Teacher-Brother Dave's Compilation of
TOPICAL STUDIES from
THE NEW EPOCHAL REVELATION OF TRUTH.
NOW UPDATED TOPICAL STUDIES INDEX Check these out:
TOPICAL STUDIES INDEX
Topical Study number 147
"TRUTH and TRUTHS" -all
Part 20
NOTE: The Urantia Book text in English is free of copyright to allow extensive sharing worldwide. But my order of selections, font types for emphasis and my added comments in square brackets are Copyright by Dave@PureChristians.org
Paper 48 - The Morontia Life
4. The Reversion Directors
48:4:18 (549.5) Humor should function as an automatic safety valve to prevent the building up of excessive pressures due to the monotony of sustained and serious self-contemplation in association with the intense struggle for developmental progress and noble achievement. Humor also functions to lessen the shock of the unexpected impact of fact or of truth, rigid unyielding fact and flexible ever-living truth. The mortal personality, never sure as to which will next be encountered, through humor swiftly grasps—sees the point and achieves insight—the unexpected nature of the situation be it fact or be it truth.
6. Morontia [Soul level] World Seraphim—Transition Ministers
48:6:8 (552.6) Even on Urantia [Earth] they counsel the human teachers of truth and righteousness to adhere to the preaching of “the goodness of God, which leads to repentance,” to proclaim “the love of God, which casts out all fear.” Even so have these truths been declared on your world:
48:6.9 (552.7) The Gods [Trinity] are my caretakers; I shall not stray;
48:6.10 (552.8) Side by side they lead me in the beautiful paths and glorious refreshing of life everlasting.
48:6.11 (552.9) I shall not, in this Divine Presence, want for food nor thirst for water.
48:6.12 (552.10) Though I go down into the valley of uncertainty or ascend up into the worlds of doubt,
48:6.13 (552.11) Though I move in loneliness or with the fellows of my kind,
48:6.14 (552.12) Though I triumph in the choirs of light or falter in the solitary places of the spheres,
48:6.15 (552.13) Your good spirit shall minister to me, and your glorious angel will comfort me.
48:6.16 (552.14) Though I descend into the depths of darkness and death itself,
48:6.17 (552.15) I shall not doubt you nor fear you,
48:6.18 (552.16) For I know that in the fullness of time and the glory of your name
48:6.19 (552.17) You will raise me up to sit with you on the battlements on high.
48:6.20 (553.1) That is the story whispered in the night season to the shepherd boy. He could not retain it word for word, but to the best of his memory he gave it much as it is recorded today.
48:6:26 (553.7) Even on Urantia, these seraphim teach the everlasting truth: If your own mind does not serve you well, you can exchange it for the mind of Jesus of Nazareth, who always serves you well.
48:6:32 (554.6) These angels are all in the chain of recorders extending from the lowest to the highest custodians of the facts of time and the truths of eternity. Some day they will teach you to seek truth as well as fact, to expand your soul as well as your mind. Even now you should learn to water the garden of your heart as well as to seek for the dry sands of knowledge. Forms are valueless when lessons are learned. No chick may be had without the shell, and no shell is of any worth after the chick is hatched. But sometimes error is so great that its rectification by revelation would be fatal to those slowly emerging truths which are essential to its experiential overthrow. When children have their ideals, do not dislodge them; let them grow. And while you are learning to think as men, you should also be learning to pray as children.
48:6:33 (555.1) Law is life itself and not the rules of its conduct. Evil is a transgression of law, not a violation of the rules of conduct pertaining to life, which is the law. Falsehood is not a matter of narration technique but something premeditated as a perversion of truth. The creation of new pictures out of old facts, the restatement of parental life in the lives of offspring—these are the artistic triumphs of truth. The shadow of a hair’s turning, premeditated for an untrue purpose, the slightest twisting or perversion of that which is principle—these constitute falseness. But the fetish of factualized truth, fossilized truth, the iron band of so-called unchanging truth, holds one blindly in a closed circle of cold fact. One can be technically right as to fact and everlastingly wrong in the truth.
