Van (Prince’s staff)

67:6.1The fol­low­ers of Van early with­drew to the high­lands west of In­dia, where they were ex­empt from at­tacks by the con­fused races of the low­lands, and from which place of re­tire­ment they planned for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the world as their early Ba­don­ite pre­de­ces­sors had once all un­wit­tingly worked for the wel­fare of man­kind just be­fore the days of the birth of the San­gik tribes.

67:6.2Be­fore the ar­rival of the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers, Van placed the ad­min­is­tra­tion of hu­man af­fairs in the hands of ten com­mis­sions of four each, groups iden­ti­cal with those of the Prince’s regime. The se­nior res­i­dent Life Car­ri­ers as­sumed tem­po­rary lead­er­ship of this coun­cil of forty, which func­tioned through­out the seven years of wait­ing. Sim­i­lar groups of Ama­don­ites as­sumed these re­spon­si­bil­i­ties when the thirty-nine loyal staff mem­bers re­turned to Je­ru­sem.

67:6.3These Ama­don­ites were de­rived from the group of 144 loyal An­don­ites to which Amadon be­longed, and who have be­come known by his name. This group com­prised thirty-nine men and one hun­dred and five women. Fifty-six of this num­ber were of im­mor­tal­ity sta­tus, and all (ex­cept Amadon) were trans­lated along with the loyal mem­bers of the staff. The re­main­der of this no­ble band con­tin­ued on earth to the end of their mor­tal days un­der the lead­er­ship of Van and Amadon. They were the bi­o­logic leaven which mul­ti­plied and con­tin­ued to fur­nish lead­er­ship for the world down through the long dark ages of the postre­bel­lion era.

67:6.4Van was left on Uran­tia un­til the time of Adam, re­main­ing as tit­u­lar head of all super­hu­man per­son­al­i­ties func­tion­ing on the planet. He and Amadon were sus­tained by the tech­nique of the tree of life in con­junc­tion with the spe­cial­ized life min­istry of the Mel­chiz­e­deks for over one hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years.

67:6.5The af­fairs of Uran­tia were for a long time ad­min­is­tered by a coun­cil of plan­e­tary re­ceivers, twelve Mel­chiz­e­deks, con­firmed by the man­date of the se­nior con­stel­la­tion ruler, the Most High Fa­ther of Nor­la­ti­adek. As­so­ci­ated with the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers was an ad­vi­sory coun­cil con­sist­ing of: one of the loyal aids of the fallen Prince, the two res­i­dent Life Car­ri­ers, a Trin­i­tized Son in ap­pren­tice­ship train­ing, a vol­un­teer Teacher Son, a Bril­liant Evening Star of Avalon (pe­ri­od­i­cally), the chiefs of ser­a­phim and cheru­bim, ad­vis­ers from two neigh­bor­ing plan­ets, the di­rec­tor gen­eral of sub­or­di­nate an­gelic life, and Van, the com­man­der in chief of the mid­way crea­tures. And thus was Uran­tia gov­erned and ad­min­is­tered un­til the ar­rival of Adam. It is not strange that the coura­geous and loyal Van was as­signed a place on the coun­cil of plan­e­tary re­ceivers which for so long ad­min­is­tered the af­fairs of Uran­tia.

67:6.6The twelve Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers of Uran­tia did heroic work. They pre­served the rem­nants of civ­i­liza­tion, and their plan­e­tary poli­cies were faith­fully ex­e­cuted by Van. Within one thou­sand years af­ter the re­bel­lion he had more than three hun­dred and fifty ad­vanced groups scat­tered abroad in the world. These out­posts of civ­i­liza­tion con­sisted largely of the de­scen­dants of the loyal An­don­ites slightly ad­mixed with the San­gik races, par­tic­u­larly the blue men, and with the Nod­ites.

67:6.7Not­with­stand­ing the ter­ri­ble set­back of re­bel­lion there were many good strains of bi­o­logic prom­ise on earth. Un­der the super­vi­sion of the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers, Van and Amadon con­tin­ued the work of fos­ter­ing the nat­u­ral evo­lu­tion of the hu­man race, car­ry­ing for­ward the phys­i­cal evo­lu­tion of man un­til it reached that cul­mi­nat­ing at­tain­ment which war­ranted the dis­patch of a Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter to Uran­tia.

