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Mara….based on the discussions about faith and love related to primitive peoples and children in the “Agondonter” topic, I would surmise that almost everybody today will survive regardless of any acknowledgement or beliefs or definitions of any specificity. Faith appears to be as related to the inner life and awareness of something/someone within….a difficult and challenging study for me so far. Truth, beauty, goodness, and love of others and service to others as experienced and expressed does seem to be a form of substitute (in this life only) for knowledge, belief, declaration of loyalty, prayer, and worship…in other words, the term “faith” appears to have many facets and elements in a primitive mind. And I would claim that mortal minds on Urantia remain primitive by most any definition.
I would contend (without any evidence) that survivorship rates before and after Pentacost are significantly different with a much higher survival rate afterwards….pure speculation.
The topic of this thread suggests a concern for our fellow human beings and their salvation.
then Mara goes and mentions “the crusader in us”
so I had to go and re-read the paper on John the Babtist.
Wouldnt you love to have the fortitude to dawn a hairy garment with a broad leather belt and shout out to everyone that the Kingdom is at hand, repent and prepare yourselves?
did he not have the crusader in him?
i don’t think this approach would draw UB readers but the desire to share what we have was there then just as much as it is here now.
christians preach and are driven to do so, isn’t it part of being Christian?
other religions are persuasive in much less pleasant ways but there is the same crusader driving that religionists tend to experience.
im not sure if this is a good or bad thing.
john did not survive very long but he drew many believers.
The topic of this thread suggests a concern for our fellow human beings and their salvation.
It does!
. . . that survivorship rates before and after Pentacost are significantly different. . . .
This seems a reasonable conjecture Bradly. Yet the revelators assert in 1934 that a mortal “. . . must become adept in the art of a continuous human temporal compromise while he yields spiritual allegiance to but one master; and this is why so many falter and fail, grow weary and succumb to the stress of the evolutionary struggle.” They didn’t say *many falter, fail and grow weary* nor did they say *some falter, fail and grow weary* nor did they say *few falter, fail and grow weary*. They said *so many* do succumb to the stress of the evolutionary struggle. In the context the words *so many* jumped out at me. It is for that reason I used the reference in my opening comments.
On the other hand modern and supposedly civilized persons might try to evade religious convictions.
195:9.6[Part IV]Primitive man lived a life of superstitious bondage to religious fear. Modern, civilized men dread the thought of falling under the dominance of strong religious convictions. Thinking man has always feared to be held by a religion. When a strong and moving religion threatens to dominate him, he invariably tries to rationalize, traditionalize, and institutionalize it, thereby hoping to gain control of it. By such procedure, even a revealed religion becomes man-made and man-dominated. Modern men and women of intelligence evade the religion of Jesus because of their fears of what it will do to them — and with them. And all such fears are well founded. The religion of Jesus does, indeed, dominate and transform its believers, demanding that men dedicate their lives to seeking for a knowledge of the will of the Father in heaven and requiring that the energies of living be consecrated to the unselfish service of the brotherhood of man.On another thread (Agondonter) Midi mentioned time as a factor and while I didn’t get what he was saying on that topic (my apologies Midi), he brought forth the element of time, and I think it applies to this topic as well.28:6.9 3. The Import of Time. Time is the one universal endowment of all will creatures; it is the “one talent” intrusted to all intelligent beings. You all have time in which to insure your survival; and time is fatally squandered only when it is buried in neglect, when you fail so to utilize it as to make certain the survival of your soul. Failure to improve one’s time to the fullest extent possible does not impose fatal penalties; it merely retards the pilgrim of time in his journey of ascent. If survival is gained, all other losses can be retrieved.If.Gene wrote: christians preach and are driven to do so, isn’t it part of being Christian? other religions are persuasive in much less pleasant ways but there is the same crusader driving that religionists tend to experience. im not sure if this is a good or bad thing. john did not survive very long but he drew many believers.I think you’re missing something here. What John the Baptist did was based on evolutionary religious and cultural beliefs, not spiritual faith. I don’t want to go into Jewish history right now, but even Jesus said that anyone who had entered the kingdom of heaven was greater than John. What do you suppose he meant by that? I think he meant that John’s preaching was based upon a belief system centered on the false premise of racial sin and the need for a Messiah, among other things. Those things are beliefs; they are NOT not faith. Faith is the only thing that can get get you into the kingdom of heaven. Belief doesn’t get you there unless it leads to faith. People usually don’t preach their faith, they live it. People often preach their beliefs; and frankly, who needs it?
