will of God

2:5.5Af­ter all, the great­est ev­i­dence of the good­ness of God and the su­preme rea­son for lov­ing him is the in­dwelling gift of the Fa­ther—the Ad­juster who so pa­tiently awaits the hour when you both shall be eter­nally made one. Though you can­not find God by search­ing, if you will sub­mit to the lead­ing of the in­dwelling spirit, you will be unerringly guided, step by step, life by life, through uni­verse upon uni­verse, and age by age, un­til you fi­nally stand in the pres­ence of the Par­a­dise per­son­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

5:1.12The great God makes di­rect con­tact with mor­tal man and gives a part of his in­fi­nite and eter­nal and in­com­pre­hen­si­ble self to live and dwell within him. God has em­barked upon the eter­nal ad­ven­ture with man. If you yield to the lead­ings of the spir­i­tual forces in you and around you, you can­not fail to at­tain the high des­tiny es­tab­lished by a lov­ing God as the uni­verse goal of his as­cen­dant crea­tures from the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of space.

110:3.2The suc­cess of your Ad­juster in the en­ter­prise of pi­lot­ing you through the mor­tal life and bring­ing about your sur­vival de­pends not so much on the the­o­ries of your be­liefs as upon your de­ci­sions, de­ter­mi­na­tions, and stead­fast faith. All these move­ments of per­son­al­ity growth be­come pow­er­ful in­flu­ences aid­ing in your ad­vance­ment be­cause they help you to co-op­er­ate with the Ad­juster; they as­sist you in ceas­ing to re­sist. Thought Ad­justers suc­ceed or ap­par­ently fail in their ter­res­trial un­der­tak­ings just in so far as mor­tals suc­ceed or fail to co-op­er­ate with the scheme whereby they are to be ad­vanced along the as­cend­ing path of per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. The se­cret of sur­vival is wrapped up in the su­preme hu­man de­sire to be God­like and in the as­so­ci­ated will­ing­ness to do and be any and all things which are es­sen­tial to the fi­nal at­tain­ment of that over­mas­ter­ing de­sire.

117:5.2The in­tel­lec­tual, po­ten­tially per­sonal selves of the fi­nite emerge from the Third Source and Cen­ter and achieve fi­nite time-space De­ity syn­the­sis in the Su­preme. When the crea­ture sub­mits to the will of the Cre­ator, he does not sub­merge or sur­ren­der his per­son­al­ity; the in­di­vid­ual per­son­al­ity par­tic­i­pants in the ac­tu­al­iza­tion of the fi­nite God do not lose their vo­li­tional self­hood by so func­tion­ing. Rather are such per­son­al­i­ties pro­gres­sively aug­mented by par­tic­i­pa­tion in this great De­ity ad­ven­ture; by such union with di­vin­ity man ex­alts, en­riches, spir­i­tu­al­izes, and uni­fies his evolv­ing self to the very thresh­old of su­prem­acy.

128:1.6The Naz­a­reth car­pen­ter now fully un­der­stood the work be­fore him, but he chose to live his hu­man life in the chan­nel of its nat­u­ral flow­ing. And in some of these mat­ters he is in­deed an ex­am­ple to his mor­tal crea­tures, even as it is re­corded: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Je­sus, who, be­ing of the na­ture of God, thought it not strange to be equal with God. But he made him­self to be of lit­tle im­port and, tak­ing upon him­self the form of a crea­ture, was born in the like­ness of man­kind. And be­ing thus fash­ioned as a man, he hum­bled him­self and be­came obe­di­ent to death, even the death of the cross.”

128:1.12Al­ways, even af­ter his emer­gence into the larger life on earth, Je­sus was sub­mis­sively sub­ject to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

130:2.2At their inn there also lodged a mer­chant from Mon­go­lia, and since this Far-East­erner talked Greek fairly well, Je­sus had sev­eral long vis­its with him. This man was much im­pressed with Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life and never for­got his words of wis­dom re­gard­ing “the liv­ing of the heav­enly life while on earth by means of daily sub­mis­sion to the will of the heav­enly Fa­ther.” This mer­chant was a Taoist, and he had thereby be­come a strong be­liever in the doc­trine of a uni­ver­sal De­ity. When he re­turned to Mon­go­lia, he be­gan to teach these ad­vanced truths to his neigh­bors and to his busi­ness as­so­ciates, and as a di­rect re­sult of such ac­tiv­i­ties, his el­dest son de­cided to be­come a Taoist priest. This young man ex­erted a great in­flu­ence in be­half of ad­vanced truth through­out his life­time and was fol­lowed by a son and a grand­son who like­wise were de­vot­edly loyal to the doc­trine of the One God—the Su­preme Ruler of Heaven.

131:2.8“Yah­weh is the God of my sal­va­tion; there­fore in the di­vine name will I put my trust. I will trust in the Lord with all my heart; I will lean not upon my own un­der­stand­ing. In all my ways I will ac­knowl­edge him, and he shall di­rect my paths. The Lord is faith­ful; he keeps his word with those who serve him; the just shall live by his faith. If you do not well, it is be­cause sin lies at the door; men reap the evil they plough and the sin they sow. Fret not your­self be­cause of evil­do­ers. If you re­gard in­iq­uity in your heart, the Lord will not hear you; if you sin against God, you also wrong your own soul. God will bring ev­ery man’s work to judg­ment with ev­ery se­cret thing, whether it be good or evil. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

133:7.10A hu­man mind, built up solely out of the con­scious­ness of phys­i­cal sen­sa­tions, could never at­tain spir­i­tual lev­els; this kind of ma­te­rial mind would be ut­terly lack­ing in a sense of moral val­ues and would be with­out a guid­ing sense of spir­i­tual dom­i­nance which is so es­sen­tial to achiev­ing har­mo­nious per­son­al­ity unity in time, and which is in­sep­a­ra­ble from per­son­al­ity sur­vival in eter­nity.

135:11.3These dis­ci­ples were amazed at John’s pro­nounce­ment, so much so that they de­parted in si­lence. John was also much ag­i­tated, for he per­ceived that he had ut­tered a prophecy. Never again did he wholly doubt the mis­sion and di­vin­ity of Je­sus. But it was a sore dis­ap­point­ment to John that Je­sus sent him no word, that he came not to see him, and that he ex­er­cised none of his great power to de­liver him from prison. But Je­sus knew all about this. He had great love for John, but be­ing now cog­nizant of his di­vine na­ture and know­ing fully the great things in prepa­ra­tion for John when he de­parted from this world and also know­ing that John’s work on earth was fin­ished, he con­strained him­self not to in­ter­fere in the nat­u­ral out­work­ing of the great preacher-prophet’s ca­reer.

136:4.4These forty days were the oc­ca­sion of the fi­nal con­fer­ence be­tween the hu­man and the di­vine minds, or rather the first real func­tion­ing of these two minds as now made one. The re­sults of this mo­men­tous sea­son of med­i­ta­tion demon­strated con­clu­sively that the di­vine mind has tri­umphantly and spir­i­tu­ally dom­i­nated the hu­man in­tel­lect. The mind of man has be­come the mind of God from this time on, and though the self­hood of the mind of man is ever pres­ent, al­ways does this spir­i­tu­al­ized hu­man mind say, “Not my will but yours be done.”

136:6.4Be­fore his bap­tismal il­lu­mi­na­tion he had lived in per­fect sub­mis­sion to the will and guid­ance of his heav­enly Fa­ther. He em­phat­i­cally de­cided to con­tinue on in just such im­plicit mor­tal de­pen­dence on the Fa­ther’s will. He pur­posed to fol­low the un­nat­u­ral course—he de­cided not to seek self-preser­va­tion. He chose to go on pur­su­ing the pol­icy of re­fus­ing to de­fend him­self. He for­mu­lated his con­clu­sions in the words of Scrip­ture fa­mil­iar to his hu­man mind: “Man shall not live by bread alone but by ev­ery word that pro­ceeds from the mouth of God.” In reach­ing this con­clu­sion in re­gard to the ap­petite of the phys­i­cal na­ture as ex­pressed in hunger for food, the Son of Man made his fi­nal dec­la­ra­tion con­cern­ing all other urges of the flesh and the nat­u­ral im­pulses of hu­man na­ture.

138:7.1Je­sus had planned for a quiet mis­sion­ary cam­paign of five months’ per­sonal work. He did not tell the apos­tles how long this was to last; they worked from week to week. And early on this first day of the week, just as he was about to an­nounce this to his twelve apos­tles, Si­mon Pe­ter, James Zeb­e­dee, and Ju­das Is­car­iot came to have pri­vate con­verse with him. Tak­ing Je­sus aside, Pe­ter made bold to say: “Mas­ter, we come at the be­hest of our as­so­ciates to in­quire whether the time is not now ripe to en­ter into the king­dom. And will you pro­claim the king­dom at Ca­per­naum, or are we to move on to Je­ru­sa­lem? And when shall we learn, each of us, the po­si­tions we are to oc­cupy with you in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom—” and Pe­ter would have gone on ask­ing fur­ther ques­tions, but Je­sus raised an ad­mon­i­tory hand and stopped him. And beck­on­ing the other apos­tles stand­ing near by to join them, Je­sus said: “My lit­tle chil­dren, how long shall I bear with you! Have I not made it plain to you that my king­dom is not of this world? I have told you many times that I have not come to sit on David’s throne, and now how is it that you are in­quir­ing which place each of you will oc­cupy in the Fa­ther’s king­dom? Can you not per­ceive that I have called you as am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual king­dom? Do you not un­der­stand that soon, very soon, you are to rep­re­sent me in the world and in the procla­ma­tion of the king­dom, even as I now rep­re­sent my Fa­ther who is in heaven? Can it be that I have cho­sen you and in­structed you as mes­sen­gers of the king­dom, and yet you do not com­pre­hend the na­ture and sig­nif­i­cance of this com­ing king­dom of di­vine pre-em­i­nence in the hearts of men? My friends, hear me once more. Ban­ish from your minds this idea that my king­dom is a rule of power or a reign of glory. In­deed, all power in heaven and on earth will pres­ently be given into my hands, but it is not the Fa­ther’s will that we use this di­vine en­dow­ment to glo­rify our­selves dur­ing this age. In an­other age you shall in­deed sit with me in power and glory, but it be­hooves us now to sub­mit to the will of the Fa­ther and to go forth in hum­ble obe­di­ence to ex­e­cute his bid­ding on earth.”

140:8.3Je­sus made clear to the three the dif­fer­ence be­tween the re­quire­ments of apos­tle­ship and dis­ci­ple­ship. And even then he did not for­bid the ex­er­cise of pru­dence and fore­sight by the twelve. What he preached against was not fore­thought but anx­i­ety, worry. He taught the ac­tive and alert sub­mis­sion to God’s will. In an­swer to many of their ques­tions re­gard­ing fru­gal­ity and thrifti­ness, he sim­ply called at­ten­tion to his life as car­pen­ter, boat­maker, and fish­er­man, and to his care­ful or­ga­ni­za­tion of the twelve. He sought to make it clear that the world is not to be re­garded as an en­emy; that the cir­cum­stances of life con­sti­tute a di­vine dis­pen­sa­tion work­ing along with the chil­dren of God.