7. Morontia Mota [soul super-philosophy]
48:7.1 (556.1) The lower planes of morontia mota join directly with the higher levels of human philosophy. On the first mansion world [of the next seven soul-level Heavens,] it is the practice to teach the less advanced students by the parallel technique; that is, in one column are presented the more simple concepts of mota meanings, and in the opposite column citation is made of analogous statements of mortal philosophy.
48:7.2 (556.2) Not long since, while executing an assignment on the first mansion world of Satania, [not Satan, who was replaced by loyal Lanaforge; it is just our local system name,] I [an Archangel of our local universe of Nebadon,] had occasion to observe this method of teaching; and though I may not undertake to present the mota content of the lesson, I am permitted to record the twenty-eight statements of human philosophy which this morontia instructor was utilizing as illustrative material designed to assist these new mansion world sojourners in their early efforts to grasp the significance and meaning of mota. These illustrations of human philosophy were:
48:7.3 (556.3) 1. A display of specialized skill does not signify possession of spiritual capacity. Cleverness is not a substitute for true character.
48:7.4 (556.4) 2. Few persons live up to the faith which they really have. Unreasoned fear is a master intellectual fraud practiced upon the evolving mortal soul.
48:7.5 (556.5) 3. Inherent capacities cannot be exceeded; a pint can never hold a quart. The spirit concept cannot be mechanically forced into the material memory mold.
48:7.6 (556.6) 4. Few mortals ever dare to draw anything like the sum of personality credits established by the combined ministries of nature and grace. The majority of impoverished souls are truly rich, but they refuse to believe it.
48:7.7 (556.7) 5. Difficulties may challenge mediocrity and defeat the fearful, but they only stimulate the true children of the Most Highs.
48:7.8 (556.8) 6. To enjoy privilege without abuse, to have liberty without license, to possess power and steadfastly refuse to use it for self-aggrandizement—these are the marks of high civilization.
48:7.9 (556.9) 7. Blind and unforeseen accidents do not occur in the cosmos. Neither do the celestial beings assist the lower being who refuses to act upon his light of truth.
48:7.10 (556.10) 8. Effort does not always produce joy, but there is no happiness without intelligent effort.
48:7.11 (556.11) 9. Action achieves strength; moderation eventuates in charm.
48:7.12 (556.12) 10. Righteousness strikes the harmony chords of truth, and the melody vibrates throughout the cosmos, even to the recognition of the Infinite.
48:7.13 (556.13) 11. The weak indulge in resolutions, but the strong act. Life is but a day’s work—do it well. The act is ours; the consequences God’s.
48:7.14 (556.14) 12. The greatest affliction of the cosmos is never to have been afflicted. Mortals only learn wisdom by experiencing tribulation.
48:7.15 (556.15) 13. Stars are best discerned from the lonely isolation of experiential depths, not from the illuminated and ecstatic mountain tops.
48:7.16 (556.16) 14. Whet the appetites of your associates for truth; give advice only when it is asked for.
48:7.17 (557.1) 15. Affectation is the ridiculous effort of the ignorant to appear wise, the attempt of the barren soul to appear rich.
48:7.18 (557.2) 16. You cannot perceive spiritual truth until you feelingly experience it, and many truths are not really felt except in adversity.
48:7.19 (557.3) 17. Ambition is dangerous until it is fully socialized. You have not truly acquired any virtue until your acts make you worthy of it.
48:7.20 (557.4) 18. Impatience is a spirit poison; anger is like a stone hurled into a hornet’s nest.
48:7.21 (557.5) 19. Anxiety must be abandoned. The disappointments hardest to bear are those which never come.
48:7.22 (557.6) 20. Only a poet can discern poetry in the commonplace prose of routine existence.
48:7.23 (557.7) 21. The high mission of any art is, by its illusions, to foreshadow a higher universe reality, to crystallize the emotions of time into the thought of eternity.
48:7.24 (557.8) 22. The evolving soul is not made divine by what it does, but by what it strives to do.
48:7.25 (557.9) 23. Death added nothing to the intellectual possession or to the spiritual endowment, but it did add to the experiential status the consciousness of survival.
48:7.26 (557.10) 24. The destiny of eternity is determined moment by moment by the achievements of the day by day living. The acts of today are the destiny of tomorrow.
