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Posts
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3:6.1 (52.4) With divine selflessness, consummate generosity, the Universal Father relinquishes authority and delegates power, but he is still primal; his hand is on the mighty lever of the circumstances of the universal realms; he has reserved all final decisions and unerringly wields the all-powerful veto scepter of his eternal purpose with unchallengeable authority over the welfare and destiny of the outstretched, whirling, and ever-circling creation.
3:6.2 (52.5) The 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.
5:6.8 (71.3) Having thus provided for the growth of the immortal soul and having liberated man’s inner self from the fetters of absolute dependence on antecedent causation, the Father stands aside. Now, man having thus been liberated from the fetters of causation response, at least as pertains to eternal destiny, and provision having been made for the growth of the immortal self, the soul, it remains for man himself to will the creation or to inhibit the creation of this surviving and eternal self which is his for the choosing. No other being, force, creator, or agency in all the wide universe of universes can interfere to any degree with the absolute sovereignty of the mortal free will, as it operates within the realms of choice, regarding the eternal destiny of the personality of the choosing mortal. As pertains to eternal survival, God has decreed the sovereignty of the material and mortal will, and that decree is absolute.
Sovereignty:
https://urantia-association.org/search/?zoom_sort=2&zoom_query=Sovereignty+&x=9&y=14
5. Political Sovereignty
134:5.1 (1487.8) [While the Master’s teaching concerning the sovereignty of God is a truth—only complicated by the subsequent appearance of the religion about him among the world’s religions—his presentations concerning political sovereignty are vastly complicated by the political evolution of nation life during the last nineteen hundred years and more. In the times of Jesus there were only two great world powers—the Roman Empire in the West and the Han Empire in the East—and these were widely separated by the Parthian kingdom and other intervening lands of the Caspian and Turkestan regions. We have, therefore, in the following presentation departed more widely from the substance of the Master’s teachings at Urmia concerning political sovereignty, at the same time attempting to depict the import of such teachings as they are applicable to the peculiarly critical stage of the evolution of political sovereignty in the twentieth century after Christ.]
134:5.2 (1487.9) War on Urantia will never end so long as nations cling to the illusive notions of unlimited national sovereignty. There are only two levels of relative sovereignty on an inhabited world: the spiritual free will of the individual mortal and the collective sovereignty of mankind as a whole. Between the level of the individual human being and the level of the total of mankind, all groupings and associations are relative, transitory, and of value only in so far as they enhance the welfare, well-being, and progress of the individual and the planetary grand total—man and mankind.
134:5.3 (1488.1) Religious teachers must always remember that the spiritual sovereignty of God overrides all intervening and intermediate spiritual loyalties. Someday civil rulers will learn that the Most Highs rule in the kingdoms of men.
The Most Highs:
https://urantia-association.org/search/?zoom_sort=2&zoom_query=%22Most+Highs%22&x=8&y=12
The UB teaches that there are (or will be) 7 trillion worlds like Urantia, each a unique expression of evolutionary experience over time. Each of those worlds is guided by and attended to by a host of celestials whose ministries slowly transform a world from barbarity through primitivism and a progression of social transformation and civilization that ultimately results in a wondrous era called Light and Life.
A study of Paper 52 The Mortal Epochs and Paper 55 The Spheres of Light and Life is suggested to better understand this inevitable destiny of the worlds of mortal origin.
52:7.14 No matter what the special natural history of an individual planet may be, no difference whether a realm has been wholly loyal, tainted with evil, or cursed by sin—no matter what the antecedents may be—sooner or later the grace of God and the ministry of angels will usher in the day of the advent of the Trinity Teacher Sons; and their departure, following their final mission, will inaugurate this superb era of light and life.
52:7.15 All the worlds of Satania can join in the hope of the one who wrote: “Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that you look for such things, be diligent that you may be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless.” *
52:7.16 The departure of the Teacher Son corps, at the end of their first or some subsequent reign, ushers in the dawn of the era of light and life—the threshold of the transition from time to the vestibule of eternity. The planetary realization of this era of light and life far more than equals the fondest expectations of Urantia mortals who have entertained no more farseeing concepts of the future life than those embraced within religious beliefs which depict heaven as the immediate destiny and final dwelling place of surviving mortals.
55:0.1 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.
55:3.1 During this age of light and life the world increasingly prospers under the fatherly rule of the Planetary Sovereign. By this time the worlds are progressing under the momentum of one language, one religion, and, on normal spheres, one race. But this age is not perfect. These worlds still have well-appointed hospitals, homes for the care of the sick. There still remain the problems of caring for accidental injuries and the inescapable infirmities attendant upon the decrepitude of old age and the disorders of senility. Disease has not been entirely vanquished, neither have the earth animals been subdued in perfection; but such worlds are like Paradise in comparison with the early times of primitive man during the pre-Planetary Prince age. You would instinctively describe such a realm—could you be suddenly transported to a planet in this stage of development—as heaven on earth.
Back to Paper 134:
134:5.4 This rule of the Most Highs in the kingdoms of men is not for the especial benefit of any especially favored group of mortals. There is no such thing as a “chosen people.” The rule of the Most Highs, the overcontrollers of political evolution, is a rule designed to foster the greatest good to the greatest number of all men and for the greatest length of time.
134:5.5 Sovereignty is power and it grows by organization. This growth of the organization of political power is good and proper, for it tends to encompass ever-widening segments of the total of mankind. But this same growth of political organizations creates a problem at every intervening stage between the initial and natural organization of political power— the family—and the final consummation of political growth—the government of all mankind, by all mankind, and for all mankind.