67:6.8Van and Amadon re­mained on earth un­til shortly af­ter the ar­rival of Adam and Eve. Some years there­after they were trans­lated to Je­ru­sem, where Van was re­united with his wait­ing Ad­juster. Van now serves in be­half of Uran­tia while await­ing the or­der to go for­ward on the long, long trail to Par­a­dise per­fec­tion and the un­re­vealed des­tiny of the as­sem­bling Corps of Mor­tal Fi­nal­ity.

67:6.9It should be re­corded that, when Van ap­pealed to the Most Highs of Eden­tia af­ter Lu­cifer had sus­tained Cali­gas­tia on Uran­tia, the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers dis­patched an im­me­di­ate de­ci­sion sus­tain­ing Van on ev­ery point of his con­tention. This ver­dict failed to reach him be­cause the plan­e­tary cir­cuits of com­mu­ni­ca­tion were sev­ered while it was in tran­sit. Only re­cently was this ac­tual rul­ing dis­cov­ered lodged in the pos­ses­sion of a re­lay en­ergy trans­mit­ter where it had been ma­rooned ever since the iso­la­tion of Uran­tia. With­out this dis­cov­ery, made as the re­sult of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions of the Uran­tia mid­way­ers, the re­lease of this de­ci­sion would have awaited the restora­tion of Uran­tia to the con­stel­la­tion cir­cuits. And this ap­par­ent ac­ci­dent of in­ter­plan­e­tary com­mu­ni­ca­tion was pos­si­ble be­cause en­ergy trans­mit­ters can re­ceive and trans­mit in­tel­li­gence, but they can­not ini­ti­ate com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

67:6.10The tech­ni­cal sta­tus of Van on the le­gal rec­ords of Sa­ta­nia was not ac­tu­ally and fi­nally set­tled un­til this rul­ing of the Eden­tia Fa­thers was re­corded on Je­ru­sem.

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

67:4.1When the fi­nal roll was called, the cor­po­real mem­bers of the Prince’s staff were found to have aligned them­selves as fol­lows: Van and his en­tire court of co-or­di­na­tion had re­mained loyal. Ang and three mem­bers of the food coun­cil had sur­vived. The board of an­i­mal hus­bandry were all swept into re­bel­lion as were all of the an­i­mal-con­quest ad­vis­ers. Fad and five mem­bers of the ed­u­ca­tional fac­ulty were saved. Nod and all of the com­mis­sion on in­dus­try and trade joined Cali­gas­tia. Hap and the en­tire col­lege of re­vealed re­li­gion re­mained loyal with Van and his no­ble band. Lut and the whole board of health were lost. The coun­cil of art and sci­ence re­mained loyal in its en­tirety, but Tut and the com­mis­sion on tribal gov­ern­ment all went astray. Thus were forty out of the one hun­dred saved, later to be trans­ferred to Je­ru­sem, where they re­sumed their Par­a­dise jour­ney.

74:4.3Van protested. Amadon was ab­sent, be­ing in charge of the guard of honor which had re­mained be­hind with Adam and Eve overnight. But Van’s protest was swept aside. He was told that he was like­wise too mod­est, too unas­sum­ing; that he was not far from a god him­self, else how had he lived so long on earth, and how had he brought about such a great event as the ad­vent of Adam? And as the ex­cited Eden­ites were about to seize him and carry him up to the mount for ado­ra­tion, Van made his way out through the throng and, be­ing able to com­mu­ni­cate with the mid­way­ers, sent their leader in great haste to Adam.

67:2.6For more than seven years this strug­gle con­tin­ued. Not un­til ev­ery per­son­al­ity con­cerned had made a fi­nal de­ci­sion, would or did the au­thor­i­ties of Eden­tia in­ter­fere or in­ter­vene. Not un­til then did Van and his loyal as­so­ciates re­ceive vin­di­ca­tion and re­lease from their pro­longed anx­i­ety and in­tol­er­a­ble sus­pense.

