­bly of uni­verse crea­tures could be lim­ited in their space ac­tiv­i­ties by the del­e­gated au­thor­ity of their Cre­ator, such lim­i­ta­tions were not op­er­a­tive in con­nec­tion with their func­tion in time. And this lim­i­ta­tion was de­pen­dent on the fact that Ad­justers are non­time be­ings when once they are per­son­al­ized. Ac­cord­ingly was Je­sus ad­mon­ished that, while the Ad­juster’s con­trol of the liv­ing in­tel­li­gences placed un­der his com­mand would be com­plete and per­fect as to all mat­ters in­volv­ing space, there could be no such per­fect lim­i­ta­tions im­posed re­gard­ing time. Said the Ad­juster: “I will, as you have di­rected, en­join the em­ploy­ment of this at­ten­dant host of uni­verse in­tel­li­gences in any man­ner in con­nec­tion with your earth ca­reer ex­cept in those cases where the Par­a­dise Fa­ther di­rects me to re­lease such agen­cies in or­der that his di­vine will of your choos­ing may be ac­com­plished, and in those in­stances where you may en­gage in any choice or act of your di­vine-hu­man will which shall only in­volve de­par­tures from the nat­u­ral earth or­der as to time. In all such events I am pow­er­less, and your crea­tures here as­sem­bled in per­fec­tion and unity of power are like­wise help­less. If your united na­tures once en­ter­tain such de­sires, these man­dates of your choice will be forth­with ex­e­cuted. Your wish in all such mat­ters will con­sti­tute the abridg­ment of time, and the thing pro­jected is ex­is­tent. Un­der my com­mand this con­sti­tutes the fullest pos­si­ble lim­i­ta­tion which can be im­posed upon your po­ten­tial sov­er­eignty. In my self-con­scious­ness time is nonex­is­tent, and there­fore I can­not limit your crea­tures in any­thing re­lated thereto.”

136:5.5Thus did Je­sus be­come ap­prised of the work­ing out of his de­ci­sion to go on liv­ing as a man among men. He had by a sin­gle de­ci­sion ex­cluded all of his at­ten­dant uni­verse hosts of var­ied in­tel­li­gences from par­tic­i­pat­ing in his en­su­ing pub­lic min­istry ex­cept in such mat­ters as con­cerned time only. It there­fore be­comes ev­i­dent that any pos­si­ble super­nat­u­ral or sup­pos­edly super­hu­man ac­com­pa­ni­ments of Je­sus’ min­istry per­tained wholly to the elim­i­na­tion of time un­less the Fa­ther in heaven specif­i­cally ruled oth­er­wise. No mir­a­cle, min­istry of mercy, or any other pos­si­ble event oc­cur­ring in con­nec­tion with Je­sus’ re­main­ing earth labors could pos­si­bly be of the na­ture or char­ac­ter of an act tran­scend­ing the nat­u­ral laws es­tab­lished and reg­u­larly work­ing in the af­fairs of man as he lives on Uran­tia ex­cept in this ex­pressly stated mat­ter of time. No lim­its, of course, could be placed upon the man­i­fes­ta­tions of “the Fa­ther’s will.” The elim­i­na­tion of time in con­nec­tion with the ex­pressed de­sire of this po­ten­tial Sov­er­eign of a uni­verse could only be avoided by the di­rect and ex­plicit act of the will of this God-man to the ef­fect that time, as re­lated to the act or event in ques­tion, should not be short­ened or elim­i­nated. In or­der to pre­vent the ap­pear­ance of ap­par­ent time mir­a­cles, it was nec­es­sary for Je­sus to re­main con­stantly time con­scious. Any lapse of time con­scious­ness on his part, in con­nec­tion with the en­ter­tain­ment of def­i­nite de­sire, was equiv­a­lent to the en­act­ment of the thing con­ceived in the mind of this Cre­ator Son, and with­out the in­ter­ven­tion of time.

136:5.6Through the super­vis­ing con­trol of his as­so­ci­ated and Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster it was pos­si­ble for Mi­chael per­fectly to limit his per­sonal earth ac­tiv­i­ties with ref­er­ence to space, but it was not pos­si­ble for the Son of Man thus to limit his new earth sta­tus as po­ten­tial Sov­er­eign of Neb­a­don as re­gards time. And this was the ac­tual sta­tus of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth as he went forth to be­gin his pub­lic min­istry on Uran­tia.