142:6.8Nicode­mus was thor­oughly sin­cere. He was deeply im­pressed but went away be­wil­dered. Nicode­mus was ac­com­plished in self-de­vel­op­ment, in self-re­straint, and even in high moral qual­i­ties. He was re­fined, ego­is­tic, and al­tru­is­tic; but he did not know how to sub­mit his will to the will of the di­vine Fa­ther as a lit­tle child is will­ing to sub­mit to the guid­ance and lead­ing of a wise and lov­ing earthly fa­ther, thereby be­com­ing in re­al­ity a son of God, a pro­gres­sive heir of the eter­nal king­dom.

146:3.5“The Son is nat­u­rally en­dowed with the life of the Fa­ther. Hav­ing been en­dowed with the liv­ing spirit of the Fa­ther, you are there­fore sons of God. You sur­vive your life in the ma­te­rial world of the flesh be­cause you are iden­ti­fied with the Fa­ther’s liv­ing spirit, the gift of eter­nal life. Many, in­deed, had this life be­fore I came forth from the Fa­ther, and many more have re­ceived this spirit be­cause they be­lieved my word; but I de­clare that, when I re­turn to the Fa­ther, he will send his spirit into the hearts of all men.

146:3.6“While you can­not ob­serve the di­vine spirit at work in your minds, there is a prac­ti­cal method of dis­cov­er­ing the de­gree to which you have yielded the con­trol of your soul pow­ers to the teach­ing and guid­ance of this in­dwelling spirit of the heav­enly Fa­ther, and that is the de­gree of your love for your fel­low men. This spirit of the Fa­ther par­takes of the love of the Fa­ther, and as it dom­i­nates man, it un­fail­ingly leads in the di­rec­tions of di­vine wor­ship and lov­ing re­gard for one’s fel­lows. At first you be­lieve that you are sons of God be­cause my teach­ing has made you more con­scious of the in­ner lead­ings of our Fa­ther’s in­dwelling pres­ence; but pres­ently the Spirit of Truth shall be poured out upon all flesh, and it will live among men and teach all men, even as I now live among you and speak to you the words of truth. And this Spirit of Truth, speak­ing for the spir­i­tual en­dow­ments of your souls, will help you to know that you are the sons of God. It will un­fail­ingly bear wit­ness with the Fa­ther’s in­dwelling pres­ence, your spirit, then dwell­ing in all men as it now dwells in some, telling you that you are in re­al­ity the sons of God.

146:3.7“Ev­ery earth child who fol­lows the lead­ing of this spirit shall even­tu­ally know the will of God, and he who sur­ren­ders to the will of my Fa­ther shall abide for­ever. The way from the earth life to the eter­nal es­tate has not been made plain to you, but there is a way, there al­ways has been, and I have come to make that way new and liv­ing. He who en­ters the king­dom has eter­nal life al­ready—he shall never per­ish. But much of this you will the bet­ter un­der­stand when I shall have re­turned to the Fa­ther and you are able to view your pres­ent ex­pe­ri­ences in ret­ro­spect.”

149:5.3“Much of man’s sor­row is born of the dis­ap­point­ment of his am­bi­tions and the wound­ing of his pride. Al­though men owe a duty to them­selves to make the best of their lives on earth, hav­ing thus sin­cerely ex­erted them­selves, they should cheer­fully ac­cept their lot and ex­er­cise in­ge­nu­ity in mak­ing the most of that which has fallen to their hands. All too many of man’s trou­bles take ori­gin in the fear soil of his own nat­u­ral heart. ‘The wicked flee when no man pur­sues.’ ‘The wicked are like the trou­bled sea, for it can­not rest, but its wa­ters cast up mire and dirt; there is no peace, says God, for the wicked.’

168:0.11When the mourn­ers saw that Mary had gone to greet Je­sus, they with­drew for a short dis­tance while both Martha and Mary talked with the Mas­ter and re­ceived fur­ther words of com­fort and ex­hor­ta­tion to main­tain strong faith in the Fa­ther and com­plete res­ig­na­tion to the di­vine will.

171:4.7Then turn­ing to his apos­tles, Je­sus said: “From olden times the proph­ets have per­ished in Je­ru­sa­lem, and it is only be­fit­ting that the Son of Man should go up to the city of the Fa­ther’s house to be of­fered up as the price of hu­man big­otry and as the re­sult of re­li­gious prej­u­dice and spir­i­tual blind­ness. O Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­ru­sa­lem, which kills the proph­ets and stones the teach­ers of truth! How of­ten would I have gath­ered your chil­dren to­gether even as a hen gath­ers her own brood un­der her wings, but you would not let me do it! Be­hold, your house is about to be left to you des­o­late! You will many times de­sire to see me, but you shall not. You will then seek but not find me.” And when he had spo­ken, he turned to those around him and said: “Nev­er­the­less, let us go up to Je­ru­sa­lem to at­tend the Pass­over and do that which be­comes us in ful­fill­ing the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.”

171:8.14When they had fin­ished their lunch, and af­ter the mul­ti­tude of fol­low­ers had gone on to­ward Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­sus, stand­ing there be­fore the apos­tles in the shade of an over­hang­ing rock by the road­side, with cheer­ful dig­nity and a gra­cious majesty pointed his fin­ger west­ward, say­ing: “Come, my breth­ren, let us go on into Je­ru­sa­lem, there to re­ceive that which awaits us; thus shall we ful­fill the will of the heav­enly Fa­ther in all things.”

178:3.3“You look down on yon­der city in sor­row, for you have heard my words telling of the end of Je­ru­sa­lem. I have fore­warned you lest you should per­ish in her de­struc­tion and so de­lay the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom. Like­wise do I warn you to take heed lest you need­lessly ex­pose your­selves to peril when they come to take the Son of Man. I must go, but you are to re­main to wit­ness to this gospel when I have gone, even as I di­rected that Laz­a­rus flee from the wrath of man that he might live to make known the glory of God. If it is the Fa­ther’s will that I de­part, noth­ing you may do can frus­trate the di­vine plan. Take heed to your­selves lest they kill you also. Let your souls be valiant in de­fense of the gospel by spirit power but be not mis­led into any fool­ish at­tempt to de­fend the Son of Man. I need no de­fense by the hand of man; the armies of heaven are even now near at hand; but I am de­ter­mined to do the will of my Fa­ther in heaven, and there­fore must we sub­mit to that which is so soon to come upon us.

180:2.2“As the Fa­ther has loved me, so have I loved you. Live in my love even as I live in the Fa­ther’s love. If you do as I have taught you, you shall abide in my love even as I have kept the Fa­ther’s word and ev­er­more abide in his love.”

181:2.11“And now, Si­mon, when you do fi­nally see all of this, and af­ter you have shaken off your de­pres­sion and have gone forth pro­claim­ing this gospel in great power, never for­get that I was with you even through all of your sea­son of dis­cour­age­ment, and that I will go on with you to the very end. You shall al­ways be my apos­tle, and af­ter you be­come will­ing to see by the eye of the spirit and more fully to yield your will to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, then will you re­turn to la­bor as my am­bas­sador, and no one shall take away from you the au­thor­ity which I have con­ferred upon you, be­cause of your slow­ness of com­pre­hend­ing the truths I have taught you. And so, Si­mon, once more I warn you that they who fight with the sword per­ish with the sword, while they who la­bor in the spirit achieve life ev­er­last­ing in the king­dom to come with joy and peace in the king­dom which now is. And when the work given into your hands is fin­ished on earth, you, Si­mon, shall sit down with me in my king­dom over there. You shall re­ally see the king­dom you have longed for, but not in this life. Con­tinue to be­lieve in me and in that which I have re­vealed to you, and you shall re­ceive the gift of eter­nal life.”

181:2.15Je­sus then stepped over to James Zeb­e­dee, who stood in si­lence as the Mas­ter ad­dressed him, say­ing: “James, when you and your younger brother once came to me seek­ing prefer­ment in the hon­ors of the king­dom, and I told you such hon­ors were for the Fa­ther to be­stow, I asked if you were able to drink my cup, and both of you an­swered that you were. Even if you were not then able, and if you are not now able, you will soon be pre­pared for such a ser­vice by the ex­pe­ri­ence you are about to pass through. By such be­hav­ior you an­gered your breth­ren at that time. If they have not al­ready fully for­given you, they will when they see you drink my cup. Whether your min­istry be long or short, pos­sess your soul in pa­tience. When the new teacher comes, let him teach you the poise of com­pas­sion and that sym­pa­thetic tol­er­ance which is born of sub­lime con­fi­dence in me and of per­fect sub­mis­sion to the Fa­ther’s will. Ded­i­cate your life to the dem­on­stra­tion of that com­bined hu­man af­fec­tion and di­vine dig­nity of the God-know­ing and Son-be­liev­ing dis­ci­ple. And all who thus live will re­veal the gospel even in the man­ner of their death. You and your brother John will go dif­fer­ent ways, and one of you may sit down with me in the eter­nal king­dom long be­fore the other. It would help you much if you would learn that true wis­dom em­braces dis­cre­tion as well as cour­age. You should learn sagac­ity to go along with your ag­gres­sive­ness. There will come those su­preme mo­ments wherein my dis­ci­ples will not hes­i­tate to lay down their lives for this gospel, but in all or­di­nary cir­cum­stances it would be far bet­ter to pla­cate the wrath of un­be­liev­ers that you might live and con­tinue to preach the glad tid­ings. As far as lies in your power, live long on the earth that your life of many years may be fruit­ful in souls won for the heav­enly king­dom.”

182:2.1The apos­tles were greatly shocked when they re­turned to their camp and found Ju­das ab­sent. While the eleven were en­gaged in a heated dis­cus­sion of their traitorous fel­low apos­tle, David Zeb­e­dee and John Mark took Je­sus to one side and re­vealed that they had kept Ju­das un­der ob­ser­va­tion for sev­eral days, and that they knew he in­tended to be­tray him into the hands of his en­e­mies. Je­sus lis­tened to them but only said: “My friends, noth­ing can hap­pen to the Son of Man un­less the Fa­ther in heaven so wills. Let not your hearts be trou­bled; all things will work to­gether for the glory of God and the sal­va­tion of men.”

182:2.2The cheer­ful at­ti­tude of Je­sus was wan­ing. As the hour passed, he grew more and more se­ri­ous, even sor­row­ful. The apos­tles, be­ing much ag­i­tated, were loath to re­turn to their tents even when re­quested to do so by the Mas­ter him­self. Re­turn­ing from his talk with David and John, he ad­dressed his last words to all eleven, say­ing: “My friends, go to your rest. Pre­pare your­selves for the work of to­mor­row. Re­mem­ber, we should all sub­mit our­selves to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. My peace I leave with you.” And hav­ing thus spo­ken, he mo­tioned them to their tents, but as they went, he called to Pe­ter, James, and John, say­ing, “I de­sire that you re­main with me for a lit­tle while.”