48:7.27 (557.11) 25. Greatness lies not so much in possessing strength as in making a wise and divine use of such strength.
48:7.28 (557.12) 26. Knowledge is possessed only by sharing; it is safeguarded by wisdom and socialized by love.
48:7.29 (557.13) 27. Progress demands development of individuality; mediocrity seeks perpetuation in standardization.
48:7.30 (557.14) 28. The argumentative defense of any proposition is inversely proportional to the truth contained.
48:7.31 (557.15) Such is the work of the beginners on the first mansion world while the more advanced pupils on the later worlds are mastering the higher levels of cosmic insight and morontia mota. [There are 570 progressive morontia worlds in our local universe, then there are just over one billion Spirit-level Heavens to become qualified for the Eternal unending exploration of our Father God's Infinity and unending adventures in the Cosmos-Infinite !!!]
Paper 50 - The Planetary Princes
5. Progressive Civilization
50:5:6 (577.1) 3. The material-comfort era. After food problems have been partially solved and some degree of security has been attained, the additional leisure is utilized to promote personal comfort. Luxury vies with necessity in occupying the center of the stage of human activities. Such an age is all too often characterized by tyranny, intolerance, gluttony, and drunkenness. The weaker elements of the races incline towards excesses and brutality. Gradually these pleasure-seeking weaklings are subjugated by the more strong and truth-loving elements of the advancing civilization.
Paper 52 - Planetary Mortal Epochs
2. Post-Planetary Prince Man
52:2:3 (591.3) When the Planetary Prince arrives on a primitive world, [about 500,000 years ago on Urantia] the evolved religion of fear and ignorance prevails. The prince and his staff make the first revelations of higher truth and universe organization. These initial presentations of revealed religion are very simple, and they usually pertain to the affairs of the local system. Religion is wholly an evolutionary process prior to the arrival of the Planetary Prince. Subsequently, religion progresses by graduated revelation as well as by evolutionary growth. Each dispensation, each mortal epoch, receives an enlarged presentation of spiritual truth and religious ethics. The evolution of the religious capacity of receptivity in the inhabitants of a world largely determines their rate of spiritual advancement and the extent of religious revelation.
3. Post-Adamic Man
52:3:11 (594.2) [Our biologic uplifters, Adam and Eve arrived here about 38,000 years ago] During the closing centuries of the post-Adamic age there develops new interest in art, music, and literature, and this world-wide awakening is the signal for the appearance of a Magisterial Son. [under our universe Creator Father Jesus Christ Michael.] The crowning development of this era is the universal interest in intellectual realities, true philosophy. Religion becomes less nationalistic, becomes more and more a planetary affair. New revelations of truth characterize these ages, and the Most Highs of the constellations begin to rule in the affairs of men. Truth is revealed up to the administration of the constellations. [100 constellations in our Nebadon.]
52:3.12 (594.3) Great ethical advancement characterizes this era; the brotherhood of man is the goal of its society. World-wide peace—the cessation of race conflict and national animosity—is the indicator of planetary ripeness for the advent of the third order of sonship, the Magisterial Son. [also under Jesus]
4. Post-Magisterial Son Man
52:4:4 (594.7) Each new dispensation extends the horizon of revealed religion, and the Magisterial Sons extend the revelation of truth to portray the affairs of the local universe and all its tributaries.
5. Post-Bestowal Son Man
52:5.3 (596.1) The bestowal Son [also under our Creator Father-Son of God Jesus,]arrives on a world of high educational culture and encounters a race spiritually trained and prepared to assimilate advanced teachings and to appreciate the bestowal mission. This is an age characterized by the world-wide pursuit of moral culture and spiritual truth. The mortal passion of this dispensation is the penetration of cosmic reality and communion with spiritual reality. The revelations of truth are extended to include the superuniverse. Entirely new systems of education and government grow up to supplant the crude regimes of former times. The joy of living takes on new color, and the reactions of life are exalted to heavenly heights of tone and timbre.
52:5.4 (596.2) The bestowal Son lives and dies for the spiritual uplift of the mortal races of a world. He establishes the “new and living way”; his life is an incarnation of Paradise truth in mortal flesh, that very truth—even the Spirit of Truth—in the knowledge of which men shall be free.