134:5.6 Starting out with parental power in the family group, political sovereignty evolves by organization as families overlap into consanguineous clans which become united, for various reasons, into tribal units—superconsanguineous political groupings. And then, by trade, commerce, and conquest, tribes become unified as a nation, while nations themselves sometimes become unified by empire.
134:5.7 As sovereignty passes from smaller groups to larger groups, wars are lessened. That is, minor wars between smaller nations are lessened, but the potential for greater wars is increased as the nations wielding sovereignty become larger and larger. Presently, when all the world has been explored and occupied, when nations are few, strong, and powerful, when these great and supposedly sovereign nations come to touch borders, when only oceans separate them, then will the stage be set for major wars, world-wide conflicts. So-called sovereign nations cannot rub elbows without generating conflicts and eventuating wars.
134:5.8 The difficulty in the evolution of political sovereignty from the family to all mankind, lies in the inertia-resistance exhibited on all intervening levels. Families have, on occasion, defied their clan, while clans and tribes have often been subversive of the sovereignty of the territorial state. Each new and forward evolution of political sovereignty is (and has always been) embarrassed and hampered by the “scaffolding stages” of the previous developments in political organization. And this is true because human loyalties, once mobilized, are hard to change. The same loyalty which makes possible the evolution of the tribe, makes difficult the evolution of the supertribe—the territorial state. And the same loyalty (patriotism) which makes possible the evolution of the territorial state, vastly complicates the evolutionary development of the government of all mankind.
So….in the realms of time and space, evolution is the functional norm. Everything evolves. Even celestials advance and gain experiential wisdom from their creation in-time. It is not just material biology or the astrological formation of stars and worlds that evolve, but also persons and groups of persons and systems evolve. Sovereignty evolves too. From family to tribe to nation to world. This is an inevitable process of progressive development and achievement and ultimate realization. The brotherhood/sisterhood of mortals is not a gift or some sudden dispensation delivered from on high by armageddons and raptures. These are earned by struggle and experience and by the spiritualization of each person and all persons…it is a collective aggregation of spiritual progress. As goes the parts, so goes the whole…..perfection of the whole requires the perfecting of the parts!
3. The Evolutionary Idea
32:3.1 (360.3) The only creation that is perfectly settled is Havona, the central universe, which was made directly by the thought of the Universal Father and the word of the Eternal Son. Havona is an existential, perfect, and replete universe, surrounding the home of the eternal Deities, the center of all things. The creations of the seven superuniverses are finite, evolutionary, and consistently progressive.
32:3.2 (360.4) The physical systems of time and space are all evolutionary in origin. They are not even physically stabilized until they are swung into the settled circuits of their superuniverses. Neither is a local universe settled in light and life until its physical possibilities of expansion and development have been exhausted, and until the spiritual status of all its inhabited worlds has been forever settled and stabilized.
32:3.3 (360.5) Except in the central universe, perfection is a progressive attainment. In the central creation we have a pattern of perfection, but all other realms must attain that perfection by the methods established for the advancement of those particular worlds or universes. And an almost infinite variety characterizes the plans of the Creator Sons for organizing, evolving, disciplining, and settling their respective local universes.
134:5.9 (1488.7) Political sovereignty is created out of the surrender of self-determinism, first by the individual within the family and then by the families and clans in relation to the tribe and larger groupings. This progressive transfer of self-determination from the smaller to ever larger political organizations has generally proceeded unabated in the East since the establishment of the Ming and the Mogul dynasties. In the West it obtained for more than a thousand years right on down to the end of the World War, when an unfortunate retrograde movement temporarily reversed this normal trend by re-establishing the submerged political sovereignty of numerous small groups in Europe.
134:5.10 (1489.1) Urantia will not enjoy lasting peace until the so-called sovereign nations intelligently and fully surrender their sovereign powers into the hands of the brotherhood of men—mankind government. Internationalism—Leagues of Nations—can never bring permanent peace to mankind. World-wide confederations of nations will effectively prevent minor wars and acceptably control the smaller nations, but they will not prevent world wars nor control the three, four, or five most powerful governments. In the face of real conflicts, one of these world powers will withdraw from the League and declare war. You cannot prevent nations going to war as long as they remain infected with the delusional virus of national sovereignty. Internationalism is a step in the right direction. An international police force will prevent many minor wars, but it will not be effective in preventing major wars, conflicts between the great military governments of earth.
134:5.11 (1489.2) As the number of truly sovereign nations (great powers) decreases, so do both opportunity and need for mankind government increase. When there are only a few really sovereign (great) powers, either they must embark on the life and death struggle for national (imperial) supremacy, or else, by voluntary surrender of certain prerogatives of sovereignty, they must create the essential nucleus of supernational power which will serve as the beginning of the real sovereignty of all mankind.
134:5.12 (1489.3) Peace will not come to Urantia until every so-called sovereign nation surrenders its power to make war into the hands of a representative government of all mankind. Political sovereignty is innate with the peoples of the world. When all the peoples of Urantia create a world government, they have the right and the power to make such a government SOVEREIGN; and when such a representative or democratic world power controls the world’s land, air, and naval forces, peace on earth and good will among men can prevail—but not until then.
Me here: Paper 71 – Development of the State – is a good study on this topic of political and national sovereignty. Those nations who will relinquish nationalism for globalism must first learn to act in the best interests of its citizens – the greatest good for the greatest number. Good nationalistic governance evolves, eventually, into more pluralistic and then more globalistic governance. But in all such matters, the reduction of self interest in favor of service-to-others motivations and priorities is a prerequisite for such epochal and evolutionary progress.