186:2.3Je­sus was con­vinced that it was the will of the Fa­ther that he sub­mit him­self to the nat­u­ral and or­di­nary course of hu­man events just as ev­ery other mor­tal crea­ture must, and there­fore he re­fused to em­ploy even his purely hu­man pow­ers of per­sua­sive elo­quence to in­flu­ence the out­come of the machi­na­tions of his so­cially near­sighted and spir­i­tu­ally blinded fel­low mor­tals. Al­though Je­sus lived and died on Uran­tia, his whole hu­man ca­reer, from first to last, was a spec­ta­cle de­signed to in­flu­ence and in­struct the en­tire uni­verse of his cre­ation and un­ceas­ing up­hold­ing.

25:4.17Tech­ni­cal Ad­vis­ers are ded­i­cated to the work of pre­vent­ing de­lay, fa­cil­i­tat­ing prog­ress, and coun­sel­ing achieve­ment. There is al­ways a best and right way to do things; there is al­ways the tech­nique of per­fec­tion, a di­vine method, and these ad­vis­ers know how to di­rect us all in the find­ing of this bet­ter way.

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

108:2.105. Dec­la­ra­tion of in­ten­tion to do the will of God. We ob­serve that many mor­tals on the worlds of space may be ap­par­ently in readi­ness to re­ceive Ad­justers, and yet the Mon­i­tors do not ap­pear. We go on watch­ing such crea­tures as they live from day to day, and pres­ently they qui­etly, al­most un­con­sciously, ar­rive at the de­ci­sion to be­gin the pur­suit of the do­ing of the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. And then we ob­serve the im­me­di­ate dis­patch of the Thought Ad­justers.

1:7.2Man does not achieve union with God as a drop of wa­ter might find unity with the ocean. Man at­tains di­vine union by pro­gres­sive re­cip­ro­cal spir­i­tual com­mu­nion, by per­son­al­ity in­ter­course with the per­sonal God, by in­creas­ingly at­tain­ing the di­vine na­ture through whole­hearted and in­tel­li­gent con­for­mity to the di­vine will. Such a sub­lime re­la­tion­ship can ex­ist only be­tween per­son­al­i­ties.

3:5.3In the af­fairs of men’s hearts the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther may not al­ways have his way; but in the con­duct and des­tiny of a planet the di­vine plan pre­vails; the eter­nal pur­pose of wis­dom and love tri­umphs.

12:7.1There is op­er­a­tive through­out all time and space and with re­gard to all re­al­ity of what­ever na­ture an in­ex­orable and im­per­sonal law which is equiv­a­lent to the func­tion of a cos­mic prov­i­dence. Mercy char­ac­ter­izes God’s at­ti­tude of love for the in­di­vid­ual; im­par­tial­ity mo­ti­vates God’s at­ti­tude to­ward the to­tal. The will of God does not nec­es­sar­ily pre­vail in the part—the heart of any one per­son­al­ity—but his will does ac­tu­ally rule the whole, the uni­verse of uni­verses.

12:7.7The will of God does not uni­formly pre­vail in the heart of the God-seek­ing ma­te­rial mor­tal, but if the time frame is en­larged be­yond the mo­ment to em­brace the whole of the first life, then does God’s will be­come in­creas­ingly dis­cern­i­ble in the spirit fruits which are borne in the lives of the spirit-led chil­dren of God. And then, if hu­man life is fur­ther en­larged to in­clude the mor­ontia ex­pe­ri­ence, the di­vine will is ob­served to shine brighter and brighter in the spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing acts of those crea­tures of time who have be­gun to taste the di­vine de­lights of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the re­la­tion­ship of the per­son­al­ity of man with the per­son­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

115:3.13The three Ab­so­lutes of po­ten­tial­ity are op­er­a­tive on the purely eter­nal level of the cos­mos, hence never func­tion as such on sub­ab­so­lute lev­els. On the de­scend­ing lev­els of re­al­ity the tri­odity of po­ten­tial­ity is man­i­fest with the Ul­ti­mate and upon the Su­preme. The po­ten­tial may fail to time-ac­tu­al­ize with re­spect to a part on some sub­ab­so­lute level, but never in the ag­gre­gate. The will of God does ul­ti­mately pre­vail, not al­ways con­cern­ing the in­di­vid­ual but in­vari­ably con­cern­ing the to­tal.

• is passport to infinity, perfection

1:3.6In the uni­verses God the Fa­ther is, in po­ten­tial, the over­con­trol­ler of mat­ter, mind, and spirit. Only by means of his far-flung per­son­al­ity cir­cuit does God deal di­rectly with the per­son­al­i­ties of his vast cre­ation of will crea­tures, but he is con­tactable (out­side of Par­a­dise) only in the pres­ences of his frag­mented en­ti­ties, the will of God abroad in the uni­verses. This Par­a­dise spirit that in­dwells the minds of the mor­tals of time and there fos­ters the evo­lu­tion of the im­mor­tal soul of the sur­viv­ing crea­ture is of the na­ture and di­vin­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. But the minds of such evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures orig­i­nate in the lo­cal uni­verses and must gain di­vine per­fec­tion by achiev­ing those ex­pe­ri­en­tial trans­for­ma­tions of spir­i­tual at­tain­ment which are the in­ev­i­ta­ble re­sult of a crea­ture’s choos­ing to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• is secret of survival and perfection

3:5.15Through­out the uni­verse, ev­ery unit is re­garded as a part of the whole. Sur­vival of the part is de­pen­dent on co-op­er­a­tion with the plan and pur­pose of the whole, the whole­hearted de­sire and per­fect will­ing­ness to do the Fa­ther’s di­vine will. The only evo­lu­tion­ary world with­out er­ror (the pos­si­bil­ity of un­wise judg­ment) would be a world with­out free in­tel­li­gence. In the Ha­vona uni­verse there are a bil­lion per­fect worlds with their per­fect in­hab­i­tants, but evolv­ing man must be fal­li­ble if he is to be free. Free and in­ex­pe­ri­enced in­tel­li­gence can­not pos­si­bly at first be uni­formly wise. The pos­si­bil­ity of mis­taken judg­ment (evil) be­comes sin only when the hu­man will con­sciously en­dorses and know­ingly em­braces a de­lib­er­ate im­moral judg­ment.

• is supreme virtue

16:7.10Moral acts are those hu­man per­for­mances which are char­ac­ter­ized by the high­est in­tel­li­gence, di­rected by se­lec­tive dis­crim­i­na­tion in the choice of su­pe­rior ends as well as in the se­lec­tion of moral means to at­tain these ends. Such con­duct is vir­tu­ous. Su­preme virtue, then, is whole­heart­edly to choose to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• always benefits, never destroys

94:6.6His un­der­stand­ing of the eter­nal pur­pose of God was clear, for he said: “The Ab­so­lute De­ity does not strive but is al­ways vic­to­ri­ous; he does not co­erce man­kind but al­ways stands ready to re­spond to their true de­sires; the will of God is eter­nal in pa­tience and eter­nal in the in­evitabil­ity of its ex­pres­sion.” And of the true re­li­gion­ist he said, in ex­press­ing the truth that it is more blessed to give than to re­ceive: “The good man seeks not to re­tain truth for him­self but rather at­tempts to be­stow these riches upon his fel­lows, for that is the re­al­iza­tion of truth. The will of the Ab­so­lute God al­ways ben­e­fits, never de­stroys; the pur­pose of the true be­liever is al­ways to act but never to co­erce.”

• discloses way of truth

102:1.1The work of the Thought Ad­juster con­sti­tutes the ex­pla­na­tion of the trans­la­tion of man’s prim­i­tive and evo­lu­tion­ary sense of duty into that higher and more cer­tain faith in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of rev­e­la­tion. There must be per­fec­tion hunger in man’s heart to in­sure ca­pac­ity for com­pre­hend­ing the faith paths to su­preme at­tain­ment. If any man chooses to do the di­vine will, he shall know the way of truth. It is lit­er­ally true, “Hu­man things must be known in or­der to be loved, but di­vine things must be loved in or­der to be known.” But hon­est doubts and sin­cere ques­tion­ings are not sin; such at­ti­tudes merely spell de­lay in the pro­gres­sive jour­ney to­ward per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. Child­like trust se­cures man’s en­trance into the king­dom of heav­enly as­cent, but prog­ress is wholly de­pen­dent on the vig­or­ous ex­er­cise of the ro­bust and con­fi­dent faith of the full-grown man.

• is passport to infinity, perfection

106:9.11Sooner or later all uni­verse per­son­al­i­ties be­gin to re­al­ize that the fi­nal quest of eter­nity is the end­less ex­plo­ration of in­fin­ity, the never-end­ing voy­age of dis­cov­ery into the ab­so­lute­ness of the First Source and Cen­ter. Sooner or later we all be­come aware that all crea­ture growth is pro­por­tional to Fa­ther iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. We ar­rive at the un­der­stand­ing that liv­ing the will of God is the eter­nal pass­port to the end­less pos­si­bil­ity of in­fin­ity it­self. Mor­tals will some­time re­al­ize that suc­cess in the quest of the In­fi­nite is di­rectly pro­por­tional to the achieve­ment of Fa­ther­like­ness, and that in this uni­verse age the re­al­i­ties of the Fa­ther are re­vealed within the qual­i­ties of di­vin­ity. And these qual­i­ties of di­vin­ity are per­son­ally ap­pro­pri­ated by uni­verse crea­tures in the ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing di­vinely, and to live di­vinely means ac­tu­ally to live the will of God.

106:9.12To ma­te­rial, evo­lu­tion­ary, fi­nite crea­tures, a life pred­i­cated on the liv­ing of the Fa­ther’s will leads di­rectly to the at­tain­ment of spirit su­prem­acy in the per­son­al­ity arena and brings such crea­tures one step nearer the com­pre­hen­sion of the Fa­ther-In­fi­nite. Such a Fa­ther life is one pred­i­cated on truth, sen­si­tive to beauty, and dom­i­nated by good­ness. Such a God-know­ing per­son is in­wardly il­lu­mi­nated by wor­ship and out­wardly de­voted to the whole­hearted ser­vice of the uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood of all per­son­al­i­ties, a ser­vice min­istry which is filled with mercy and mo­ti­vated by love, while all these life qual­i­ties are uni­fied in the evolv­ing per­son­al­ity on ever-as­cend­ing lev­els of cos­mic wis­dom, self-re­al­iza­tion, God-find­ing, and Fa­ther wor­ship.

• is following leading of indwelling Adjuster

107:0.4Any mor­tal who has seen a Cre­ator Son has seen the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, and he who is in­dwelt by a di­vine Ad­juster is in­dwelt by the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. Ev­ery mor­tal who is con­sciously or un­con­sciously fol­low­ing the lead­ing of his in­dwelling Ad­juster is liv­ing in ac­cor­dance with the will of God. Con­scious­ness of Ad­juster pres­ence is con­scious­ness of God’s pres­ence. Eter­nal fu­sion of the Ad­juster with the evo­lu­tion­ary soul of man is the fac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of eter­nal union with God as a uni­verse as­so­ciate of De­ity.