52:5.5 (596.3) On Urantia the establishment of this “new and living way” was a matter of fact as well as of truth. The isolation of Urantia in the Lucifer rebellion [200,000 yeras ago] had suspended the procedure whereby mortals can pass, upon death, directly to the shores of the mansion worlds. Before the days of Christ Michael on Urantia all souls slept on until the dispensational or special millennial resurrections. Even Moses was not permitted to go over to the other side until the occasion of a special resurrection, the fallen Planetary Prince, Caligastia, contesting such a deliverance. But ever since [May 18, A.D. 30] the day of Pentecost, Urantia mortals again may proceed directly to the morontia spheres. [Thank You, our Good Master Jesus !]
52:5.6 (596.4) Upon the resurrection of a bestowal Son, on the third day after yielding up his incarnated life, he ascends to the right hand of the Universal Father, receives the assurance of the acceptance of the bestowal mission, and returns to the Creator Son at the headquarters of the local universe. Thereupon the bestowal Avonal and the Creator Michael send their joint spirit, the Spirit of Truth, into the bestowal world. This is the occasion when the “spirit of the triumphant Son is poured out upon all flesh.” The Universe Mother [Holy] Spirit also participates in this bestowal of the Spirit of Truth, and concomitant therewith there issues the bestowal edict of the Thought Adjusters. [God's pure Spirit-will indwelling your mind and co-creating you as a higher soul to ascend !] Thereafter all normal-minded will creatures of that world will receive Adjusters as soon as they attain the age [usually age 5 to 6 years here now] of moral responsibility, of spiritual choice.
7. Post-Teacher Son Man
52:7:3 (598.6) The revelation of truth is now extended to the central universe and to Paradise. The races are becoming highly spiritual. A great people has evolved and a great age is approaching. The educational, economic, and administrative systems of the planet are undergoing radical transformations. New values and relationships are being established. The kingdom of heaven is appearing on earth, and the glory of God is being shed abroad in the world. [Our still confused planet had a double default of higher leaders on our planet. To make up for this, the tremendous 2097 page Fifth Epochal Revelation -- "The Urantia Book" was given to us in year 1955. Now free of copyright to allow worldwide sharing, translations and interpretations. Now, a worldwide best seller. It will help to spiritually, morally, socially positively transform this needy world.]
Paper 53 - The Lucifer Rebellion
8. The Son of Man [Jesus Christ] on Urantia
53:8.7 (610.3) Before the bestowal of [Christ] Michael these rulers of darkness sought to maintain their authority on Urantia, and they persistently withstood the minor and subordinate celestial personalities. But since the day of Pentecost this traitorous Caligastia and his equally contemptible associate, Daligastia, are servile before the divine majesty of the Paradise Thought Adjusters and the protective Spirit of Truth, the spirit of [Jesus Christ] Michael, which has been poured out upon all flesh.
53:8.8 (610.4) But even so, no fallen spirit ever did have the power to invade the minds or to harass the souls of the children of God. Neither Satan nor Caligastia [our former Planetary Prince, now removed from functioning here !] could ever touch or approach the faith sons of God; faith is an effective armor against sin and iniquity. It is true: “He who is born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one touches him not.”
53:8.9 (610.5) In general, when weak and dissolute mortals are supposed to be under the influence of devils and demons, they are merely being dominated by their own inherent and debased tendencies, being led away by their own natural propensities. The devil has been given a great deal of credit for evil which does not belong to him. Caligastia has been comparatively impotent since the cross of Christ.
Paper 54 - Problems of the Lucifer Rebellion
0: Introduction
54:0.1 (613.1) Evolutionary man finds it difficult fully to comprehend the significance and to grasp the meanings of evil, error, sin, and iniquity. Man is slow to perceive that contrastive perfection and imperfection produce potential evil; that conflicting truth and falsehood create confusing error; that the divine endowment of freewill choice eventuates in the divergent realms of sin and righteousness; that the persistent pursuit of divinity leads to the kingdom of God as contrasted with its continuous rejection, which leads to the domains of iniquity.