The rights of the each must become the rights of all which requires that personal sovereignty is tamed and circumscribed according to the rights of all others…every ‘each’ has the same rights as every other ‘each’ which describes true liberty vs. false liberty. True liberty does NOT mean I can do whatever I want whenever I want no matter the consequences to someone else’s liberties. No….it doesn’t mean that. That is False Liberty…the liberty I steal from others for my own selfish wants and self importance.
71:4.16 (804.16) The appearance of genuine brotherhood signifies that a social order has arrived in which all men delight in bearing one another’s burdens; they actually desire to practice the golden rule. But such an ideal society cannot be realized when either the weak or the wicked lie in wait to take unfair and unholy advantage of those who are chiefly actuated by devotion to the service of truth, beauty, and goodness. In such a situation only one course is practical: The “golden rulers” may establish a progressive society in which they live according to their ideals while maintaining an adequate defense against their benighted fellows who might seek either to exploit their pacific predilections or to destroy their advancing civilization.
71:4.17 (804.17) Idealism can never survive on an evolving planet if the idealists in each generation permit themselves to be exterminated by the baser orders of humanity. And here is the great test of idealism: Can an advanced society maintain that military preparedness which renders it secure from all attack by its war-loving neighbors without yielding to the temptation to employ this military strength in offensive operations against other peoples for purposes of selfish gain or national aggrandizement? National survival demands preparedness, and religious idealism alone can prevent the prostitution of preparedness into aggression. Only love, brotherhood, can prevent the strong from oppressing the weak.
Me here: Paper 72 – Government On A Neighboring Planet – gives us an example of a continental nation that has evolved significantly and much further than the rest of that world’s populations. It provides a fascinating look into a stage of political sovereignty that does indeed embrace the greatest good for the greatest number. The Paper describes a people that are far beyond any form of governance found on our own world at this time. But it also describes a recognizable potential in our arc of trajectory I think.
Secular and social progress depends upon the spiritual progress of the citizenry. Social progress cannot be legislated or enforced by authority. True progress, lasting progress, evolutionary progress of the whole is the reflection of the aggregate progress of the parts. True peace and social fraternity are the results of spirituality…not the other way around.
52:6.2 (597.3) Even on normal evolutionary worlds the realization of the world-wide brotherhood of man is not an easy accomplishment. On a confused and disordered planet like Urantia such an achievement requires a much longer time and necessitates far greater effort. Unaided social evolution can hardly achieve such happy results on a spiritually isolated sphere. Religious revelation is essential to the realization of brotherhood on Urantia. While Jesus has shown the way to the immediate attainment of spiritual brotherhood, the realization of social brotherhood on your world depends much on the achievement of the following personal transformations and planetary adjustments:
52:6.3 (597.4) 1. Social fraternity. Multiplication of international and interracial social contacts and fraternal associations through travel, commerce, and competitive play. Development of a common language and the multiplication of multilinguists. The racial and national interchange of students, teachers, industrialists, and religious philosophers.
52:6.4 (597.5) 2. Intellectual cross-fertilization. Brotherhood is impossible on a world whose inhabitants are so primitive that they fail to recognize the folly of unmitigated selfishness. There must occur an exchange of national and racial literature. Each race must become familiar with the thought of all races; each nation must know the feelings of all nations. Ignorance breeds suspicion, and suspicion is incompatible with the essential attitude of sympathy and love.
52:6.5 (597.6) 3. Ethical awakening. Only ethical consciousness can unmask the immorality of human intolerance and the sinfulness of fratricidal strife. Only a moral conscience can condemn the evils of national envy and racial jealousy. Only moral beings will ever seek for that spiritual insight which is essential to living the golden rule.
52:6.6 (598.1) 4. Political wisdom. Emotional maturity is essential to self-control. Only emotional maturity will insure the substitution of international techniques of civilized adjudication for the barbarous arbitrament of war. Wise statesmen will sometime work for the welfare of humanity even while they strive to promote the interest of their national or racial groups. Selfish political sagacity is ultimately suicidal—destructive of all those enduring qualities which insure planetary group survival.
52:6.7 (598.2) 5. Spiritual insight. The brotherhood of man is, after all, predicated on the recognition of the fatherhood of God. The quickest way to realize the brotherhood of man on Urantia is to effect the spiritual transformation of present-day humanity. The only technique for accelerating the natural trend of social evolution is that of applying spiritual pressure from above, thus augmenting moral insight while enhancing the soul capacity of every mortal to understand and love every other mortal. Mutual understanding and fraternal love are transcendent civilizers and mighty factors in the world-wide realization of the brotherhood of man.
So….in the realms of time and space, evolution is the functional norm. Everything evolves. Even celestials advance and gain experiential wisdom from their creation in-time. It is not just material biology or the astrological formation of stars and worlds that evolve, but also persons and groups of persons and systems evolve. Sovereignty evolves too. From family to tribe to nation to world. This is an inevitable process of progressive development and achievement and ultimate realization. The brotherhood/sisterhood of mortals is not a gift or some sudden dispensation delivered from on high by armageddons and raptures. These are earned by struggle and experience and by the spiritualization of each person and all persons…it is a collective aggregation of spiritual progress. As goes the parts, so goes the whole…..perfection of the whole requires the perfecting of the parts!
3. The Evolutionary Idea
32:3.1 (360.3) The only creation that is perfectly settled is Havona, the central universe, which was made directly by the thought of the Universal Father and the word of the Eternal Son. Havona is an existential, perfect, and replete universe, surrounding the home of the eternal Deities, the center of all things. The creations of the seven superuniverses are finite, evolutionary, and consistently progressive.