• is sharing inner life with God

111:5.1The do­ing of the will of God is noth­ing more or less than an ex­hi­bi­tion of crea­ture will­ing­ness to share the in­ner life with God—with the very God who has made such a crea­ture life of in­ner mean­ing-value pos­si­ble. Shar­ing is God­like—di­vine. God shares all with the Eter­nal Son and the In­fi­nite Spirit, while they, in turn, share all things with the di­vine Sons and spirit Daugh­ters of the uni­verses.

• is secret of survival and perfection

111:5.2The im­i­ta­tion of God is the key to per­fec­tion; the do­ing of his will is the se­cret of sur­vival and of per­fec­tion in sur­vival.

• is spiritual finding of Father

111:5.6This choos­ing of the Fa­ther’s will is the spir­i­tual find­ing of the spirit Fa­ther by mor­tal man, even though an age must pass be­fore the crea­ture son may ac­tu­ally stand in the fac­tual pres­ence of God on Par­a­dise. This choos­ing does not so much con­sist in the nega­tion of crea­ture will—“Not my will but yours be done”—as it con­sists in the crea­ture’s pos­i­tive af­fir­ma­tion: “It is my will that your will be done.” And if this choice is made, sooner or later will the God-choos­ing son find in­ner union (fu­sion) with the in­dwelling God frag­ment, while this same per­fect­ing son will find su­preme per­son­al­ity sat­is­fac­tion in the wor­ship com­mu­nion of the per­son­al­ity of man and the per­son­al­ity of his Maker, two per­son­al­i­ties whose cre­ative at­tri­butes have eter­nally joined in self-willed mu­tu­al­ity of ex­pres­sion—the birth of an­other eter­nal part­ner­ship of the will of man and the will of God.

• is partnership with the choice of God over any alternative
• makes one more like God

130:2.7This was a con­fer­ence which lasted well into the night, in the course of which the young man re­quested Je­sus to tell him the dif­fer­ence be­tween the will of God and that hu­man mind act of choos­ing which is also called will. In sub­stance Je­sus said: The will of God is the way of God, part­ner­ship with the choice of God in the face of any po­ten­tial al­ter­na­tive. To do the will of God, there­fore, is the pro­gres­sive ex­pe­ri­ence of be­com­ing more and more like God, and God is the source and des­tiny of all that is good and beau­ti­ful and true. The will of man is the way of man, the sum and sub­stance of that which the mor­tal chooses to be and do. Will is the de­lib­er­ate choice of a self-con­scious be­ing which leads to de­ci­sion-con­duct based on in­tel­li­gent re­flec­tion.

• makes one more like God

130:4.3The high­est level to which a fi­nite crea­ture can pro­gress is the rec­og­ni­tion of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the know­ing of the Su­preme. And even then such be­ings of fi­nal­ity des­tiny go on ex­pe­ri­enc­ing change in the mo­tions of the phys­i­cal world and in its ma­te­rial phe­nom­ena. Like­wise do they re­main aware of self­hood pro­gres­sion in their con­tin­u­ing as­cen­sion of the spir­i­tual uni­verse and of grow­ing con­scious­ness in their deep­en­ing ap­pre­ci­a­tion of, and re­sponse to, the in­tel­lec­tual cos­mos. Only in the per­fec­tion, har­mony, and una­nim­ity of will can the crea­ture be­come as one with the Cre­ator; and such a state of di­vin­ity is at­tained and main­tained only by the crea­ture’s con­tin­u­ing to live in time and eter­nity by con­sis­tently con­form­ing his fi­nite per­sonal will to the di­vine will of the Cre­ator. Al­ways must the de­sire to do the Fa­ther’s will be su­preme in the soul and dom­i­nant over the mind of an as­cend­ing son of God.

• is passport to infinity, perfection

131:5.3“Praise God by seek­ing the plea­sure of the Wise One. Wor­ship the God of light by joy­fully walk­ing in the paths or­dained by his re­vealed re­li­gion. There is but one Su­preme God, the Lord of Lights. We wor­ship him who made the wa­ters, plants, an­i­mals, the earth, and the heav­ens. Our God is Lord, most benef­i­cent. We wor­ship the most beau­teous, the boun­ti­ful Im­mor­tal, en­dowed with eter­nal light. God is far­thest from us and at the same time near­est to us in that he dwells within our souls. Our God is the di­vine and holi­est Spirit of Par­a­dise, and yet he is more friendly to man than the most friendly of all crea­tures. God is most help­ful to us in this great­est of all busi­nesses, the know­ing of him­self. God is our most adorable and righ­teous friend; he is our wis­dom, life, and vigor of soul and body. Through our good think­ing the wise Cre­ator will en­able us to do his will, thereby at­tain­ing the re­al­iza­tion of all that is di­vinely per­fect.

• is not the easy way

136:9.4As the days passed, with ever-in­creas­ing clear­ness Je­sus per­ceived what kind of a truth-re­vealer he was to be­come. He dis­cerned that God’s way was not go­ing to be the easy way. He be­gan to re­al­ize that the cup of the re­main­der of his hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence might pos­si­bly be bit­ter, but he de­cided to drink it.

• in any earthly occupation

155:6.11Never for­get there is only one ad­ven­ture which is more sat­is­fy­ing and thrilling than the at­tempt to dis­cover the will of the liv­ing God, and that is the su­preme ex­pe­ri­ence of hon­estly try­ing to do that di­vine will. And fail not to re­mem­ber that the will of God can be done in any earthly oc­cu­pa­tion. Some call­ings are not holy and oth­ers sec­u­lar. All things are sa­cred in the lives of those who are spirit led; that is, sub­or­di­nated to truth, en­no­bled by love, dom­i­nated by mercy, and re­strained by fair­ness—jus­tice. The spirit which my Fa­ther and I shall send into the world is not only the Spirit of Truth but also the spirit of ide­al­is­tic beauty.

148:4.2“Do not make the mis­take of con­fus­ing evil with the evil one, more cor­rectly the in­iq­ui­tous one. He whom you call the evil one is the son of self-love, the high ad­min­is­tra­tor who know­ingly went into de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the rule of my Fa­ther and his loyal Sons. But I have al­ready van­quished these sin­ful rebels. Make clear in your mind these dif­fer­ent at­ti­tudes to­ward the Fa­ther and his uni­verse. Never for­get these laws of re­la­tion to the Fa­ther’s will:

148:4.3“Evil is the un­con­scious or un­in­tended trans­gres­sion of the di­vine law, the Fa­ther’s will. Evil is like­wise the mea­sure of the im­per­fect­ness of obe­di­ence to the Fa­ther’s will.

148:4.4“Sin is the con­scious, know­ing, and de­lib­er­ate trans­gres­sion of the di­vine law, the Fa­ther’s will. Sin is the mea­sure of un­will­ing­ness to be di­vinely led and spir­i­tu­ally di­rected.

5:1.11Mor­tal man may draw near God and may re­peat­edly for­sake the di­vine will so long as the power of choice re­mains. Man’s fi­nal doom is not sealed un­til he has lost the power to choose the Fa­ther’s will. There is never a clo­sure of the Fa­ther’s heart to the need and the pe­ti­tion of his chil­dren. Only do his off­spring close their hearts for­ever to the Fa­ther’s draw­ing power when they fi­nally and for­ever lose the de­sire to do his di­vine will—to know him and to be like him. Like­wise is man’s eter­nal des­tiny as­sured when Ad­juster fu­sion pro­claims to the uni­verse that such an as­cender has made the fi­nal and ir­re­vo­ca­ble choice to live the Fa­ther’s will.

117:0.1To the ex­tent that we do the will of God in what­ever uni­verse sta­tion we may have our ex­is­tence, in that mea­sure the al­mighty po­ten­tial of the Su­preme be­comes one step more ac­tual. The will of God is the pur­pose of the First Source and Cen­ter as it is po­ten­tial­ized in the three Ab­so­lutes, per­son­al­ized in the Eter­nal Son, con­joined for uni­verse ac­tion in the In­fi­nite Spirit, and eter­nal­ized in the ev­er­last­ing pat­terns of Par­a­dise. And God the Su­preme is be­com­ing the high­est fi­nite man­i­fes­ta­tion of the to­tal will of God.

14:4.13As the wor­ship of the faith sons of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds min­is­ters to the sat­is­fac­tion of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther’s love, so the ex­alted ado­ra­tion of the Ha­vona crea­tures sa­ti­ates the per­fect ide­als of di­vine beauty and truth. As mor­tal man strives to do the will of God, these be­ings of the cen­tral uni­verse live to grat­ify the ide­als of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity. In their very na­ture they are the will of God. Man re­joices in the good­ness of God, Havon­ers ex­ult in the di­vine beauty, while you both en­joy the min­istry of the lib­erty of liv­ing truth.

3:6.2The sov­er­eignty of God is un­lim­ited; it is the fun­da­men­tal fact of all cre­ation. The uni­verse was not in­ev­i­ta­ble. The uni­verse is not an ac­ci­dent, nei­ther is it self-ex­is­tent. The uni­verse is a work of cre­ation and is there­fore wholly sub­ject to the will of the Cre­ator. The will of God is di­vine truth, liv­ing love; there­fore are the per­fect­ing cre­ations of the evo­lu­tion­ary uni­verses char­ac­ter­ized by good­ness—near­ness to di­vin­ity; by po­ten­tial evil—re­mote­ness from di­vin­ity.

136:4.82. The Fa­ther’s way—the ex­em­pli­fi­ca­tion of a farsee­ing ideal of crea­ture life vi­su­al­ized by the high per­son­al­i­ties of the Par­a­dise ad­min­is­tra­tion of the uni­verse of uni­verses.

196:0.2The hu­man Je­sus saw God as be­ing holy, just, and great, as well as be­ing true, beau­ti­ful, and good. All these at­tri­butes of di­vin­ity he fo­cused in his mind as the “will of the Fa­ther in heaven.” Je­sus’ God was at one and the same time “The Holy One of Is­rael” and “The liv­ing and lov­ing Fa­ther in heaven.” The con­cept of God as a Fa­ther was not orig­i­nal with Je­sus, but he ex­alted and el­e­vated the idea into a sub­lime ex­pe­ri­ence by achiev­ing a new rev­e­la­tion of God and by pro­claim­ing that ev­ery mor­tal crea­ture is a child of this Fa­ther of love, a son of God.