67:3.3The traitorous Prince mar­shaled the dis­loyal mid­way crea­tures and other groups of rebel per­son­al­i­ties and or­ga­nized them to ex­e­cute his bid­ding, while Van as­sem­bled the loyal mid­way­ers and other faith­ful groups and be­gan the great bat­tle for the sal­va­tion of the plan­e­tary staff and other ma­rooned ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties.

67:3.6Through­out the seven cru­cial years of the Cali­gas­tia re­bel­lion, Van was wholly de­voted to the work of min­istry to his loyal army of men, mid­way­ers, and an­gels. The spir­i­tual in­sight and moral stead­fast­ness which en­abled Van to main­tain such an un­shak­able at­ti­tude of loy­alty to the uni­verse gov­ern­ment was the prod­uct of clear think­ing, wise rea­son­ing, log­i­cal judg­ment, sin­cere mo­ti­va­tion, un­selfish pur­pose, in­tel­li­gent loy­alty, ex­pe­ri­en­tial mem­ory, dis­ci­plined char­ac­ter, and the un­ques­tion­ing ded­i­ca­tion of his per­son­al­ity to the do­ing of the will of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise.

67:3.7This seven years of wait­ing was a time of heart search­ing and soul dis­ci­pline. Such crises in the af­fairs of a uni­verse demon­strate the tremen­dous in­flu­ence of mind as a fac­tor in spir­i­tual choos­ing. Ed­u­ca­tion, train­ing, and ex­pe­ri­ence are fac­tors in most of the vi­tal de­ci­sions of all evo­lu­tion­ary moral crea­tures. But it is en­tirely pos­si­ble for the in­dwelling spirit to make di­rect con­tact with the de­ci­sion-de­ter­min­ing pow­ers of the hu­man per­son­al­ity so as to em­power the fully con­se­crated will of the crea­ture to per­form amaz­ing acts of loyal de­vo­tion to the will and the way of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise. And this is just what oc­curred in the ex­pe­ri­ence of Amadon, the mod­i­fied hu­man as­so­ciate of Van.

67:3.8Amadon is the out­stand­ing hu­man hero of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. This male de­scen­dant of An­don and Fonta was one of the one hun­dred who con­tributed life plasm to the Prince’s staff, and ever since that event he had been at­tached to Van as his as­so­ciate and hu­man as­sis­tant. Amadon elected to stand with his chief through­out the long and try­ing strug­gle. And it was an in­spir­ing sight to be­hold this child of the evo­lu­tion­ary races stand­ing un­moved by the soph­ist­ries of Dali­gas­tia while through­out the seven-year strug­gle he and his loyal as­so­ciates re­sisted with un­yield­ing for­ti­tude all of the de­cep­tive teach­ings of the bril­liant Cali­gas­tia.

67:3.9Cali­gas­tia, with a max­i­mum of in­tel­li­gence and a vast ex­pe­ri­ence in uni­verse af­fairs, went astray—em­braced sin. Amadon, with a min­i­mum of in­tel­li­gence and ut­terly de­void of uni­verse ex­pe­ri­ence, re­mained stead­fast in the ser­vice of the uni­verse and in loy­alty to his as­so­ciate. Van uti­lized both mind and spirit in a mag­nif­i­cent and ef­fec­tive com­bi­na­tion of in­tel­lec­tual de­ter­mi­na­tion and spir­i­tual in­sight, thereby achiev­ing an ex­pe­ri­en­tial level of per­son­al­ity re­al­iza­tion of the high­est at­tain­able or­der. Mind and spirit, when fully united, are po­ten­tial for the cre­ation of super­hu­man val­ues, even mor­ontia re­al­i­ties.

73:6.1In the cen­ter of the Gar­den tem­ple Van planted the long-guarded tree of life, whose leaves were for the “heal­ing of the na­tions,” and whose fruit had so long sus­tained him on earth. Van well knew that Adam and Eve would also be de­pen­dent on this gift of Eden­tia for their life main­te­nance af­ter they once ap­peared on Uran­tia in ma­te­rial form.