32:3.2 (360.4) The physical systems of time and space are all evolutionary in origin. They are not even physically stabilized until they are swung into the settled circuits of their superuniverses. Neither is a local universe settled in light and life until its physical possibilities of expansion and development have been exhausted, and until the spiritual status of all its inhabited worlds has been forever settled and stabilized.
32:3.3 (360.5) Except in the central universe, perfection is a progressive attainment. In the central creation we have a pattern of perfection, but all other realms must attain that perfection by the methods established for the advancement of those particular worlds or universes. And an almost infinite variety characterizes the plans of the Creator Sons for organizing, evolving, disciplining, and settling their respective local universes.
134:5.9 (1488.7) Political sovereignty is created out of the surrender of self-determinism, first by the individual within the family and then by the families and clans in relation to the tribe and larger groupings. This progressive transfer of self-determination from the smaller to ever larger political organizations has generally proceeded unabated in the East since the establishment of the Ming and the Mogul dynasties. In the West it obtained for more than a thousand years right on down to the end of the World War, when an unfortunate retrograde movement temporarily reversed this normal trend by re-establishing the submerged political sovereignty of numerous small groups in Europe.
134:5.10 (1489.1) Urantia will not enjoy lasting peace until the so-called sovereign nations intelligently and fully surrender their sovereign powers into the hands of the brotherhood of men—mankind government. Internationalism—Leagues of Nations—can never bring permanent peace to mankind. World-wide confederations of nations will effectively prevent minor wars and acceptably control the smaller nations, but they will not prevent world wars nor control the three, four, or five most powerful governments. In the face of real conflicts, one of these world powers will withdraw from the League and declare war. You cannot prevent nations going to war as long as they remain infected with the delusional virus of national sovereignty. Internationalism is a step in the right direction. An international police force will prevent many minor wars, but it will not be effective in preventing major wars, conflicts between the great military governments of earth.
134:5.11 (1489.2) As the number of truly sovereign nations (great powers) decreases, so do both opportunity and need for mankind government increase. When there are only a few really sovereign (great) powers, either they must embark on the life and death struggle for national (imperial) supremacy, or else, by voluntary surrender of certain prerogatives of sovereignty, they must create the essential nucleus of supernational power which will serve as the beginning of the real sovereignty of all mankind.
134:5.12 (1489.3) Peace will not come to Urantia until every so-called sovereign nation surrenders its power to make war into the hands of a representative government of all mankind. Political sovereignty is innate with the peoples of the world. When all the peoples of Urantia create a world government, they have the right and the power to make such a government SOVEREIGN; and when such a representative or democratic world power controls the world’s land, air, and naval forces, peace on earth and good will among men can prevail—but not until then.
Me here: Paper 71 – Development of the State – is a good study on this topic of political and national sovereignty. Those nations who will relinquish nationalism for globalism must first learn to act in the best interests of its citizens – the greatest good for the greatest number. Good nationalistic governance evolves, eventually, into more pluralistic and then more globalistic governance. But in all such matters, the reduction of self interest in favor of service-to-others motivations and priorities is a prerequisite for such epochal and evolutionary progress.
The rights of the each must become the rights of all which requires that personal sovereignty is tamed and circumscribed according to the rights of all others…every ‘each’ has the same rights as every other ‘each’ which describes true liberty vs. false liberty. True liberty does NOT mean I can do whatever I want whenever I want no matter the consequences to someone else’s liberties. No….it doesn’t mean that. That is False Liberty…the liberty I steal from others for my own selfish wants and self importance.
71:4.16 (804.16) The appearance of genuine brotherhood signifies that a social order has arrived in which all men delight in bearing one another’s burdens; they actually desire to practice the golden rule. But such an ideal society cannot be realized when either the weak or the wicked lie in wait to take unfair and unholy advantage of those who are chiefly actuated by devotion to the service of truth, beauty, and goodness. In such a situation only one course is practical: The “golden rulers” may establish a progressive society in which they live according to their ideals while maintaining an adequate defense against their benighted fellows who might seek either to exploit their pacific predilections or to destroy their advancing civilization.
71:4.17 (804.17) Idealism can never survive on an evolving planet if the idealists in each generation permit themselves to be exterminated by the baser orders of humanity. And here is the great test of idealism: Can an advanced society maintain that military preparedness which renders it secure from all attack by its war-loving neighbors without yielding to the temptation to employ this military strength in offensive operations against other peoples for purposes of selfish gain or national aggrandizement? National survival demands preparedness, and religious idealism alone can prevent the prostitution of preparedness into aggression. Only love, brotherhood, can prevent the strong from oppressing the weak.
Me here: Paper 72 – Government On A Neighboring Planet – gives us an example of a continental nation that has evolved significantly and much further than the rest of that world’s populations. It provides a fascinating look into a stage of political sovereignty that does indeed embrace the greatest good for the greatest number. The Paper describes a people that are far beyond any form of governance found on our own world at this time. But it also describes a recognizable potential in our arc of trajectory I think.
Secular and social progress depends upon the spiritual progress of the citizenry. Social progress cannot be legislated or enforced by authority. True progress, lasting progress, evolutionary progress of the whole is the reflection of the aggregate progress of the parts. True peace and social fraternity are the results of spirituality…not the other way around.
52:6.2 (597.3) Even on normal evolutionary worlds the realization of the world-wide brotherhood of man is not an easy accomplishment. On a confused and disordered planet like Urantia such an achievement requires a much longer time and necessitates far greater effort. Unaided social evolution can hardly achieve such happy results on a spiritually isolated sphere. Religious revelation is essential to the realization of brotherhood on Urantia. While Jesus has shown the way to the immediate attainment of spiritual brotherhood, the realization of social brotherhood on your world depends much on the achievement of the following personal transformations and planetary adjustments:
52:6.3 (597.4) 1. Social fraternity. Multiplication of international and interracial social contacts and fraternal associations through travel, commerce, and competitive play. Development of a common language and the multiplication of multilinguists. The racial and national interchange of students, teachers, industrialists, and religious philosophers.