1:0.3The en­light­ened worlds all rec­og­nize and wor­ship the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, the eter­nal maker and in­fi­nite up­holder of all cre­ation. The will crea­tures of uni­verse upon uni­verse have em­barked upon the long, long Par­a­dise jour­ney, the fas­ci­nat­ing strug­gle of the eter­nal ad­ven­ture of at­tain­ing God the Fa­ther. The tran­scen­dent goal of the chil­dren of time is to find the eter­nal God, to com­pre­hend the di­vine na­ture, to rec­og­nize the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. God-know­ing crea­tures have only one su­preme am­bi­tion, just one con­sum­ing de­sire, and that is to be­come, as they are in their spheres, like him as he is in his Par­a­dise per­fec­tion of per­son­al­ity and in his uni­ver­sal sphere of righ­teous su­prem­acy. From the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther who in­hab­its eter­nity there has gone forth the su­preme man­date, “Be you per­fect, even as I am per­fect.” In love and mercy the mes­sen­gers of Par­a­dise have car­ried this di­vine ex­hor­ta­tion down through the ages and out through the uni­verses, even to such lowly an­i­mal-ori­gin crea­tures as the hu­man races of Uran­tia.

1:0.4This mag­nif­i­cent and uni­ver­sal in­junc­tion to strive for the at­tain­ment of the per­fec­tion of di­vin­ity is the first duty, and should be the high­est am­bi­tion, of all the strug­gling crea­ture cre­ation of the God of per­fec­tion. This pos­si­bil­ity of the at­tain­ment of di­vine per­fec­tion is the fi­nal and cer­tain des­tiny of all man’s eter­nal spir­i­tual prog­ress.

1:0.5Uran­tia mor­tals can hardly hope to be per­fect in the in­fi­nite sense, but it is en­tirely pos­si­ble for hu­man be­ings, start­ing out as they do on this planet, to at­tain the su­per­nal and di­vine goal which the in­fi­nite God has set for mor­tal man; and when they do achieve this des­tiny, they will, in all that per­tains to self-re­al­iza­tion and mind at­tain­ment, be just as re­plete in their sphere of di­vine per­fec­tion as God him­self is in his sphere of in­fin­ity and eter­nity. Such per­fec­tion may not be uni­ver­sal in the ma­te­rial sense, un­lim­ited in in­tel­lec­tual grasp, or fi­nal in spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, but it is fi­nal and com­plete in all fi­nite as­pects of di­vin­ity of will, per­fec­tion of per­son­al­ity mo­ti­va­tion, and God-con­scious­ness.

1:0.6This is the true mean­ing of that di­vine com­mand, “Be you per­fect, even as I am per­fect,” which ever urges mor­tal man on­ward and beck­ons him in­ward in that long and fas­ci­nat­ing strug­gle for the at­tain­ment of higher and higher lev­els of spir­i­tual val­ues and true uni­verse mean­ings. This sub­lime search for the God of uni­verses is the su­preme ad­ven­ture of the in­hab­i­tants of all the worlds of time and space.

7:4.7The Eter­nal Son is the per­sonal trus­tee, the di­vine cus­to­dian, of the Fa­ther’s uni­ver­sal plan of crea­ture as­cen­sion. Hav­ing pro­mul­gated the uni­ver­sal man­date, “Be you per­fect, even as I am per­fect,” the Fa­ther in­trusted the ex­e­cu­tion of this tremen­dous un­der­tak­ing to the Eter­nal Son; and the Eter­nal Son shares the fos­ter­ing of this su­per­nal en­ter­prise with his di­vine co-or­di­nate, the In­fi­nite Spirit. Thus do the De­i­ties ef­fec­tively co-op­er­ate in the work of cre­ation, con­trol, evo­lu­tion, rev­e­la­tion, and min­is­tra­tion—and if re­quired, in restora­tion and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

7:5.1The Eter­nal Son with­out reser­va­tion joined with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in broad­cast­ing that tremen­dous in­junc­tion to all cre­ation: “Be you per­fect, even as your Fa­ther in Ha­vona is per­fect.” And ever since, that in­vi­ta­tion-com­mand has mo­ti­vated all the sur­vival plans and the be­stowal projects of the Eter­nal Son and his vast fam­ily of co-or­di­nate and as­so­ci­ated Sons. And in these very be­stowals the Sons of God have be­come to all evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures “the way, the truth, and the life.”

9:5.6Mind, on Uran­tia, is a com­pro­mise be­tween the essence of thought per­fec­tion and the evolv­ing men­tal­ity of your im­ma­ture hu­man na­ture. The plan for your in­tel­lec­tual evo­lu­tion is, in­deed, one of sub­lime per­fec­tion, but you are far short of that di­vine goal as you func­tion in the taber­na­cles of the flesh. Mind is truly of di­vine ori­gin, and it does have a di­vine des­tiny, but your mor­tal minds are not yet of di­vine dig­nity.

13:2.8These ren­dezvous worlds of spirit life are for­bid­den ground to the ex­tent that we are asked not to ne­go­ti­ate en­trance to those phases of these spheres which are wholly out­side our realms of ex­pe­ri­ence. You may be­come crea­ture per­fect even as the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is de­ity per­fect, but you may not know all the ex­pe­ri­en­tial se­crets of all other or­ders of uni­verse per­son­al­i­ties. When the Cre­ator has an ex­pe­ri­en­tial per­son­al­ity se­cret with his crea­ture, the Cre­ator pre­serves that se­cret in eter­nal con­fi­dence.

26:4.12The pil­grim lands on the re­ceiv­ing planet of Ha­vona, the pi­lot world of the sev­enth cir­cuit, with only one en­dow­ment of per­fec­tion, per­fec­tion of pur­pose. The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has de­creed: “Be you per­fect, even as I am per­fect.” That is the as­tound­ing in­vi­ta­tion-com­mand broad­cast to the fi­nite chil­dren of the worlds of space. The pro­mul­ga­tion of that in­junc­tion has set all cre­ation astir in the co-op­er­a­tive ef­fort of the ce­les­tial be­ings to as­sist in bring­ing about the ful­fill­ment and re­al­iza­tion of that tremen­dous com­mand of the First Great Source and Cen­ter.

40:7.4These are the mor­tals who have been com­manded by the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, “Be you per­fect, even as I am per­fect.” The Fa­ther has be­stowed him­self upon you, placed his own spirit within you; there­fore does he de­mand ul­ti­mate per­fec­tion of you. The nar­ra­tive of hu­man as­cent from the mor­tal spheres of time to the di­vine realms of eter­nity con­sti­tutes an in­trigu­ing recital not in­cluded in my as­sign­ment, but this su­per­nal ad­ven­ture should be the su­preme study of mor­tal man.

56:0.1God is unity. De­ity is uni­ver­sally co-or­di­nated. The uni­verse of uni­verses is one vast in­te­grated mech­a­nism which is ab­so­lutely con­trolled by one in­fi­nite mind. The phys­i­cal, in­tel­lec­tual, and spir­i­tual do­mains of uni­ver­sal cre­ation are di­vinely cor­re­lated. The per­fect and im­per­fect are truly in­ter­re­lated, and there­fore may the fi­nite evo­lu­tion­ary crea­ture as­cend to Par­a­dise in obe­di­ence to the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther’s man­date: “Be you per­fect, even as I am per­fect.”

94:3.1While the high­est phase of Brah­man­ism was hardly a re­li­gion, it was truly one of the most no­ble reaches of the mor­tal mind into the do­mains of phi­los­o­phy and meta­physics. Hav­ing started out to dis­cover fi­nal re­al­ity, the In­dian mind did not stop un­til it had spec­u­lated about al­most ev­ery phase of the­ol­ogy ex­cept­ing the es­sen­tial dual con­cept of re­li­gion: the ex­is­tence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther of all uni­verse crea­tures and the fact of the as­cend­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the uni­verse of these very crea­tures as they seek to at­tain the eter­nal Fa­ther, who has com­manded them to be per­fect, even as he is per­fect.

99:5.3The re­li­gion of Je­sus is the most dy­namic in­flu­ence ever to ac­ti­vate the hu­man race. Je­sus shat­tered tra­di­tion, de­stroyed dogma, and called man­kind to the achieve­ment of its high­est ide­als in time and eter­nity—to be per­fect, even as the Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect.

107:0.3God, hav­ing com­manded man to be per­fect, even as he is per­fect, has de­scended as the Ad­juster to be­come man’s ex­pe­ri­en­tial part­ner in the achieve­ment of the su­per­nal des­tiny which has been thus or­dained. The frag­ment of God which in­dwells the mind of man is the ab­so­lute and un­qual­i­fied as­sur­ance that man can find the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in as­so­ci­a­tion with this di­vine Ad­juster, which came forth from God to find man and son­ship him even in the days of the flesh.

131:9.4“A wise man is oc­cu­pied with the search for truth, not in seek­ing for a mere liv­ing. To at­tain the per­fec­tion of Heaven is the goal of man. The su­pe­rior man is given to self-ad­just­ment, and he is free from anx­i­ety and fear. God is with you; have no doubt in your heart. Ev­ery good deed has its rec­om­pense. The su­pe­rior man mur­murs not against Heaven nor holds a grudge against men. What you do not like when done to your­self, do not to oth­ers. Let com­pas­sion be a part of all pun­ish­ment; in ev­ery way en­deavor to make pun­ish­ment a bless­ing. Such is the way of Great Heaven. While all crea­tures must die and re­turn to the earth, the spirit of the no­ble man goes forth to be dis­played on high and to as­cend to the glo­ri­ous light of fi­nal bright­ness.”

137:8.13“And this king­dom which I de­clare to you is not a reign of power and plenty. The king­dom of heaven is not a mat­ter of meat and drink but rather a life of pro­gres­sive righ­teous­ness and in­creas­ing joy in the per­fect­ing ser­vice of my Fa­ther who is in heaven. For has not the Fa­ther said of his chil­dren of the world, ‘It is my will that they should even­tu­ally be per­fect, even as I am per­fect.’

140:3.16“Your Fa­ther in heaven makes the sun to shine on the evil as well as upon the good; like­wise he sends rain on the just and the un­just. You are the sons of God; even more, you are now the am­bas­sadors of my Fa­ther’s king­dom. Be mer­ci­ful, even as God is mer­ci­ful, and in the eter­nal fu­ture of the king­dom you shall be per­fect, even as your heav­enly Fa­ther is per­fect.

140:5.15And then Je­sus went on to in­struct his fol­low­ers in the re­al­iza­tion of the chief pur­pose of all hu­man strug­gling—per­fec­tion—even di­vine at­tain­ment. Al­ways he ad­mon­ished them: “Be you per­fect, even as your Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect.” He did not ex­hort the twelve to love their neigh­bors as they loved them­selves. That would have been a wor­thy achieve­ment; it would have in­di­cated the achieve­ment of broth­erly love. He rather ad­mon­ished his apos­tles to love men as he had loved them—to love with a fa­therly as well as a broth­erly af­fec­tion. And he il­lus­trated this by point­ing out four su­preme re­ac­tions of fa­therly love:

140:8.32The Mas­ter came to cre­ate in man a new spirit, a new will—to im­part a new ca­pac­ity for know­ing the truth, ex­pe­ri­enc­ing com­pas­sion, and choos­ing good­ness—the will to be in har­mony with God’s will, cou­pled with the eter­nal urge to be­come per­fect, even as the Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect.