136:01 Though Jesus spoke of John as the greatest of the prophets of the old order, he also said that the least of those who saw the great light of the new way and entered thereby into the kingdom of heaven was indeed greater than John.
144:8.4 “Verily, verily, I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen a greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is but small in the kingdom of heaven is greater because he has been born of the spirit and knows that he has become a son of God.”
Beliefs don’t necessarily come from the spirit, however faith does. Faith is a gift. Beliefs are ideas formulated by the human intellect to explain things that can’t be rationally proved or logically understood. Beliefs can be right or wrong, but they are purely human. Faith is a gift from the spirit that can only be had by a relationship with spirit. Beliefs come out of human relations; faith is the result of a spirit relationship. There’s a huge difference between the two. Those who crusade their beliefs are often deluded and those who follow are often misled. On the other hand, some people do go off the rails and start crusading if they experience a sudden spiritual conversion, and that’s not necessarily a good thing either.
I know that TUB says that another John the Baptist will eventually come, but the new John the Baptist will not necessarily be preaching his beliefs, but rather attempting to bring Jesus’ actual gospel back into the light. As I see it, this would be all about faith, not beliefs.
170:5.19 Sooner or later another and greater John the Baptist is due to arise proclaiming “the kingdom of God is at hand” – meaning a return to the high spiritual concept of Jesus, who proclaimed that the kingdom is the will of his heavenly Father dominant and transcendent in the heart of the believer – and doing all this without in any way referring either to the visible church on earth or to the anticipated second coming of Christ. There must come a revival of the actual teachings of Jesus, such a restatement as will undo the work of his early followers who went about to create a sociophilosophical system of belief regarding the fact of Michael’s sojourn on earth. In a short time the teaching of this story about Jesus nearly supplanted the preaching of Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom. In this way a historical religion displaced that teaching in which Jesus had blended man’s highest moral
Greeting Everyone!
Mara, I noticed that “so many” does not say and may not mean “most” and if it does, the quotes provided do not say so many fail to survive but that so many fail in the transfer of the seat of identity, they succumb to temporal and material realities and attachments, which sounds to me as an explanation as to how “so many” remain soul-babies and don’t make much progress through the Circles during mortal life by failing to wisely choose their “master”. Sounds like the very definition of confusion and distraction to me – not conscious rejection but a failure to embrace the Spirit nature. Is succumbing to the stress of mortal life the same as failure to survive? I don’t think so, no.
Notice in the second quote “finally and forever”….who on Urantia has made such a choice? Perhaps sociopaths and psychopaths? Those whose indifference to every and all people makes them heartless, cruel, indifferent, and take delight in causing suffering in others may indeed have killed their soul or never had one. I would claim that one must kill their soul while living here to not survive to the Mansion Worlds….and I’m not sure what that takes to “finally and forever” close their hearts with no chance for remediation. One has a flicker if they have a soul.
109:5.4[Part III]
The great problem of life is the adjustment of the ancestral tendencies of living to the demands of the spiritual urges initiated by the divine presence of the Mystery Monitor. While in the universe and superuniverse careers no man can serve two masters, in the life you now live on Urantia every man must perforce serve two masters. He must become adept in the art of a continuous human temporal compromise while he yields spiritual allegiance to but one master; and this is why so many falter and fail, grow weary and succumb to the stress of the evolutionary struggle.5:1.11[Part I]
Mortal 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.What does it take to kill a soul in this brief life? This is the question being considered. For most people now born on Urantia give birth to a soul….and every expression of truth, beauty, goodness, love, and selfless service (sharing and caring) adds to soul. The response in mind to the ministries in mind feed soul. Who knows someone they would describe as soulless? I may have met a handful in my life and I’ve been around the mountain, seen the elephant, and been back again a time or two….pretty rare birds IMO. I doubt many who give birth to soul and receive their TA manage to kill their soul in this short life.