52:6.4 (597.5) 2. Intellectual cross-fertilization. Brotherhood is impossible on a world whose inhabitants are so primitive that they fail to recognize the folly of unmitigated selfishness. There must occur an exchange of national and racial literature. Each race must become familiar with the thought of all races; each nation must know the feelings of all nations. Ignorance breeds suspicion, and suspicion is incompatible with the essential attitude of sympathy and love.
52:6.5 (597.6) 3. Ethical awakening. Only ethical consciousness can unmask the immorality of human intolerance and the sinfulness of fratricidal strife. Only a moral conscience can condemn the evils of national envy and racial jealousy. Only moral beings will ever seek for that spiritual insight which is essential to living the golden rule.
52:6.6 (598.1) 4. Political wisdom. Emotional maturity is essential to self-control. Only emotional maturity will insure the substitution of international techniques of civilized adjudication for the barbarous arbitrament of war. Wise statesmen will sometime work for the welfare of humanity even while they strive to promote the interest of their national or racial groups. Selfish political sagacity is ultimately suicidal—destructive of all those enduring qualities which insure planetary group survival.
52:6.7 (598.2) 5. Spiritual insight. The brotherhood of man is, after all, predicated on the recognition of the fatherhood of God. The quickest way to realize the brotherhood of man on Urantia is to effect the spiritual transformation of present-day humanity. The only technique for accelerating the natural trend of social evolution is that of applying spiritual pressure from above, thus augmenting moral insight while enhancing the soul capacity of every mortal to understand and love every other mortal. Mutual understanding and fraternal love are transcendent civilizers and mighty factors in the world-wide realization of the brotherhood of man.
For those unfamiliar with USA history, we began as 13 distinct colonies and multiple territories in the 16th and 17th century, each started by a sovereign European country – including England, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, and Russia – or by some corporate proxy/representative of a European government or by some outcast religious order granted land by some king or another. The 13 colonies along the Atlantic seaboard become solely English properties by war or treaty or purchase. But each colony was a distinct culture and shared little with any other colony prior to and even after they all became the colonies and properties of England.
The colonies slowly became federalized beginning with the American Revolution and subsequent victory over their English masters. But there was great state by state sovereign jealousy and statehood-independence for many years…that does still exist today. Texas threatens secession from the Union regularly and our Civil War in the 1860’s was about state’s rights vs. federalism!! We now have 50 states (since 1959) and several Territories all subject to our system of Federalism where each state is subject to certain centralized sovereignty and loyalty.
The success of mutual Federalism was not an easy or natural path for the States to manage. It was not always popular with the citizens of those states either. Localism and nationalism are difficult prejudices to overcome. Mutual interest will deliver globalism to our world as the Colonies found Federalism in the best interests of the states and the citizens of those states.
Ironically enough, the USA is the biggest obstacle to the evolutionary forces and trends toward Globalism. There are legitimate concerns to consider if one studies Paper 72 – Government On A Neighboring Planet. Urantia may not yet be prepared for the inevitable globalization to come. But it is obvious enough that our world is now moving in that direction. We shall see how long it takes and how difficult the journey becomes….
At the time the UB was published the USA had 48 states in the Union:
134:5.13 (1489.4) To use an important nineteenth- and twentieth-century illustration: The forty-eight states of the American Federal Union have long enjoyed peace. They have no more wars among themselves. They have surrendered their sovereignty to the federal government, and through the arbitrament of war, they have abandoned all claims to the delusions of self-determination. While each state regulates its internal affairs, it is not concerned with foreign relations, tariffs, immigration, military affairs, or interstate commerce. Neither do the individual states concern themselves with matters of citizenship. The forty-eight states suffer the ravages of war only when the federal government’s sovereignty is in some way jeopardized.
134:5.14 (1489.5) These forty-eight states, having abandoned the twin sophistries of sovereignty and self-determination, enjoy interstate peace and tranquillity. So will the nations of Urantia begin to enjoy peace when they freely surrender their respective sovereignties into the hands of a global government—the sovereignty of the brotherhood of men. In this world state the small nations will be as powerful as the great, even as the small state of Rhode Island has its two senators in the American Congress just the same as the populous state of New York or the large state of Texas.
134:5.15 (1490.1) The limited (state) sovereignty of these forty-eight states was created by men and for men. The superstate (national) sovereignty of the American Federal Union was created by the original thirteen of these states for their own benefit and for the benefit of men. Sometime the supernational sovereignty of the planetary government of mankind will be similarly created by nations for their own benefit and for the benefit of all men.
134:5.16 (1490.2) Citizens are not born for the benefit of governments; governments are organizations created and devised for the benefit of men. There can be no end to the evolution of political sovereignty short of the appearance of the government of the sovereignty of all men. All other sovereignties are relative in value, intermediate in meaning, and subordinate in status.
134:5.17 (1490.3) With scientific progress, wars are going to become more and more devastating until they become almost racially suicidal. How many world wars must be fought and how many leagues of nations must fail before men will be willing to establish the government of mankind and begin to enjoy the blessings of permanent peace and thrive on the tranquillity of good will—world-wide good will—among men?