• led supreme court of tribal co-ordination and racial co-operation

66:5.3110. The su­preme court of tribal co-or­di­na­tion and racial co-op­er­a­tion. This su­preme coun­cil was di­rected by Van and was the court of ap­peals for all of the other nine spe­cial com­mis­sions charged with the super­vi­sion of hu­man af­fairs. This coun­cil was one of wide func­tion, be­ing in­trusted with all mat­ters of earthly con­cern which were not specif­i­cally as­signed to the other groups. This se­lected corps had been ap­proved by the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers of Eden­tia be­fore they were au­tho­rized to as­sume the func­tions of the su­preme court of Uran­tia.

• indicted Daligastia, Caligastia, and Lucifer as standing in contempt

67:2.2The pre­sen­ta­tion of this as­tound­ing de­mand was fol­lowed by the mas­terly ap­peal of Van, chair­man of the su­preme coun­cil of co-or­di­na­tion. This dis­tin­guished ad­min­is­tra­tor and able ju­rist branded the pro­posed course of Cali­gas­tia as an act bor­der­ing on plan­e­tary re­bel­lion and ap­pealed to his con­fer­ees to ab­stain from all par­tic­i­pa­tion un­til an ap­peal could be taken to Lu­cifer, the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign of Sa­ta­nia; and he won the sup­port of the en­tire staff. Ac­cord­ingly, ap­peal was taken to Je­ru­sem, and forth­with came back the or­ders des­ig­nat­ing Cali­gas­tia as su­preme sov­er­eign on Uran­tia and com­mand­ing ab­so­lute and un­ques­tion­ing al­le­giance to his man­dates. And it was in re­ply to this amaz­ing mes­sage that the no­ble Van made his mem­o­rable ad­dress of seven hours’ length in which he for­mally drew his in­dict­ment of Dali­gas­tia, Cali­gas­tia, and Lu­cifer as stand­ing in con­tempt of the sov­er­eignty of the uni­verse of Neb­a­don; and he ap­pealed to the Most Highs of Eden­tia for sup­port and con­fir­ma­tion.

• remained 150,000 years after rebellion; left 7 years after Adam’s arrival

67:4.5When the staff of one hun­dred came to Uran­tia, they were tem­porar­ily de­tached from their Thought Ad­justers. Im­me­di­ately upon the ar­rival of the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers the loyal per­son­al­i­ties (ex­cept Van) were re­turned to Je­ru­sem and were re­united with their wait­ing Ad­justers. We know not the fate of the sixty staff rebels; their Ad­justers still tarry on Je­ru­sem. Mat­ters will un­doubt­edly rest as they now are un­til the en­tire Lu­cifer re­bel­lion is fi­nally ad­ju­di­cated and the fate of all par­tic­i­pants de­creed.

• despite efforts, by 50,000 years after collapse earthly affairs disorganized and retarded

67:7.3By fifty thou­sand years af­ter the col­lapse of the plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion, earthly af­fairs were so dis­or­ga­nized and re­tarded that the hu­man race had gained very lit­tle over the gen­eral evo­lu­tion­ary sta­tus ex­ist­ing at the time of Cali­gas­tia’s ar­rival three hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years pre­vi­ously. In cer­tain re­spects prog­ress had been made; in other di­rec­tions much ground had been lost.

• preached advent of racial uplifter

73:2.1For al­most one hun­dred years prior to Taba­man­tia’s in­spec­tion, Van and his as­so­ciates, from their high­land head­quar­ters of world ethics and cul­ture, had been preach­ing the ad­vent of a prom­ised Son of God, a racial up­lifter, a teacher of truth, and the wor­thy suc­ces­sor of the traitorous Cali­gas­tia. Though the ma­jor­ity of the world’s in­hab­i­tants of those days ex­hib­ited lit­tle or no in­ter­est in such a pre­dic­tion, those who were in im­me­di­ate con­tact with Van and Amadon took such teach­ing se­ri­ously and be­gan to plan for the ac­tual re­cep­tion of the prom­ised Son.