One reason for such a belief: I quit church due to the inherent unfairness of the doctrine of salvation and damnation. Fairness became a very important attribute of the God Jesus teaches in the Bible…a paternal, loving, kind, patient, and merciful creator. The UB illuminates this inherent nature of God. How fair is it to condemn those and deny eternity to those who suffer in darkness, fear, material anxieties, infirmaries, and false beliefs? Or should I ask how unfair would that be?
(566.4) 49:5.16 All such comparative estimates concerning the intellectual progress or the spiritual attainments of any world or group of worlds should in fairness recognize planetary age; much, very much, depends on age, the help of the biologic uplifters, and the subsequent missions of the various orders of the divine Sons.
39:1.8 [Part II]
The seraphic court advisers serve extensively as defenders of mortals. Not that there ever exists any disposition to be unfair to the lowly creatures of the realms, but while justice demands the adjudication of every default in the climb towards divine perfection, mercy requires that every such misstep be fairly adjudged in accordance with the creature nature and the divine purpose. These angels are the exponents and exemplification of the element of mercy inherent in divine justice — of fairness based on the knowledge of the underlying facts of personal motives and racial tendencies.Me here: Speaking of fairness within the mercy ministry, if we are to do to others as we would that they do to us, is not this the least standard we might expect from those in whose care and hands depends our chance at eternity? I think the very question and concern of who survives illustrates that human tendency and weakness to judge others and to elevate our own standing and status (no accusations in such a generalization intended). I remember Christian “pride”….one of the few and the most important of all others. So very much NOT Jesusonian. I trust God’s inherent fairness and mercy and love for his children that his view is not harsh or impatient but is willing to wait while loving us and letting our full experience here and in heaven to lead us to choose better when so much more is known to us for the choosing. The text is clear that there is no particular and arbitrary measurement of each mind/soul but every one of us is given very personal allowance and mercy while enjoying the embrace of love and mercy ministry….not to mention TIME!!
178:1.12 [Part IV]
You must not seek to promulgate truth nor to establish righteousness by the power of civil governments or by the enaction of secular laws. You may always labor to persuade men’s minds, but you must never dare to compel them. You must not forget the great law of human fairness which I have taught you in positive form: Whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do even so to them.Gene wrote: christians preach and are driven to do so, isn’t it part of being Christian? other religions are persuasive in much less pleasant ways but there is the same crusader driving that religionists tend to experience. im not sure if this is a good or bad thing. john did not survive very long but he drew many believers.I think you’re missing something here. What John the Baptist did was based on evolutionary religious and cultural beliefs, not spiritual faith. I don’t want to go into Jewish history right now, but even Jesus said that anyone who had entered the kingdom of heaven was greater than John. What do you suppose he meant by that? I think he meant that John’s preaching was based upon a belief system centered on the false premise of racial sin and the need for a Messiah, among other things. Those things are beliefs; they are NOT not faith. Faith is the only thing that can get get you into the kingdom of heaven. Belief doesn’t get you there unless it leads to faith. People usually don’t preach their faith, they live it. People often preach their beliefs; and frankly, who needs it?
136:01 Though Jesus spoke of John as the greatest of the prophets of the old order, he also said that the least of those who saw the great light of the new way and entered thereby into the kingdom of heaven was indeed greater than John. 144:8.4 “Verily, verily, I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen a greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is but small in the kingdom of heaven is greater because he has been born of the spirit and knows that he has become a son of God.”