140:10.1That evening while teach­ing in the house, for it had be­gun to rain, Je­sus talked at great length, try­ing to show the twelve what they must be, not what they must do. They knew only a re­li­gion that im­posed the do­ing of cer­tain things as the means of at­tain­ing righ­teous­ness—sal­va­tion. But Je­sus would re­it­er­ate, “In the king­dom you must be righ­teous in or­der to do the work.” Many times did he re­peat, “Be you there­fore per­fect, even as your Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect.” All the while was the Mas­ter ex­plain­ing to his be­wil­dered apos­tles that the sal­va­tion which he had come to bring to the world was to be had only by be­liev­ing, by sim­ple and sin­cere faith. Said Je­sus: “John preached a bap­tism of re­pen­tance, sor­row for the old way of liv­ing. You are to pro­claim the bap­tism of fel­low­ship with God. Preach re­pen­tance to those who stand in need of such teach­ing, but to those al­ready seek­ing sin­cere en­trance to the king­dom, open the doors wide and bid them en­ter into the joy­ous fel­low­ship of the sons of God.” But it was a dif­fi­cult task to per­suade these Galilean fish­er­men that, in the king­dom, be­ing righ­teous, by faith, must pre­cede do­ing righ­teous­ness in the daily life of the mor­tals of earth.

143:2.6“Sal­va­tion is by the re­gen­er­a­tion of the spirit and not by the self-righ­teous deeds of the flesh. You are jus­ti­fied by faith and fel­low­shipped by grace, not by fear and the self-de­nial of the flesh, al­beit the Fa­ther’s chil­dren who have been born of the spirit are ever and al­ways mas­ters of the self and all that per­tains to the de­sires of the flesh. When you know that you are saved by faith, you have real peace with God. And all who fol­low in the way of this heav­enly peace are des­tined to be sanc­ti­fied to the eter­nal ser­vice of the ever-ad­vanc­ing sons of the eter­nal God. Hence­forth, it is not a duty but rather your ex­alted priv­i­lege to cleanse your­selves from all evils of mind and body while you seek for per­fec­tion in the love of God.

161:1.105. That God must be a per­son­al­ity since he is the Cre­ator of all per­son­al­ity and the des­tiny of all per­son­al­ity. Ro­dan had been tremen­dously in­flu­enced by the teach­ing of Je­sus, “Be you there­fore per­fect, even as your Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect.”

181:2.25And then the Mas­ter, turn­ing to all of them, said: “Be not dis­mayed that you fail to grasp the full mean­ing of the gospel. You are but fi­nite, mor­tal men, and that which I have taught you is in­fi­nite, di­vine, and eter­nal. Be pa­tient and of good cour­age since you have the eter­nal ages be­fore you in which to con­tinue your pro­gres­sive at­tain­ment of the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­com­ing per­fect, even as your Fa­ther in Par­a­dise is per­fect.”

• turning water into wine not inconsistent with

137:4.12It was grad­u­ally dawn­ing upon Je­sus what had hap­pened. Of all per­sons pres­ent at the mar­riage feast of Cana, Je­sus was the most sur­prised. Oth­ers had ex­pected him to work a won­der, but that was just what he had pur­posed not to do. And then the Son of Man re­called the ad­mo­ni­tion of his Per­son­al­ized Thought Ad­juster in the hills. He re­counted how the Ad­juster had warned him about the in­abil­ity of any power or per­son­al­ity to de­prive him of the cre­ator pre­rog­a­tive of in­de­pen­dence of time. On this oc­ca­sion power trans­form­ers, mid­way­ers, and all other re­quired per­son­al­i­ties were as­sem­bled near the wa­ter and other nec­es­sary el­e­ments, and in the face of the ex­pressed wish of the Uni­verse Cre­ator Sov­er­eign, there was no es­cap­ing the in­stan­ta­neous ap­pear­ance of wine. And this oc­cur­rence was made dou­bly cer­tain since the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster had sig­ni­fied that the ex­e­cu­tion of the Son’s de­sire was in no way a con­tra­ven­tion of the Fa­ther’s will.

141:2.1The night be­fore they left Pella, Je­sus gave the apos­tles some fur­ther in­struc­tion with re­gard to the new king­dom. Said the Mas­ter: “You have been taught to look for the com­ing of the king­dom of God, and now I come an­nounc­ing that this long-looked-for king­dom is near at hand, even that it is al­ready here and in our midst. In ev­ery king­dom there must be a king seated upon his throne and de­cree­ing the laws of the realm. And so have you de­vel­oped a con­cept of the king­dom of heaven as a glo­ri­fied rule of the Jew­ish peo­ple over all the peo­ples of the earth with Mes­siah sit­ting on David’s throne and from this place of mirac­u­lous power pro­mul­gat­ing the laws of all the world. But, my chil­dren, you see not with the eye of faith, and you hear not with the un­der­stand­ing of the spirit. I de­clare that the king­dom of heaven is the re­al­iza­tion and ac­knowl­edg­ment of God’s rule within the hearts of men. True, there is a King in this king­dom, and that King is my Fa­ther and your Fa­ther. We are in­deed his loyal sub­jects, but far tran­scend­ing that fact is the trans­form­ing truth that we are his sons. In my life this truth is to be­come man­i­fest to all. Our Fa­ther also sits upon a throne, but not one made with hands. The throne of the In­fi­nite is the eter­nal dwell­ing place of the Fa­ther in the heaven of heav­ens; he fills all things and pro­claims his laws to uni­verses upon uni­verses. And the Fa­ther also rules within the hearts of his chil­dren on earth by the spirit which he has sent to live within the souls of mor­tal men.

141:2.2“When you are the sub­jects of this king­dom, you in­deed are made to hear the law of the Uni­verse Ruler; but when, be­cause of the gospel of the king­dom which I have come to de­clare, you faith-dis­cover your­selves as sons, you hence­forth look not upon your­selves as law-sub­ject crea­tures of an all-pow­er­ful king but as priv­i­leged sons of a lov­ing and di­vine Fa­ther. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, when the Fa­ther’s will is your law, you are hardly in the king­dom. But when the Fa­ther’s will be­comes truly your will, then are you in very truth in the king­dom be­cause the king­dom has thereby be­come an es­tab­lished ex­pe­ri­ence in you. When God’s will is your law, you are no­ble slave sub­jects; but when you be­lieve in this new gospel of di­vine son­ship, my Fa­ther’s will be­comes your will, and you are el­e­vated to the high po­si­tion of the free chil­dren of God, lib­er­ated sons of the king­dom.”

141:2.3Some of the apos­tles grasped some­thing of this teach­ing, but none of them com­pre­hended the full sig­nif­i­cance of this tremen­dous an­nounce­ment, un­less it was James Zeb­e­dee. But these words sank into their hearts and came forth to glad­den their min­istry dur­ing later years of ser­vice.

• healing at sundown not inconsistent with

145:3.9When Pe­ter im­plored the Mas­ter to heed their cry for help, Je­sus, look­ing down upon the af­flicted throng, an­swered: “I have come into the world to re­veal the Fa­ther and es­tab­lish his king­dom. For this pur­pose have I lived my life to this hour. If, there­fore, it should be the will of Him who sent me and not in­con­sis­tent with my ded­i­ca­tion to the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven, I would de­sire to see my chil­dren made whole—and—” but the fur­ther words of Je­sus were lost in the tu­mult.

145:3.10Je­sus had passed the re­spon­si­bil­ity of this heal­ing de­ci­sion to the rul­ing of his Fa­ther. Ev­i­dently the Fa­ther’s will in­ter­posed no ob­jec­tion, for the words of the Mas­ter had scarcely been ut­tered when the as­sem­bly of ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties serv­ing un­der the com­mand of Je­sus’ Per­son­al­ized Thought Ad­juster was might­ily astir. The vast ret­inue de­scended into the midst of this mot­ley throng of af­flicted mor­tals, and in a mo­ment of time 683 men, women, and chil­dren were made whole, were per­fectly healed of all their phys­i­cal dis­eases and other ma­te­rial dis­or­ders. Such a scene was never wit­nessed on earth be­fore that day, nor since. And for those of us who were pres­ent to be­hold this cre­ative wave of heal­ing, it was in­deed a thrilling spec­ta­cle.

145:3.11But of all the be­ings who were as­ton­ished at this sud­den and un­ex­pected out­break of super­nat­u­ral heal­ing, Je­sus was the most sur­prised. In a mo­ment when his hu­man in­ter­ests and sym­pa­thies were fo­cused upon the scene of suf­fer­ing and af­flic­tion there spread out be­fore him, he ne­glected to bear in his hu­man mind the ad­mon­i­tory warn­ings of his Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster re­gard­ing the im­pos­si­bil­ity of lim­it­ing the time el­e­ment of the cre­ator pre­rog­a­tives of a Cre­ator Son un­der cer­tain con­di­tions and in cer­tain cir­cum­stances. Je­sus de­sired to see these suf­fer­ing mor­tals made whole if his Fa­ther’s will would not thereby be vi­o­lated. The Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster of Je­sus in­stantly ruled that such an act of cre­ative en­ergy at that time would not transgress the will of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, and by such a de­ci­sion—in view of Je­sus’ pre­ced­ing ex­pres­sion of heal­ing de­sire—the cre­ative act was. What a Cre­ator Son de­sires and his Fa­ther wills IS. Not in all of Je­sus’ sub­se­quent earth life did an­other such en masse phys­i­cal heal­ing of mor­tals take place.

• was personification of w.o.G.

149:1.73. Along with the faith of the crea­ture and the life of the Cre­ator it should also be noted that this God-man was the per­son­i­fied ex­pres­sion of the Fa­ther’s will. If, in the con­tact of the hu­man need and the di­vine power to meet it, the Fa­ther did not will oth­er­wise, the two be­came one, and the heal­ing oc­curred un­con­sciously to the hu­man Je­sus but was im­me­di­ately rec­og­nized by his di­vine na­ture. The ex­pla­na­tion, then, of many of these cases of heal­ing must be found in a great law which has long been known to us, namely, What the Cre­ator Son de­sires and the eter­nal Fa­ther wills IS.

• preferred term to “kingdom of heaven”

170:2.11The great ef­fort em­bod­ied in this ser­mon was the at­tempt to trans­late the con­cept of the king­dom of heaven into the ideal of the idea of do­ing the will of God. Long had the Mas­ter taught his fol­low­ers to pray: “Your king­dom come; your will be done”; and at this time he earnestly sought to in­duce them to aban­don the use of the term king­dom of God in fa­vor of the more prac­ti­cal equiv­a­lent, the will of God. But he did not suc­ceed.

• omnipotence does not imply power to do the ungodlike act

3:3.5Om­nipo­tence does not im­ply the power to do the non­doable, the un­god­like act. Nei­ther does om­ni­science im­ply the know­ing of the un­know­able. But such state­ments can hardly be made com­pre­hen­si­ble to the fi­nite mind. The crea­ture can hardly un­der­stand the range and lim­i­ta­tions of the will of the Cre­ator.