I do not wish to get into the weeds of domestic politics but…. events here regarding our recent elections in November and the protests and storming of our Capital in January 2021 are very illustrative of these UB text posts related to False Liberty and self-determination demonstrated here by those who fear change and hope for a return to some idyllic past that never existed. The ugly head of racism and fascism has risen here publicly to remind us of the ugliness of Me First & Right Now thinking that epitomizes regressive thinking. Such lawlessness and the embrace of chaos and anarchy demonstrate how twisted nationalism and patriotism can become in the minds of those motivated by fear and hate.
There are many enemies of globalization and many who embrace isolationism…even in this land of immigrants…which every single person in the USA either is or is the progeny of such (excepting the AmerIndian/Native Americans who came here 100,000+/- years ago – by emigration!). But the story of immigration in America is one wave of unwelcome reviled people after another….Jew, Catholic, Irish, Italian, Pole, Greek….and also Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Arab, Muslim….no group has been spared the rejection by those who have been here longer, especially the white mongrel Protestants for northern Europe (who now equal less than half of citizens!!).
I think our Democracy is gaining strength to endure and overcome the fascism and racism that plague our world. More and more national borders and barriers are being penetrated by commerce, student exchanges, the internet community, travel, pandemic and ecological disaster response, international NGO refugee and child welfare organizations, and translation technology.
But even here in this community lurk those who fear and who resist the inevitability of globalization and oppose inclusion and equality and make judgements about superiority and inferiority. Nonetheless, the experiment of equal protection under the law and equal opportunity for all continues here. Let us hope it prevails and ultimately leads to that global sovereignty to come!! Today we watch the past fade into its ignoble history and, hopefully, witness True Liberty supplant False Liberty as the remnants of fascism have their last gasp and perish by their own irrelevancy to reality and the future of our evolutionary planetary progress.
6. Law, Liberty, and Sovereignty
134:6.1 (1490.4) If one man craves freedom—liberty—he must remember that all other men long for the same freedom. Groups of such liberty-loving mortals cannot live together in peace without becoming subservient to such laws, rules, and regulations as will grant each person the same degree of freedom while at the same time safeguarding an equal degree of freedom for all of his fellow mortals. If one man is to be absolutely free, then another must become an absolute slave. And the relative nature of freedom is true socially, economically, and politically. Freedom is the gift of civilization made possible by the enforcement of LAW.
134:6.2 (1490.5) Religion makes it spiritually possible to realize the brotherhood of men, but it will require mankind government to regulate the social, economic, and political problems associated with such a goal of human happiness and efficiency.
134:6.3 (1490.6) There shall be wars and rumors of wars—nation will rise against nation—just as long as the world’s political sovereignty is divided up and unjustly held by a group of nation-states. England, Scotland, and Wales were always fighting each other until they gave up their respective sovereignties, reposing them in the United Kingdom.
134:6.4 (1490.7) Another world war will teach the so-called sovereign nations to form some sort of federation, thus creating the machinery for preventing small wars, wars between the lesser nations. But global wars will go on until the government of mankind is created. Global sovereignty will prevent global wars—nothing else can.
134:6.5 (1490.8) The forty-eight American free states live together in peace. There are among the citizens of these forty-eight states all of the various nationalities and races that live in the ever-warring nations of Europe. These Americans represent almost all the religions and religious sects and cults of the whole wide world, and yet here in North America they live together in peace. And all this is made possible because these forty-eight states have surrendered their sovereignty and have abandoned all notions of the supposed rights of self-determination.
134:6.6 (1490.9) It is not a question of armaments or disarmament. Neither does the question of conscription or voluntary military service enter into these problems of maintaining world-wide peace. If you take every form of modern mechanical armaments and all types of explosives away from strong nations, they will fight with fists, stones, and clubs as long as they cling to their delusions of the divine right of national sovereignty.
134:6.7 (1491.1) War is not man’s great and terrible disease; war is a symptom, a result. The real disease is the virus of national sovereignty.
134:6.8 (1491.2) Urantia nations have not possessed real sovereignty; they never have had a sovereignty which could protect them from the ravages and devastations of world wars. In the creation of the global government of mankind, the nations are not giving up sovereignty so much as they are actually creating a real, bona fide, and lasting world sovereignty which will henceforth be fully able to protect them from all war. Local affairs will be handled by local governments; national affairs, by national governments; international affairs will be administered by global government.
134:6.9 (1491.3) World peace cannot be maintained by treaties, diplomacy, foreign policies, alliances, balances of power, or any other type of makeshift juggling with the sovereignties of nationalism. World law must come into being and must be enforced by world government—the sovereignty of all mankind.
Me here: Sovereignty is a fascinating relationship-reality that exists at every level of being and association and interaction. False Liberty is the presumption of one’s entitlement to that which is not extended to others equally or fully…if at all. Dominance over others is, by definition, false liberty. Choosing and/or acting with disregard for others is likewise an exercise in false liberty and a presumption/illustration/expression of self importance.
Personal sovereignty is truly achieved only when all persons enjoy and extend True Liberty to others and recognize the sovereignty of all others…first. There is an order and hierarchy of sovereignty that must be respected for truth, beauty, goodness, and peace to reign. It begins with the sovereignty of God. It is then established level upon level from the highest to the lowest of all orders of beings from Paradise to the mortal and material worlds.
God has decreed the sovereignty of personality and the sovereignty of freewill for all beings granted mind with personality and freewill. Which means such beings are therefore and thereby free to choose to oorr not to respect the sovereignty of others. You see. True Liberty must allow freewill beings to choose False Liberty. Mostly this is done by those of us in darkness and confusion and immaturity and inexperience who do not yet understand how the universe works or who is in charge of what or how sovereignty works at all. Those who embrace False Liberty lack experiential wisdom and do not understand how the embrace of self importance and the domination of self over others leads to suffering….including our own suffering.