Beliefs don’t necessarily come from the spirit, however faith does. Faith is a gift. Beliefs are ideas formulated by the human intellect to explain things that can’t be rationally proved or logically understood. Beliefs can be right or wrong, but they are purely human. Faith is a gift from the spirit that can only be had by a relationship with spirit. Beliefs come out of human relations; faith is the result of a spirit relationship. There’s a huge difference between the two. Those who crusade their beliefs are often deluded and those who follow are often misled. On the other hand, some people do go off the rails and start crusading if they experience a sudden spiritual conversion, and that’s not necessarily a good thing either. I know that TUB says that another John the Baptist will eventually come, but the new John the Baptist will not necessarily be preaching his beliefs, but rather attempting to bring Jesus’ actual gospel back into the light. As I see it, this would be all about faith, not beliefs.
170:5.19 Sooner or later another and greater John the Baptist is due to arise proclaiming “the kingdom of God is at hand” – meaning a return to the high spiritual concept of Jesus, who proclaimed that the kingdom is the will of his heavenly Father dominant and transcendent in the heart of the believer – and doing all this without in any way referring either to the visible church on earth or to the anticipated second coming of Christ. There must come a revival of the actual teachings of Jesus, such a restatement as will undo the work of his early followers who went about to create a sociophilosophical system of belief regarding the fact of Michael’s sojourn on earth. In a short time the teaching of this story about Jesus nearly supplanted the preaching of Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom. In this way a historical religion displaced that teaching in which Jesus had blended man’s highest moral
i didn’t miss the Jewish cultural issues of the times but I did think that John may have been driven by something greater than the rewards of power and wealth that Moses taught.
he did have a brief relationship with Jesus and if memory serves he knew about the Gabriel visits?
Also, the repentance thing was something new.
dont want to get distracted by him so much, just thinking about that urge to save people and if it had anything in common with people who attempt it today.
Gene wrote: i didn’t miss the Jewish cultural issues of the times but I did think that John may have been driven by something greater than the rewards of power and wealth that Moses taught.Hmmm, not sure we’re on the same page when it comes to Jewish religious and cultural issues of the first century. I’m not sure why you think it has something to do with the rewards of power and wealth . . . lost on that. Not the first time though.
Gene wrote: he did have a brief relationship with Jesus and if memory serves he knew about the Gabriel visits?Yeah, but he thought it meant that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. Jesus was not the Jewish Messiah.
Gene wrote: Also, the repentance thing was something new.No it wasn’t. John considered baptism as a form of purification, just like all Jews, he was obsessed with ritual cleanliness. John wanted the whole nation to purify itself to please God, which he hoped would bring the Messiah. He took his lead from the prophets before him, Amos; Hosea; Isaiah; Micah; Elijah . . . who all preached repentance and the end times which preceded the Messiah. There’s more to it than that, but I don’t want to derail Mara’s thread.
135:3.4 From all John heard of the vice and wickedness of Rome and the dissoluteness and moral barrenness of the empire, from what he knew of the evil doings of Herod Antipas and the governors of Judea, he was minded to believe that the end of the age was impending. It seemed to this rugged and noble child of nature that the world was ripe for the end of the age of man and the dawn of the new and divine age – the kingdom of heaven. The feeling grew in John’s heart that he was to be the last of the old prophets and the first of the new. And he fairly vibrated with the mounting impulse to go forth and proclaim to all men: “Repent! Get right with God! Get ready for the end; prepare yourselves for the appearance of the new and eternal order of earth affairs, the kingdom of heaven.”
Gene wrote: dont want to get distracted by him so much, just thinking about that urge to save people and if it had anything in common with people who attempt it today.I’m not sure John was trying to save people. Wasn’t he just announcing the end of an age? I think the rationale was to get as many Jews as possible to purify themselves in order to bring it on. Honestly though . . . I don’t know what motivates people today to claim they’re saving the world. That’s something I cannot identify with . . . sorry.