• limited only by Father’s sentiments and wisdom
• to deny God’s volitional self-limitation would be to deny his volitional absoluteness

4:4.4The Fa­ther-Ab­so­lute is the cre­ator of the cen­tral and per­fect uni­verse and the Fa­ther of all other Cre­ators. Per­son­al­ity, good­ness, and nu­mer­ous other char­ac­ter­is­tics, God shares with man and other be­ings, but in­fin­ity of will is his alone. God is lim­ited in his cre­ative acts only by the sen­ti­ments of his eter­nal na­ture and by the dic­tates of his in­fi­nite wis­dom. God per­son­ally chooses only that which is in­finitely per­fect, hence the su­per­nal per­fec­tion of the cen­tral uni­verse; and while the Cre­ator Sons fully share his di­vin­ity, even phases of his ab­so­lute­ness, they are not al­to­gether lim­ited by that fi­nal­ity of wis­dom which di­rects the Fa­ther’s in­fin­ity of will. Hence, in the Mi­chael or­der of son­ship, cre­ative free will be­comes even more ac­tive, wholly di­vine and well-nigh ul­ti­mate, if not ab­so­lute. The Fa­ther is in­fi­nite and eter­nal, but to deny the pos­si­bil­ity of his vo­li­tional self-lim­i­ta­tion amounts to a de­nial of this very con­cept of his vo­li­tional ab­so­lute­ness.

• omnipotence does not imply power to do the ungodlike act

118:5.1The om­nipo­tence of De­ity does not im­ply the power to do the non­doable. Within the time-space frame and from the in­tel­lec­tual ref­er­ence point of mor­tal com­pre­hen­sion, even the in­fi­nite God can­not cre­ate square cir­cles or pro­duce evil that is in­her­ently good. God can­not do the un­god­like thing. Such a con­tra­dic­tion of philo­sophic terms is the equiv­a­lent of nonen­tity and im­plies that noth­ing is thus cre­ated. A per­son­al­ity trait can­not at the same time be God­like and un­god­like. Com­pos­si­bil­ity is in­nate in di­vine power. And all of this is de­rived from the fact that om­nipo­tence not only cre­ates things with a na­ture but also gives ori­gin to the na­ture of all things and be­ings.

• no limits may be placed upon

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.

158:7.4Pe­ter spoke thus be­cause he loved Je­sus; but the Mas­ter’s hu­man na­ture rec­og­nized in these words of well-meant af­fec­tion the sub­tle sug­ges­tion of temp­ta­tion that he change his pol­icy of pur­su­ing to the end his earth be­stowal in ac­cor­dance with the will of his Par­a­dise Fa­ther. And it was be­cause he de­tected the dan­ger of per­mit­ting the sug­ges­tions of even his af­fec­tion­ate and loyal friends to dis­suade him, that he turned upon Pe­ter and the other apos­tles, say­ing: “Get you be­hind me. You sa­vor of the spirit of the ad­ver­sary, the tempter. When you talk in this man­ner, you are not on my side but rather on the side of our en­emy. In this way do you make your love for me a stum­bling block to my do­ing the Fa­ther’s will. Mind not the ways of men but rather the will of God.”

• one’s highest ideals not necessarily synonymous with w.o.G.

103:4.3The sense of guilt (not the con­scious­ness of sin) comes ei­ther from in­ter­rupted spir­i­tual com­mu­nion or from the low­er­ing of one’s moral ide­als. De­liv­er­ance from such a predica­ment can only come through the re­al­iza­tion that one’s high­est moral ide­als are not nec­es­sar­ily syn­ony­mous with the will of God. Man can­not hope to live up to his high­est ide­als, but he can be true to his pur­pose of find­ing God and be­com­ing more and more like him.

• one’s highest ideals not necessarily synonymous with w.o.G.

131:2.3“The power of the Lord is great and his un­der­stand­ing in­fi­nite. Says the Lord: ‘As the heav­ens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.’ God re­veals the deep and se­cret things be­cause the light dwells with him. The Lord is mer­ci­ful and gra­cious; he is long-suf­fer­ing and abun­dant in good­ness and truth. The Lord is good and up­right; the meek will he guide in judg­ment. Taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who trusts God. God is our refuge and strength, a very pres­ent help in trou­ble.

• way that seems right but ends in death

139:12.5Ju­das was a good busi­ness man. It re­quired tact, abil­ity, and pa­tience, as well as painstak­ing de­vo­tion, to man­age the fi­nan­cial af­fairs of such an ide­al­ist as Je­sus, to say noth­ing of wrestling with the hel­ter-skel­ter busi­ness meth­ods of some of his apos­tles. Ju­das re­ally was a great ex­ec­u­tive, a farsee­ing and able fi­nancier. And he was a stick­ler for or­ga­ni­za­tion. None of the twelve ever crit­i­cized Ju­das. As far as they could see, Ju­das Is­car­iot was a match­less trea­surer, a learned man, a loyal (though some­times crit­i­cal) apos­tle, and in ev­ery sense of the word a great suc­cess. The apos­tles loved Ju­das; he was re­ally one of them. He must have be­lieved in Je­sus, but we doubt whether he re­ally loved the Mas­ter with a whole heart. The case of Ju­das il­lus­trates the truth­ful­ness of that say­ing: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is death.” It is al­to­gether pos­si­ble to fall vic­tim to the peace­ful de­cep­tion of pleas­ant ad­just­ment to the paths of sin and death. Be as­sured that Ju­das was al­ways fi­nan­cially loyal to his Mas­ter and his fel­low apos­tles. Money could never have been the mo­tive for his be­trayal of the Mas­ter.

• murderous Pharisees think they serve God

155:1.4“In all that you do, be­come not one-sided and over­spe­cial­ized. The Phar­isees who seek our de­struc­tion ver­ily think they are do­ing God’s ser­vice. They have be­come so nar­rowed by tra­di­tion that they are blinded by prej­u­dice and hard­ened by fear. Con­sider the Greeks, who have a sci­ence with­out re­li­gion, while the Jews have a re­li­gion with­out sci­ence. And when men be­come thus mis­led into ac­cept­ing a nar­row and con­fused dis­in­te­gra­tion of truth, their only hope of sal­va­tion is to be­come truth-co-or­di­nated—con­verted.

• murderous Pharisees think they serve God

162:2.6Ac­cord­ingly, Eber, the proper of­fi­cer of the San­hedrin, with two as­sis­tants was dis­patched to ar­rest Je­sus. As Eber made his way to­ward Je­sus, the Mas­ter said: “Fear not to ap­proach me. Draw near while you lis­ten to my teach­ing. I know you have been sent to ap­pre­hend me, but you should un­der­stand that noth­ing will be­fall the Son of Man un­til his hour comes. You are not ar­rayed against me; you come only to do the bid­ding of your mas­ters, and even these rulers of the Jews ver­ily think they are do­ing God’s ser­vice when they se­cretly seek my de­struc­tion.

136:8.5Je­sus was fully aware of the short cuts open to one of his pow­ers. He knew many ways in which the at­ten­tion of the na­tion, and the whole world, could be im­me­di­ately fo­cused upon him­self. Soon the Pass­over would be cel­e­brated at Je­ru­sa­lem; the city would be thronged with vis­i­tors. He could as­cend the pin­na­cle of the tem­ple and be­fore the be­wil­dered mul­ti­tude walk out on the air; that would be the kind of a Mes­siah they were look­ing for. But he would sub­se­quently dis­ap­point them since he had not come to re-es­tab­lish David’s throne. And he knew the fu­til­ity of the Cali­gas­tia method of try­ing to get ahead of the nat­u­ral, slow, and sure way of ac­com­plish­ing the di­vine pur­pose. Again the Son of Man bowed obe­di­ently to the Fa­ther’s way, the Fa­ther’s will.

136:8.6Je­sus chose to es­tab­lish the king­dom of heaven in the hearts of man­kind by nat­u­ral, or­di­nary, dif­fi­cult, and try­ing meth­ods, just such pro­ce­dures as his earth chil­dren must sub­se­quently fol­low in their work of en­larg­ing and ex­tend­ing that heav­enly king­dom. For well did the Son of Man know that it would be “through much tribu­la­tion that many of the chil­dren of all ages would en­ter into the king­dom.” Je­sus was now pass­ing through the great test of civ­i­lized man, to have power and stead­fastly refuse to use it for purely self­ish or per­sonal pur­poses.

12:8.3What­ever the trans­for­ma­tions of force in the out­ly­ing uni­verses, hav­ing gone out from Par­a­dise, it jour­neys on sub­ject to the never-end­ing, ever-pres­ent, un­fail­ing pull of the eter­nal Isle, obe­di­ently and in­her­ently swing­ing on for­ever around the eter­nal space paths of the uni­verses. Phys­i­cal en­ergy is the one re­al­ity which is true and stead­fast in its obe­di­ence to uni­ver­sal law. Only in the realms of crea­ture vo­li­tion has there been de­vi­a­tion from the di­vine paths and the orig­i­nal plans. Power and en­ergy are the uni­ver­sal ev­i­dences of the sta­bil­ity, con­stancy, and eter­nity of the cen­tral Isle of Par­a­dise.

4:4.3God is the be­ing of ab­so­lute self-de­ter­mi­na­tion; there are no lim­its to his uni­verse re­ac­tions save those which are self-im­posed, and his free­will acts are con­di­tioned only by those di­vine qual­i­ties and per­fect at­tri­butes which in­her­ently char­ac­ter­ize his eter­nal na­ture. There­fore is God re­lated to the uni­verse as the be­ing of fi­nal good­ness plus a free will of cre­ative in­fin­ity.

118:6.3Within a lo­cal frame, vo­li­tion may ap­pear to func­tion as an un­caused cause, but it un­fail­ingly ex­hibits in­her­i­tance fac­tors which es­tab­lish re­la­tion­ship with the unique, orig­i­nal, and ab­so­lute First Causes.

118:6.4All vo­li­tion is rel­a­tive. In the orig­i­nat­ing sense, only the Fa­ther-I AM pos­sesses fi­nal­ity of vo­li­tion; in the ab­so­lute sense, only the Fa­ther, the Son, and the Spirit ex­hibit the pre­rog­a­tives of vo­li­tion un­con­di­tioned by time and un­lim­ited by space. Mor­tal man is en­dowed with free will, the power of choice, and though such choos­ing is not ab­so­lute, nev­er­the­less, it is rel­a­tively fi­nal on the fi­nite level and con­cern­ing the des­tiny of the choos­ing per­son­al­ity.

118:6.5Vo­li­tion on any level short of the ab­so­lute en­coun­ters lim­i­ta­tions which are con­sti­tu­tive in the very per­son­al­ity ex­er­cis­ing the power of choice. Man can­not choose be­yond the range of that which is choos­able. He can­not, for in­stance, choose to be other than a hu­man be­ing ex­cept that he can elect to be­come more than a man; he can choose to em­bark upon the voy­age of uni­verse as­cen­sion, but this is be­cause the hu­man choice and the di­vine will hap­pen to be co­in­ci­dent upon this point. And what a son de­sires and the Fa­ther wills will cer­tainly come to pass.