54:0.2 (613.2) The Gods [ParadiseTrinity] neither create evil nor permit sin and rebellion. Potential evil is time-existent in a universe embracing differential levels of perfection meanings and values. Sin is potential in all realms where imperfect beings are endowed with the ability to choose between good and evil. The very conflicting presence of truth and untruth, fact and falsehood, constitutes the potentiality of error. The deliberate choice of evil constitutes sin; the willful rejection of truth is error; the persistent pursuit of sin and error is iniquity.
3. The Time Lag of Justice
54:3.1 (615.3) The moral will creatures of the evolutionary worlds are always bothered with the unthinking question as to why the all-wise Creators permit evil and sin. They fail to comprehend that both are inevitable if the creature is to be truly free. The free will of evolving man or exquisite angel is not a mere philosophic concept, a symbolic ideal. Man’s ability to choose good or evil is a universe reality. This liberty to choose for oneself is an endowment of the Supreme Rulers, and they will not permit any being or group of beings to deprive a single personality in the wide universe of this divinely bestowed liberty—not even to satisfy such misguided and ignorant beings in the enjoyment of this misnamed personal liberty.
54:3.2 (615.4) Although conscious and wholehearted identification with evil (sin) is the equivalent of nonexistence (annihilation), there must always intervene between the time of such personal identification with sin and the execution of the penalty—the automatic result of such a willful embrace of evil—a period of time of sufficient length to allow for such an adjudication of such an individual’s universe status as will prove entirely satisfactory to all related universe personalities, and which will be so fair and just as to win the approval of the sinner himself. [God's Justice always includes His Tremendous love and lavish mercy Ministry !]
54:3:3 (615.5) But if this universe rebel against the reality of truth and goodness refuses to approve the verdict, and if the guilty one knows in his heart the justice of his condemnation but refuses to make such confession, then must the execution of sentence be delayed in accordance with the discretion of the Ancients of Days. And the Ancients of Days refuse to annihilate any being until all moral values and all spiritual realities are extinct, both in the evildoer and in all related supporters and possible sympathizers.
Paper 55 - The Spheres of Light and Life
0: Introduction
55:0:1 (621.1) The age of light and life is the final evolutionary attainment of a world of time and space. From the early times of primitive man, such an inhabited world has passed through the successive planetary ages—the pre- and the post-Planetary Prince ages, the post-Adamic age, the post-Magisterial Son age, and the postbestowal Son age. And then is such a world made ready for the culminating evolutionary attainment, the settled status of light and life, by the ministry of the successive planetary missions of the Trinity Teacher Sons with their ever-advancing revelations of divine truth and cosmic wisdom. In these endeavors the Teacher Sons enjoy the assistance of the Brilliant Evening Stars always, and the Melchizedeks sometimes, in establishing the final planetary age.
3. The Golden Ages
55:3.10 (625.9) On these superb worlds the childbearing period is not greatly prolonged. It is not best for too many years to intervene between the ages of a family of children. When close together in age, children are able to contribute much more to their mutual training. And on these worlds they are magnificently trained by the competitive systems of keen striving in the advanced domains and divisions of diverse achievement in the mastery of truth, beauty, and goodness. Never fear but that even such glorified spheres present plenty of evil, real and potential, which is stimulative of the choosing between truth and error, good and evil, sin and righteousness.
55:3.11 (625.10) Nevertheless, there is a certain, inevitable penalty attaching to mortal existence on such advanced evolutionary planets. When a settled world progresses beyond the third stage of light and life, all ascenders are destined, before attaining the minor sector, to receive some sort of transient assignment on a planet passing through the earlier stages of evolution.
55:3.12 (626.1) Each of these successive ages represents advancing achievements in all phases of planetary attainment. In the initial age of light the revelation of truth was enlarged to embrace the workings of the universe of universes, while the Deity study of the second age is the attempt to master the protean concept of the nature, mission, ministry, associations, origin, and destiny of the Creator Sons, the first level of God the Sevenfold.
NOTE: The next part of this Topical Study number 21 will be posted here Monday, Dec 11, 2023
Spiritual High-Lights of Jesus Christ
Spiritual High-Lights of the Fifth Epochal Revelation
FIFTH EPOCHAL REVELATION (full text and my added comments)