Bradly wrote: Notice in the second quote “finally and forever”….who on Urantia has made such a choice? Perhaps sociopaths and psychopaths? Those whose indifference to every and all people makes them heartless, cruel, indifferent, and take delight in causing suffering in others may indeed have killed their soul or never had one. I would claim that one must kill their soul while living here to not survive to the Mansion Worlds….and I’m not sure what that takes to “finally and forever” close their hearts with no chance for remediation. One has a flicker if they have a soul.You’ve said some really good things there Bradley. The “finally and forever” thing sticks with me. How can anyone on earth really understand the “finally and forever” issue? Nevertheless, it does happen apparently. People do make these decisions in the first life. We’re told that at the dispensation roll calls the guardian of the soul of an unjust person shows up but the Adjuster doesn’t, and that’s the end of existence. All mercy credits are used up somehow. I would think that such a person must be completely amoral . . . no human level of morality at all . . . which would mean the individual was functioning on the animal level of existence, and animals are not survivable critters. But we are told in the next quote that it is none of our concern:
113:6.8 The technique of justice demands that personal or group guardians shall respond to the dispensational roll call in behalf of all nonsurviving personalities. The Adjusters of such nonsurvivors do not return, and when the rolls are called, the seraphim respond, but the Adjusters make no answer. This constitutes the “resurrection of the unjust,” in reality the formal recognition of the cessation of creature existence. This roll call of justice always immediately follows the roll call of mercy, the resurrection of the sleeping survivors. But these are matters which are of concern to none but the supreme and all-knowing Judges of survival values. Such problems of adjudication do not really concern us.
49.6.7 Thus are the sleeping survivors of a planetary age repersonalized in the dispensational roll calls. But with regard to the nonsalvable personalities of a realm, no immortal spirit is present to function with the group guardians of destiny, and this constitutes cessation of creature existence. While some of your records have pictured these events as taking place on the planets of mortal death, they all really occur on the mansion worlds.
Here’s another quote that is worth adding to this conversation:
54:6.9 One error of human thinking respecting these problems consists in the idea that all evolutionary mortals on an evolving planet would choose to enter upon the Paradise career if sin had not cursed their world. The ability to decline survival does not date from the times of the Lucifer rebellion. Mortal man has always possessed the endowment of freewill choice regarding the Paradise career.
(130:1.6) “Your Father in heaven, by endowing you with the power to choose between truth and error, created the potential negative of the positive way of light and life; but such errors of evil are really nonexistent until such a time as an intelligent creature wills their existence by mischoosing the way of life. And then are such evils later exalted into sin by the knowing and deliberate choice of such a willful and rebellious creature. This is why our Father in heaven permits the good and the evil to go along together until the end of life, just as nature allows the wheat and the tares to grow side by side until the harvest.”
Does the wheat need the tares in order to grow?
In order to choose truth to survive, does one need to grow side by side with those who choose error?
G’day all,
Julian, what a relief and satisfaction have you back at your desk. Like many brotherhousians undisturbed warms, attentive and loving regards to you.
Affectionate embrace,
André
G’day all post #24616 Mara
As pointing from Bradley the quote from UB 109:5.4 do not concern survival status.
Man’s final doom 5:1.11 or behavior strictly matter our own personal relationship with God.
139:6.5 … Said Jesus: “Judas, watch carefully your steps; do not overmagnify your office. Who of us is competent to judge his brother? … Go then, Judas, and do well that which has been intrusted to you but leave Nathaniel, your brother, to give account of himself to God.”
All those speculations among us [readers] specifically concerning others acts, attitudes or conducts are sort of natural primitive evolutionary pathway.
Mara my thoughts as ask on your post are kindly presented not an iota offensive.
With affection,
André
G’day all,
post #24624 Gene Trying to comprehend divine mercy is useless.
Gene different from your present assertion … looking for myself to understand significations and values of mercy participate to discern and figure out better characteristics of our Father. An expansion of what TUB call cosmic conscience.
Knowing my Father first apply mercy way before apply justice render Him lovable. Give meaning to the attribute and personification He his LOVE. Divine mercy implied …
Wants to reconsidered your position on this subject? http://www.urantia.org/topical-studies/mercy
Brotherly,
André
VanAmadon wrote: In order to choose truth to survive, does one need to grow side by side with those who choose error?We do NOT require actual evil-doers around us in order to recognize truth, beauty and goodness, or to choose survival. All that is necessary is the potential for evil-doing in order to provide moral options for free-will choice. All we need is the ability to recognize potential evil in order to select the alternative.