118:6.6In the mor­tal life, paths of dif­fer­en­tial con­duct are con­tin­u­ally open­ing and clos­ing, and dur­ing the times when choice is pos­si­ble the hu­man per­son­al­ity is con­stantly de­cid­ing be­tween these many courses of ac­tion. Tem­po­ral vo­li­tion is linked to time, and it must await the pass­ing of time to find op­por­tu­nity for ex­pres­sion. Spir­i­tual vo­li­tion has be­gun to taste lib­er­a­tion from the fet­ters of time, hav­ing achieved par­tial es­cape from time se­quence, and that is be­cause spir­i­tual vo­li­tion is self-iden­ti­fy­ing with the will of God.

118:6.7Vo­li­tion, the act of choos­ing, must func­tion within the uni­verse frame which has ac­tu­al­ized in re­sponse to higher and prior choos­ing. The en­tire range of hu­man will is strictly fi­nite-lim­ited ex­cept in one par­tic­u­lar: When man chooses to find God and to be like him, such a choice is super­fi­nite; only eter­nity can dis­close whether this choice is also super­ab­so­nite.

159:1.3“The Fa­ther in heaven loves his chil­dren, and there­fore should you learn to love one an­other; the Fa­ther in heaven for­gives you your sins; there­fore should you learn to for­give one an­other. If your brother sins against you, go to him and with tact and pa­tience show him his fault. And do all this be­tween you and him alone. If he will lis­ten to you, then have you won your brother. But if your brother will not hear you, if he per­sists in the er­ror of his way, go again to him, tak­ing with you one or two mu­tual friends that you may thus have two or even three wit­nesses to con­firm your tes­ti­mony and es­tab­lish the fact that you have dealt justly and mer­ci­fully with your of­fend­ing brother. Now if he re­fuses to hear your breth­ren, you may tell the whole story to the con­gre­ga­tion, and then, if he re­fuses to hear the broth­er­hood, let them take such ac­tion as they deem wise; let such an un­ruly mem­ber be­come an out­cast from the king­dom. While you can­not pre­tend to sit in judg­ment on the souls of your fel­lows, and while you may not for­give sins or oth­er­wise pre­sume to usurp the pre­rog­a­tives of the super­vi­sors of the heav­enly hosts, at the same time, it has been com­mit­ted to your hands that you should main­tain tem­po­ral or­der in the king­dom on earth. While you may not med­dle with the di­vine de­crees con­cern­ing eter­nal life, you shall de­ter­mine the is­sues of con­duct as they con­cern the tem­po­ral wel­fare of the broth­er­hood on earth. And so, in all these mat­ters con­nected with the dis­ci­pline of the broth­er­hood, what­so­ever you shall de­cree on earth, shall be rec­og­nized in heaven. Al­though you can­not de­ter­mine the eter­nal fate of the in­di­vid­ual, you may leg­is­late re­gard­ing the con­duct of the group, for, where two or three of you agree con­cern­ing any of these things and ask of me, it shall be done for you if your pe­ti­tion is not in­con­sis­tent with the will of my Fa­ther in heaven. And all this is ever true, for, where two or three be­liev­ers are gath­ered to­gether, there am I in the midst of them.”

154:6.12But he did say to David Zeb­e­dee as he en­tered the boat in hasty flight: “Tell my mother and my broth­ers that I ap­pre­ci­ate their com­ing, and that I in­tended to see them. Ad­mon­ish them to find no of­fense in me but rather to seek for a knowl­edge of the will of God and for grace and cour­age to do that will.”

75:4.3Eve had con­sented to par­tic­i­pate in the prac­tice of good and evil. Good is the car­ry­ing out of the di­vine plans; sin is a de­lib­er­ate trans­gres­sion of the di­vine will; evil is the mis­adap­ta­tion of plans and the mal­ad­just­ment of tech­niques re­sult­ing in uni­verse dishar­mony and plan­e­tary con­fu­sion.

89:10.2Sin must be re­de­fined as de­lib­er­ate dis­loy­alty to De­ity. There are de­grees of dis­loy­alty: the par­tial loy­alty of in­de­ci­sion; the di­vided loy­alty of con­flic­tion; the dy­ing loy­alty of in­dif­fer­ence; and the death of loy­alty ex­hib­ited in de­vo­tion to god­less ide­als.

148:4.6“By na­ture, be­fore the re­birth of the spirit, mor­tal man is sub­ject to in­her­ent evil ten­den­cies, but such nat­u­ral im­per­fec­tions of be­hav­ior are nei­ther sin nor in­iq­uity. Mor­tal man is just be­gin­ning his long as­cent to the per­fec­tion of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise. To be im­per­fect or par­tial in nat­u­ral en­dow­ment is not sin­ful. Man is in­deed sub­ject to evil, but he is in no sense the child of the evil one un­less he has know­ingly and de­lib­er­ately cho­sen the paths of sin and the life of in­iq­uity. Evil is in­her­ent in the nat­u­ral or­der of this world, but sin is an at­ti­tude of con­scious re­bel­lion which was brought to this world by those who fell from spir­i­tual light into gross dark­ness.

170:2.23Je­sus taught that sin is not the child of a de­fec­tive na­ture but rather the off­spring of a know­ing mind dom­i­nated by an un­sub­mis­sive will. Re­gard­ing sin, he taught that God has for­given; that we make such for­give­ness per­son­ally avail­able by the act of for­giv­ing our fel­lows. When you for­give your brother in the flesh, you thereby cre­ate the ca­pac­ity in your own soul for the re­cep­tion of the re­al­ity of God’s for­give­ness of your own mis­deeds.

186:5.7Je­sus is not about to die as a sac­ri­fice for sin. He is not go­ing to atone for the in­born moral guilt of the hu­man race. Man­kind has no such racial guilt be­fore God. Guilt is purely a mat­ter of per­sonal sin and know­ing, de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the will of the Fa­ther and the ad­min­is­tra­tion of his Sons.

188:4.5The an­i­mal na­ture—the ten­dency to­ward evil-do­ing—may be hered­i­tary, but sin is not trans­mit­ted from par­ent to child. Sin is the act of con­scious and de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the Fa­ther’s will and the Sons’ laws by an in­di­vid­ual will crea­ture.

143:2.4“By the old way you seek to sup­press, obey, and con­form to the rules of liv­ing; by the new way you are first trans­formed by the Spirit of Truth and thereby strength­ened in your in­ner soul by the con­stant spir­i­tual re­new­ing of your mind, and so are you en­dowed with the power of the cer­tain and joy­ous per­for­mance of the gra­cious, ac­cept­able, and per­fect will of God. For­get not—it is your per­sonal faith in the ex­ceed­ingly great and pre­cious promises of God that en­sures your be­com­ing par­tak­ers of the di­vine na­ture. Thus by your faith and the spirit’s trans­for­ma­tion, you be­come in re­al­ity the tem­ples of God, and his spirit ac­tu­ally dwells within you. If, then, the spirit dwells within you, you are no longer bond­slaves of the flesh but free and lib­er­ated sons of the spirit. The new law of the spirit en­dows you with the lib­erty of self-mas­tery in place of the old law of the fear of self-bond­age and the slav­ery of self-de­nial.

153:2.9“And now let me de­clare to you, once and for all time, that I have come down upon the earth, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. And this is the fi­nal will of Him who sent me, that of all those he has given me I should not lose one. And this is the will of the Fa­ther: That ev­ery one who be­holds the Son and who be­lieves him shall have eter­nal life. Only yes­ter­day did I feed you with bread for your bod­ies; to­day I of­fer you the bread of life for your hun­gry souls. Will you now take the bread of the spirit as you then so will­ingly ate the bread of this world?”

147:3.3In speak­ing to those as­sem­bled, Je­sus said: “Many of you are here, sick and af­flicted, be­cause of your many years of wrong liv­ing. Some suf­fer from the ac­ci­dents of time, oth­ers as a re­sult of the mis­takes of their fore­bears, while some of you strug­gle un­der the hand­i­caps of the im­per­fect con­di­tions of your tem­po­ral ex­is­tence. But my Fa­ther works, and I would work, to im­prove your earthly state but more es­pe­cially to in­sure your eter­nal es­tate. None of us can do much to change the dif­fi­cul­ties of life un­less we dis­cover the Fa­ther in heaven so wills. Af­ter all, we are all be­holden to do the will of the Eter­nal. If you could all be healed of your phys­i­cal af­flic­tions, you would in­deed mar­vel, but it is even greater that you should be cleansed of all spir­i­tual dis­ease and find your­selves healed of all moral in­fir­mi­ties. You are all God’s chil­dren; you are the sons of the heav­enly Fa­ther. The bonds of time may seem to af­flict you, but the God of eter­nity loves you. And when the time of judg­ment shall come, fear not, you shall all find, not only jus­tice, but an abun­dance of mercy. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you: He who hears the gospel of the king­dom and be­lieves in this teach­ing of son­ship with God, has eter­nal life; al­ready are such be­liev­ers pass­ing from judg­ment and death to light and life. And the hour is com­ing in which even those who are in the tombs shall hear the voice of the res­ur­rec­tion.”

137:4.8Through­out a pe­riod of many years, Mary had al­ways turned to Je­sus for help in ev­ery cri­sis of their home life at Naz­a­reth so that it was only nat­u­ral for her to think of him at this time. But this am­bi­tious mother had still other mo­tives for ap­peal­ing to her el­dest son on this oc­ca­sion. As Je­sus was stand­ing alone in a cor­ner of the gar­den, his mother ap­proached him, say­ing, “My son, they have no wine.” And Je­sus an­swered, “My good woman, what have I to do with that?” Said Mary, “But I be­lieve your hour has come; can­not you help us?” Je­sus replied: “Again I de­clare that I have not come to do things in this wise. Why do you trou­ble me again with these mat­ters?” And then, break­ing down in tears, Mary en­treated him, “But, my son, I prom­ised them that you would help us; won’t you please do some­thing for me?” And then spoke Je­sus: “Woman, what have you to do with mak­ing such promises? See that you do it not again. We must in all things wait upon the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.”

101:10.6Never can there be ei­ther sci­en­tific or log­i­cal proofs of di­vin­ity. Rea­son alone can never val­i­date the val­ues and good­nesses of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. But it will al­ways re­main true: Whoso­ever wills to do the will of God shall com­pre­hend the va­lid­ity of spir­i­tual val­ues. This is the near­est ap­proach that can be made on the mor­tal level to of­fer­ing proofs of the re­al­ity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Such faith af­fords the only es­cape from the me­chan­i­cal clutch of the ma­te­rial world and from the er­ror dis­tor­tion of the in­com­plete­ness of the in­tel­lec­tual world; it is the only dis­cov­ered so­lu­tion to the im­passe in mor­tal think­ing re­gard­ing the con­tin­u­ing sur­vival of the in­di­vid­ual per­son­al­ity. It is the only pass­port to com­ple­tion of re­al­ity and to eter­nity of life in a uni­ver­sal cre­ation of love, law, unity, and pro­gres­sive De­ity at­tain­ment.