73:2.2Van told his near­est as­so­ciates the story of the Ma­te­rial Sons on Je­ru­sem; what he had known of them be­fore ever he came to Uran­tia. He well knew that these Adamic Sons al­ways lived in sim­ple but charm­ing gar­den homes and pro­posed, eighty-three years be­fore the ar­rival of Adam and Eve, that they de­vote them­selves to the procla­ma­tion of their ad­vent and to the prepa­ra­tion of a gar­den home for their re­cep­tion.

• trained new generation of Garden workers; withstood desertions

73:4.5But it was a cause for great dis­ap­point­ment when Van, not know­ing how soon the ex­pected Son and Daugh­ter might come, sug­gested that the younger gen­er­a­tion also be trained in the work of car­ry­ing on the en­ter­prise in case their ar­rival should be de­layed. This seemed like an ad­mis­sion of lack of faith on Van’s part and made con­sid­er­able trou­ble, caused many de­ser­tions; but Van went for­ward with his plan of pre­pared­ness, mean­time fill­ing the places of the de­sert­ers with younger vol­un­teers.

• proclaimed Adam and Eve rulers of Urantia

74:2.1Adam and Eve fell asleep on Je­ru­sem, and when they awak­ened in the Fa­ther’s tem­ple on Uran­tia in the pres­ence of the mighty throng as­sem­bled to wel­come them, they were face to face with two be­ings of whom they had heard much, Van and his faith­ful as­so­ciate Amadon. These two heroes of the Cali­gas­tia se­ces­sion were the first to wel­come them in their new gar­den home.

• proclaimed Adam and Eve rulers of Urantia

74:2.6The next act was the de­liv­ery of the charge of plan­e­tary cus­tody to Adam and Eve by the se­nior Mel­chiz­e­dek, chief of the coun­cil of re­ceiver­ship on Uran­tia. The Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter took the oath of al­le­giance to the Most Highs of Nor­la­ti­adek and to Mi­chael of Neb­a­don and were pro­claimed rulers of Uran­tia by Van, who thereby re­lin­quished the tit­u­lar au­thor­ity which for over one hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years he had held by virtue of the ac­tion of the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers.

• remained 150,000 years after rebellion; left 7 years after Adam’s arrival

74:5.2The farewell of the re­ceivers oc­cu­pied the whole of a day, and dur­ing the evening the in­di­vid­ual Mel­chiz­e­deks gave Adam and Eve their part­ing ad­vice and best wishes. Adam had sev­eral times re­quested his ad­vis­ers to re­main on earth with him, but al­ways were these pe­ti­tions de­nied. The time had come when the Ma­te­rial Sons must as­sume full re­spon­si­bil­ity for the con­duct of world af­fairs. And so, at mid­night, the se­raphic trans­ports of Sa­ta­nia left the planet with four­teen be­ings for Je­ru­sem, the trans­la­tion of Van and Amadon oc­cur­ring si­mul­ta­ne­ously with the de­par­ture of the twelve Mel­chiz­e­deks.

• organized 350 groups along military lines

74:5.6Even among the Eden­ites there were those con­fused minds that leaned to­ward the Cali­gas­tia teach­ing of un­bri­dled per­sonal lib­erty; and they caused Adam no end of trou­ble; al­ways were they up­set­ting the best-laid plans for or­derly pro­gres­sion and sub­stan­tial de­vel­op­ment. He was fi­nally com­pelled to with­draw his pro­gram for im­me­di­ate so­cial­iza­tion; he fell back on Van’s method of or­ga­ni­za­tion, di­vid­ing the Eden­ites into com­pa­nies of one hun­dred with cap­tains over each and with lieu­tenants in charge of groups of ten.

• head of all superhuman personalities on Urantia until Adam

77:1.7This regime con­tin­ued un­til the tragic days of the plan­e­tary re­bel­lion, which en­snared a lit­tle over four fifths of the pri­mary mid­way­ers. The loyal corps en­tered the ser­vice of the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers, func­tion­ing un­der the tit­u­lar lead­er­ship of Van un­til the days of Adam.