132:2.10 The possibility of evil is necessary to moral choosing, but not the actuality thereof. A shadow is only relatively real. Actual evil is not necessary as a personal experience. Potential evil acts equally well as a decision stimulus in the realms of moral progress on the lower levels of spiritual development. Evil becomes a reality of personal experience only when a moral mind makes evil its choice.
I think another reason God permits evil-doers to exist side by side with perfection-seekers is because of the benefits for soul growth, which takes time. Also, this situation presents moral dilemmas which are the very fuel for soul growth.
54:4.7 The mercy delays of time are by the mandate of the free will of the Creators. There is good to be derived in the universe from this technique of patience in dealing with sinful rebels. While it is all too true that good cannot come of evil to the one who contemplates and performs evil, it is equally true that all things (including evil, potential and manifest) work together for good to all beings who know God, love to do his will, and are ascending Paradiseward according to his eternal plan and divine purpose.
111:6.1 Many of the temporal troubles of mortal man grow out of his twofold relation to the cosmos. Man is a part of nature—he exists in nature—and yet he is able to transcend nature. Man is finite, but he is indwelt by a spark of infinity. Such a dual situation not only provides the potential for evil but also engenders many social and moral situations fraught with much uncertainty and not a little anxiety.
Manifested evil can work for the good in people who know God even though it has destructive effects for the actual evil-doer him/herself. I don’t think this only means that we learn from other people’s mistakes. I think the moral dilemmas it engenders also help us to learn mercy. When it comes to learning mercy there are definite steps that must be traversed, and this requires a time delay for the learning process to take place. Also, soul growth comes from learning how to not hold grudges, how to forgive others, how to return good for evil, and how to climb the golden rule ladder, among other things.
28:6.8 While the spirit techniques of mercy ministry are beyond your concept, you should even now understand that mercy is a quality of growth. You should realize that there is a great reward of personal satisfaction in being first just, next fair, then patient, then kind. And then, on that foundation, if you choose and have it in your heart, you can take the next step and really show mercy; but you cannot exhibit mercy in and of itself. These steps must be traversed; otherwise there can be no genuine mercy.
146:2.4 Even the forgiveness of sin operates in this same unerring fashion. The Father in heaven has forgiven you even before you have thought to ask him, but such forgiveness is not available in your personal religious experience until such a time as you forgive your fellow men. God’s forgiveness in fact is not conditioned upon your forgiving your fellows, but in experience it is exactly so conditioned. And this fact of the synchrony of divine and human forgiveness was thus recognized and linked together in the prayer which Jesus taught the apostles.
Below are a host of additional quotes which explain why only potential evil is necessary for mortal choosing: (Incidentally, this totally obliterates the lie of original sin.)
130:4.14 Potential evil is inherent in the necessary incompleteness of the revelation of God as a time-space-limited expression of infinity and eternity. The fact of the partial in the presence of the complete constitutes relativity of reality, creates necessity for intellectual choosing, and establishes value levels of spirit recognition and response. The incomplete and finite concept of the Infinite which is held by the temporal and limited creature mind is, in and of itself, potential evil. But the augmenting error of unjustified deficiency in reasonable spiritual rectification of these originally inherent intellectual disharmonies and spiritual insufficiencies, is equivalent to the realization of actual evil.
54:0.2 The Gods 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.
132:2.7 Goodness is found in the recognition of the positive truth-values of the spiritual level, which must, in human experience, be contrasted with the negative counterpart – the shadows of potential evil.
130:1.6 Your Father in heaven, by endowing you with the power to choose between truth and error, created the potential negative of the positive way of light and life; but such errors of evil are really nonexistent until such a time as an intelligent creature wills their existence by mischoosing the way of life. And then are such evils later exalted into sin by the knowing and deliberate choice of such a willful and rebellious creature. This is why our Father in heaven permits the good and the evil to go along together until the end of life, just as nature allows the wheat and the tares to grow side by side until the harvest.