All the sovereignty relationships in all the universes are easily aligned and maintained by our primary personality relationship with God. When God becomes our sovereign and we acknowledge God’s power and our relationship with God as the source of our very being and of creation itself, then will all other relationships begin to allow for and respect True Liberty. Only then do we begin to align our own being and becoming and relationships with universe reality. Such a paradigm shift affects everything and everyone profoundly. Suffering is an effect. Our relationship with God and with one another is the primary cause of all effects.
So…we cannot enjoy true sovereignty until we respect the sovereignty of others first…all others.
Or so I understand the Papers to teach.
99:4.4 (1089.12) No matter what upheavals may attend the social and economic growth of civilization, religion is genuine and worth while if it fosters in the individual an experience in which the sovereignty of truth, beauty, and goodness prevails, for such is the true spiritual concept of supreme reality. And through love and worship this becomes meaningful as fellowship with man and sonship with God.
99:7.4 (1093.2) Man can never wisely decide temporal issues or transcend the selfishness of personal interests unless he meditates in the presence of the sovereignty of God and reckons with the realities of divine meanings and spiritual values.
https://urantia-association.org/search/?zoom_sort=2&zoom_query=Sovereignty+&x=6&y=9
134:6.10 (1491.4) The individual will enjoy far more liberty under world government. Today, the citizens of the great powers are taxed, regulated, and controlled almost oppressively, and much of this present interference with individual liberties will vanish when the national governments are willing to trustee their sovereignty as regards international affairs into the hands of global government.
134:6.11 (1491.5) Under global government the national groups will be afforded a real opportunity to realize and enjoy the personal liberties of genuine democracy. The fallacy of self-determination will be ended. With global regulation of money and trade will come the new era of world-wide peace. Soon may a global language evolve, and there will be at least some hope of sometime having a global religion—or religions with a global viewpoint.
134:6.12 (1491.6) Collective security will never afford peace until the collectivity includes all mankind.
134:6.13 (1491.7) The political sovereignty of representative mankind government will bring lasting peace on earth, and the spiritual brotherhood of man will forever insure good will among all men. And there is no other way whereby peace on earth and good will among men can be realized.
134:6.15 (1491.8) After the death of Cymboyton, his sons encountered great difficulties in maintaining a peaceful faculty. The repercussions of Jesus’ teachings would have been much greater if the later Christian teachers who joined the Urmia faculty had exhibited more wisdom and exercised more tolerance.
134:6.16 (1491.9) Cymboyton’s eldest son had appealed to Abner at Philadelphia for help, but Abner’s choice of teachers was most unfortunate in that they turned out to be unyielding and uncompromising. These teachers sought to make their religion dominant over the other beliefs. They never suspected that the oft-referred-to lectures of the caravan conductor had been delivered by Jesus himself.
134:6.17 (1491.10) As confusion increased in the faculty, the three brothers withdrew their financial support, and after five years the school closed. Later it was reopened as a Mithraic temple and eventually burned down in connection with one of their orgiastic celebrations.
7. The Thirty-First Year (A.D. 25)
134:7.1 (1492.1) When Jesus returned from the journey to the Caspian Sea, he knew that his world travels were about finished. He made only one more trip outside of Palestine, and that was into Syria. After a brief visit to Capernaum, he went to Nazareth, stopping over a few days to visit. In the middle of April he left Nazareth for Tyre. From there he journeyed on north, tarrying for a few days at Sidon, but his destination was Antioch.
More soil cultivation and seed sowing.
134:7.2 (1492.2) This is the year of Jesus’ solitary wanderings through Palestine and Syria. Throughout this year of travel he was known by various names in different parts of the country: the carpenter of Nazareth, the boatbuilder of Capernaum, the scribe of Damascus, and the teacher of Alexandria.
134:7.3 (1492.3) At Antioch the Son of Man lived for over two months, working, observing, studying, visiting, ministering, and all the while learning how man lives, how he thinks, feels, and reacts to the environment of human existence. For three weeks of this period he worked as a tentmaker. He remained longer in Antioch than at any other place he visited on this trip. Ten years later, when the Apostle Paul was preaching in Antioch and heard his followers speak of the doctrines of the Damascus scribe, he little knew that his pupils had heard the voice, and listened to the teachings, of the Master himself.
134:7.4 (1492.4) From Antioch Jesus journeyed south along the coast to Caesarea, where he tarried for a few weeks, continuing down the coast to Joppa. From Joppa he traveled inland to Jamnia, Ashdod, and Gaza. From Gaza he took the inland trail to Beersheba, where he remained for a week.
134:7.5 (1492.5) Jesus then started on his final tour, as a private individual, through the heart of Palestine, going from Beersheba in the south to Dan in the north. On this journey northward he stopped at Hebron, Bethlehem (where he saw his birthplace), Jerusalem (he did not visit Bethany), Beeroth, Lebonah, Sychar, Shechem, Samaria, Geba, En-Gannim, Endor, Madon; passing through Magdala and Capernaum, he journeyed on north; and passing east of the Waters of Merom, he went by Karahta to Dan, or Caesarea-Philippi.
134:7.6 (1492.6) The indwelling Thought Adjuster now led Jesus to forsake the dwelling places of men and betake himself up to Mount Hermon that he might finish his work of mastering his human mind and complete the task of effecting his full consecration to the remainder of his lifework on earth.
134:7.7 (1492.7) This was one of those unusual and extraordinary epochs in the Master’s earth life on Urantia. Another and very similar one was the experience he passed through when alone in the hills near Pella just subsequent to his baptism. This period of isolation on Mount Hermon marked the termination of his purely human career, that is, the technical termination of the mortal bestowal, while the later isolation marked the beginning of the more divine phase of the bestowal. And Jesus lived alone with God for six weeks on the slopes of Mount Hermon.