• Jesus’ Creator prerogatives not limited by t.; his miracles abridged t.

136:7.3Un­der­stand­ing all of this and know­ing that the Mas­ter re­fused to work in de­fi­ance of his es­tab­lished laws of na­ture in so far as his per­sonal con­duct was con­cerned, you know of a cer­tainty that he never walked on the wa­ter nor did any­thing else which was an out­rage to his ma­te­rial or­der of ad­min­is­ter­ing the world; al­ways, of course, bear­ing in mind that there had, as yet, been found no way whereby he could be wholly de­liv­ered from the lack of con­trol over the el­e­ment of time in con­nec­tion with those mat­ters put un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster.

• wisely using time › essential to all human adjustment, except moral and spiritual

152:6.1While rest­ing at the home of a wealthy be­liever in the Gen­nesaret re­gion, Je­sus held in­for­mal con­fer­ences with the twelve ev­ery af­ter­noon. The am­bas­sadors of the king­dom were a se­ri­ous, sober, and chas­tened group of dis­il­lu­sioned men. But even af­ter all that had hap­pened, and as sub­se­quent events dis­closed, these twelve men were not yet fully de­liv­ered from their in­bred and long-cher­ished no­tions about the com­ing of the Jew­ish Mes­siah. Events of the pre­ced­ing few weeks had moved too swiftly for these as­ton­ished fish­er­men to grasp their full sig­nif­i­cance. It re­quires time for men and women to ef­fect rad­i­cal and ex­ten­sive changes in their ba­sic and fun­da­men­tal con­cepts of so­cial con­duct, philo­sophic at­ti­tudes, and re­li­gious con­vic­tions.

• wisely using time › dedicate to contemplation of eternal realities

155:6.13When you once be­gin to find God in your soul, pres­ently you will be­gin to dis­cover him in other men’s souls and even­tu­ally in all the crea­tures and cre­ations of a mighty uni­verse. But what chance does the Fa­ther have to ap­pear as a God of su­preme loy­al­ties and di­vine ide­als in the souls of men who give lit­tle or no time to the thought­ful con­tem­pla­tion of such eter­nal re­al­i­ties? While the mind is not the seat of the spir­i­tual na­ture, it is in­deed the gate­way thereto.

• nature of time › nonexistent to sleeping survivors

168:2.5Laz­a­rus greeted Je­sus and the apos­tles and asked the mean­ing of the grave cloths and why he had awak­ened in the gar­den. Je­sus and the apos­tles drew to one side while Martha told Laz­a­rus of his death, burial, and res­ur­rec­tion. She had to ex­plain to him that he had died on Sun­day and was now brought back to life on Thurs­day, inas­much as he had had no con­scious­ness of time since falling asleep in death.

• nature of time › nonexistent to sleeping survivors

168:2.9Laz­a­rus could hardly com­pre­hend what had oc­curred. He knew he had been very sick, but he could re­call only that he had fallen asleep and been awak­ened. He was never able to tell any­thing about these four days in the tomb be­cause he was wholly un­con­scious. Time is nonex­is­tent to those who sleep the sleep of death.

• days and years › on Urantia › Jews reckoned day as beginning at sunset

179:0.1Dur­ing the af­ter­noon of this Thurs­day, when Philip re­minded the Mas­ter about the ap­proach­ing Pass­over and in­quired con­cern­ing his plans for its cel­e­bra­tion, he had in mind the Pass­over sup­per which was due to be eaten on the evening of the next day, Fri­day. It was the cus­tom to be­gin the prepa­ra­tions for the cel­e­bra­tion of the Pass­over not later than noon of the pre­ced­ing day. And since the Jews reck­oned the day as be­gin­ning at sun­set, this meant that Sat­ur­day’s Pass­over sup­per would be eaten on Fri­day night, some­time be­fore the mid­night hour.

• nature of time › relationship to eternity

189:1.3Man­kind is slow to per­ceive that, in all that is per­sonal, mat­ter is the skele­ton of mor­ontia, and that both are the re­flected shadow of en­dur­ing spirit re­al­ity. How long be­fore you will re­gard time as the mov­ing im­age of eter­nity and space as the fleet­ing shadow of Par­a­dise re­al­i­ties?