3:5.13 Is unselfishness–the spirit of self-forgetfulness–desirable? Then must mortal man live face to face with the incessant clamoring of an inescapable self for recognition and honor. Man could not dynamically choose the divine life if there were no self-life to forsake. Man could never lay saving hold on righteousness if there were no potential evil to exalt and differentiate the good by contrast.
3:6.2 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.
148:4.8 Men are, indeed, by nature evil, but not necessarily sinful. The new birth—the baptism of the spirit—is essential to deliverance from evil and necessary for entrance into the kingdom of heaven, but none of this detracts from the fact that man is the son of God. Neither does this inherent presence of potential evil mean that man is in some mysterious way estranged from the Father in heaven so that, as an alien, foreigner, or stepchild, he must in some manner seek for legal adoption by the Father. All such notions are born, first, of your misunderstanding of the Father and, second, of your ignorance of the origin, nature, and destiny of man.
4:3.6 The infinite goodness of the Father is beyond the comprehension of the finite mind of time; hence must there always be afforded a contrast with comparative evil (not sin) for the effective exhibition of all phases of relative goodness. Perfection of divine goodness can be discerned by mortal imperfection of insight only because it stands in contrastive association with relative imperfection in the relationships of time and matter in the motions of space.
111:4.11 This is the problem: If freewill man is endowed with the powers of creativity in the inner man, then must we recognize that freewill creativity embraces the potential of freewill destructivity.
132:3.8 Spiritual evolution is an experience of the increasing and voluntary choice of goodness attended by an equal and progressive diminution of the possibility of evil. With the attainment of finality of choice for goodness and of completed capacity for truth appreciation, there comes into existence a perfection of beauty and holiness whose righteousness eternally inhibits the possibility of the emergence of even the concept of potential evil. Such a God-knowing soul casts no shadow of doubting evil when functioning on such a high spirit level of divine goodness.
G’day all,
post #24624 Gene Trying to comprehend divine mercy is useless.
Gene different from your present assertion … looking for myself to understand significations and values of mercy participate to discern and figure out better characteristics of our Father. An expansion of what TUB call cosmic conscience. Knowing my Father first apply mercy way before apply justice render Him lovable. Give meaning to the attribute and personification He his LOVE. Divine mercy implied … Wants to reconsidered your position on this subject? http://www.urantia.org/topical-studies/mercy Brotherly, André
thank you Andre’ I am not very articulate.
as Gods mercy in infinite, comprehension is limited. I was also thinking that we have been instructed that we should not make assumptions about how it is given.
Being merciful is likely better than thinking about what may be coming to us.
Gene – about what may be coming to us…..eternal adventure is coming and I think about it all the time!!
108:6.6 (1193.5) And as you are the human parent, so is the Adjuster the divine parent of the real you, your higher and advancing self, your better morontial and future spiritual self. And it is this evolving morontial soul that the judges and censors discern when they decree your survival and pass you upward to new worlds and never-ending existence in eternal liaison with your faithful partner — God, the Adjuster.
108:6.7 (1193.6) The Adjusters are the eternal ancestors, the divine originals, of your evolving immortal souls; they are the unceasing urge that leads man to attempt the mastery of the material and present existence in the light of the spiritual and future career. The Monitors are the prisoners of undying hope, the founts of everlasting progression. And how they do enjoy communicating with their subjects in more or less direct channels! How they rejoice when they can dispense with symbols and other methods of indirection and flash their messages straight to the intellects of their human partners!
108:6.8 (1194.1) You humans have begun an endless unfolding of an almost infinite panorama, a limitless expanding of never-ending, ever-widening spheres of opportunity for exhilarating service, matchless adventure, sublime uncertainty, and boundless attainment. When the clouds gather overhead, your faith should accept the fact of the presence of the indwelling Adjuster, and thus you should be able to look beyond the mists of mortal uncertainty into the clear shining of the sun of eternal righteousness on the beckoning heights of the mansion worlds of Satania.
Gene, I believe the Blue Ribbon of achievement is won by sincerity, not articulation! You’re a blue ribbon winner already!! May you feel the sublime assurance of a faith son on the path to your eternal destiny of adventure! = )
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