Well…..
We have come to the end of The Travels of Jesus in the UB prior to his public ministry. Michael has completed his actual or technical 7th and final bestowal. He now spends 6 weeks in the mountains in “unbroken communion” with God and in contemplation of his options and next steps to finalize his experience as a mortal of Nebadon.
At the end of this sojourn, he also faces and deals with the rebel leaders of the planetary rebellion, Satan and Caligastia. Jesus here realizes his power and authority and becomes the unified Son of Man and Son of God. But he chooses to serve our world further and to make a gift to our world and to all of Nebadon of his example of faith, and the Divine Gospel, and teachings of his wisdom in public ministry for a few more years, prior to his departure and that great gift of his Spirit of Truth to the mortals of Urantia forevermore.
8. The Sojourn on Mount Hermon
134:8.1 (1492.8) After spending some time in the vicinity of Caesarea-Philippi, Jesus made ready his supplies, and securing a beast of burden and a lad named Tiglath, he proceeded along the Damascus road to a village sometime known as Beit Jenn in the foothills of Mount Hermon. Here, near the middle of August, A.D. 25, he established his headquarters, and leaving his supplies in the custody of Tiglath, he ascended the lonely slopes of the mountain. Tiglath accompanied Jesus this first day up the mountain to a designated point about 6,000 feet above sea level, where they built a stone container in which Tiglath was to deposit food twice a week.
134:8.2 (1493.1) The first day, after he had left Tiglath, Jesus had ascended the mountain only a short way when he paused to pray. Among other things he asked his Father to send back the guardian seraphim to “be with Tiglath.” He requested that he be permitted to go up to his last struggle with the realities of mortal existence alone. And his request was granted. He went into the great test with only his indwelling Adjuster to guide and sustain him.
134:8.3 (1493.2) Jesus ate frugally while on the mountain; he abstained from all food only a day or two at a time. The superhuman beings who confronted him on this mountain, and with whom he wrestled in spirit, and whom he defeated in power, were real; they were his archenemies in the system of Satania; they were not phantasms of the imagination evolved out of the intellectual vagaries of a weakened and starving mortal who could not distinguish reality from the visions of a disordered mind.
134:8.4 (1493.3) Jesus spent the last three weeks of August and the first three weeks of September on Mount Hermon. During these weeks he finished the mortal task of achieving the circles of mind-understanding and personality-control. Throughout this period of communion with his heavenly Father the indwelling Adjuster also completed the assigned services. The mortal goal of this earth creature was there attained. Only the final phase of mind and Adjuster attunement remained to be consummated.
134:8.5 (1493.4) After more than five weeks of unbroken communion with his Paradise Father, Jesus became absolutely assured of his nature and of the certainty of his triumph over the material levels of time-space personality manifestation. He fully believed in, and did not hesitate to assert, the ascendancy of his divine nature over his human nature.
134:8.6 (1493.5) Near the end of the mountain sojourn Jesus asked his Father if he might be permitted to hold conference with his Satania enemies as the Son of Man, as Joshua ben Joseph. This request was granted. During the last week on Mount Hermon the great temptation, the universe trial, occurred. Satan (representing Lucifer) and the rebellious Planetary Prince, Caligastia, were present with Jesus and were made fully visible to him. And this “temptation,” this final trial of human loyalty in the face of the misrepresentations of rebel personalities, had not to do with food, temple pinnacles, or presumptuous acts. It had not to do with the kingdoms of this world but with the sovereignty of a mighty and glorious universe. The symbolism of your records was intended for the backward ages of the world’s childlike thought. And subsequent generations should understand what a great struggle the Son of Man passed through that eventful day on Mount Hermon.
134:8.7 (1493.6) To the many proposals and counterproposals of the emissaries of Lucifer, Jesus only made reply: “May the will of my Paradise Father prevail, and you, my rebellious son, may the Ancients of Days judge you divinely. I am your Creator-father; I can hardly judge you justly, and my mercy you have already spurned. I commit you to the adjudication of the Judges of a greater universe.”
134:8.8 (1494.1) To all the Lucifer-suggested compromises and makeshifts, to all such specious proposals about the incarnation bestowal, Jesus only made reply, “The will of my Father in Paradise be done.” And when the trying ordeal was finished, the detached guardian seraphim returned to Jesus’ side and ministered to him.
134:8.9 (1494.2) On an afternoon in late summer, amid the trees and in the silence of nature, Michael of Nebadon won the unquestioned sovereignty of his universe. On that day he completed the task set for Creator Sons to live to the full the incarnated life in the likeness of mortal flesh on the evolutionary worlds of time and space. The universe announcement of this momentous achievement was not made until the day of his baptism, months afterward, but it all really took place that day on the mountain. And when Jesus came down from his sojourn on Mount Hermon, the Lucifer rebellion in Satania and the Caligastia secession on Urantia were virtually settled. Jesus had paid the last price required of him to attain the sovereignty of his universe, which in itself regulates the status of all rebels and determines that all such future upheavals (if they ever occur) may be dealt with summarily and effectively. Accordingly, it may be seen that the so-called “great temptation” of Jesus took place sometime before his baptism and not just after that event.
134:8.10 (1494.3) At the end of this sojourn on the mountain, as Jesus was making his descent, he met Tiglath coming up to the rendezvous with food. Turning him back, he said only: “The period of rest is over; I must return to my Father’s business.” He was a silent and much changed man as they journeyed back to Dan, where he took leave of the lad, giving him the donkey. He then proceeded south by the same way he had come, to Capernaum.
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