© 2008 David Glass
© 2008 The Urantia Book Fellowship
| The Start of a Worthy New Tradition | Volume 9, Number 1, 2008 (Summer) — Index | The Urantia Book Is Not What It Used To Be |
The seven bestowals of Christ Michael, unlike the sevenfold bestowals of the Eternal Son in Havona, are within the range of the appreciation of the mind of contemporary Urantian men and women. A study of the Urantia Papers, in particular of Paper 119, “The Bestowals of Christ Michael,” reveals to the reader that what our world has known of the earth life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus, called “the Christ,” is only a tiny part of the full significance of even those fragmentary records of Jesus’ life that have been traditionally presented in and as the four Gospels of the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Seen from the perspective of the Urantia Papers, the beginning, outworking, termination, and resumption of the earth life of Jesus on Urantia, together with the partial accounts of his six other heretofore unrevealed, sovereignty-winning bestowals, have a far deeper and more cosmically relevant significance.
To begin at the planetary level and then to ascend through all levels of ever-widening scope and relevance, Michael’s bestowal on Urantia, according to the revelators, came at the most auspicious time for the global appreciation and effect of the bestowal in all history up to that time and, so far, since that time. The Urantia Book states that our world has not yet reached a level any more advantageously inclined to receive Michael appreciatively and appropriately than at that which prevailed at the time of the actual Urantia bestowal of the Son of God and Son of Man. What the Urantia Papers actually say pursuant to this point is:
Jesus did not come to this world during an age of spiritual decadence; at the time of his birth Urantia was experiencing such a revival of spiritual thinking and religious living as it had not known in all its previous post-Adamic history nor has experienced in any era since. [UB 121:1.1]
Let’s appreciate fully what is being stated here. I believe the implication is that the spiritual and religious climate of Urantia is not now as propitious as it was at the time of Michael’s actual bestowal. Though mankind was perhaps technologically, economically, and socially, poised at a more humble level than that of our contemporary era, the local area of Palestine and the Hellenized and Romanized world was, I infer, more conducive to the reception and integration of Michael’s life and teachings into the worldly systems and organizations than it would be, or is, at present.
Now, in the present, we find ourselves having just recently (cosmically speaking) been presented with a revelatory restatement of the record of the life and teaching of Michael on Urantia. No doubt, there was and is a certain “timely rightness” or temporal appropriateness about the bestowal of this information of so much of Jesus’ life and teachings at this time in history. We can speculate what some of these reasons may be; I feel that a primary purpose for the timing of this bestowal gift is so that it can assist in the preparation of teachers and leaders to function throughout what I presume to be a period of perhaps a millennium of planetary transition, an era into which we have already embarked.
This new and oncoming social order will not settle down complacently for a millennium. The human race must become reconciled to a procession of changes, adjustments, and readjustment. Mankind is on the march toward a new and unrevealed planetary destiny. [UB 99:1.1]
Urantia society can never hope to settle down as in past ages. The social ship has steamed out of the sheltered bays of established tradition and has begun its cruise upon the high seas of evolutionary destiny; and the soul of man, as never before in the world’s history, needs carefully to scrutinize its charts of morality and painstakingly to observe the compass of religious guidance. [UB 99:1.3]
I submit that the life and teaching of Jesus—presented in the context of the complete fifth epochal revelation—represents both an appropriate and perhaps a maximal revelation of spiritual and cosmic truth assimilable by the general populations of Urantia, perhaps on a partial scale at present, but growing more and more to embrace the entire planetary citizenry during the unfolding centuries of the future. We have, therefore, established that the seventh bestowal of Michael is certainly of planetary significance to our world in the past, present, and future.
The revelation of Michael’s life and teaching on Urantia is also of local system importance in that, as a man with the sole assistance of his Adjuster, Michael engaged himself in a final struggle with Caligastia and Lucifer and officially terminated the Lucifer rebellion. Additionally, considerable changes in local system administration—most notably the assignment of a new local system sovereign, Lanaforge, to fill Lucifer’s vacated office— were necessary.
The bestowal of Michael on Urantia was of constellation significance in that, since the outbreak of the Lucifer rebellion, terminated during Michael’s Urantia bestowal, a Most High Observer, a Vorondadek Son from Edentia, has been of continuous assignment to the watchcare and potential emergency administration of our planet. [UB 114:4]
Michael’s sevenfold bestowal career was obviously of tremendous local universe importance because the one-billion year enterprise represents Michael’s required method of acquiring forever the supreme sovereignty of his own, self-created universe of Nebadon.
The Nebadon Michael’s local universe bestowal career was also of superuniverse significance in that it needed to be and was recognized by the Uversa Ancients of Days as having satisfied the experiential requirements of a Creator Son to rule with full universe sovereignty in an Orvonton local universe.
Because Michael’s bestowal was that of the 611,121st Creator Son in all existence, the bestowal career and the transition of Michael from Crator Son status to that of Master Son were of grand universe significance. And because Michael’s sevenfold career comprised the living of the seven singular and plural manifestations of the wills of the three Paradise Deities, the bestowal career embraced the seven qualities of grand universe creation, the unification of which established the status and equals the growth and maturation of the Supreme Being, God the Supreme. Therefore was the bestowal career of Michael of significance to the realization of the Supreme Being and to the actualization of supremacy in general.
Now, since Michael is presently ready to begin the actualization of his absonite potentials, and since these potentials will probably be actualized in the vast regions of the four outer space zones, Michael’s achievement of local universe sovereignty is also of master universe relevance.
We know that the physical plans, life patterns, and personality traits that Michael selected to create and actualize in his local universe of Nebadon were chosen from, and during his prior tour of, the central universe; thus his bestowal career as a stage in the development and actualization of that local universe, is of Havona significance.
Michael’s completion of his bestowal career in Nebadon and his accession to the status of Master Son, the sovereign of this local universe, was greeted and acknowledged by the recognition and esteem and love of the Universal Father—hence was Michael’s local universe bestowal career of Paradise significance.
The revelation discloses that there are absolute potentials folded up in the unfathomable natures of the Michael Sons, potentials which are inherent in their origin in absolute beings— the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. Therefore, does the achievement of local universe sovereignty serve as another significant benchmark in the actualization of those unlimited potentials. In this regard, let me close with this quotation:
. . . When on Urantia, Christ Michael once said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” And we believe that in eternity the Michaels are literally destined to be “the way, the truth, and the life,” ever blazing the path for all universe personalities as it leads from supreme divinity through ultimate absonity to eternal deity finality. [UB 21:6.4]
David Glass has been a student of The Urantia Book since 1973 and has been active in many study groups and conferences in several states, including Florida, Oregon, and Texas. He gives private piano lessons and enjoys writing spiritually inspired poetry. Currently serving as Vice President of the North Texas Urantia Society, he has just begun his 16th reading of The Urantia Book.
. . . The appearance in and on your world, by apparently natural processes, of a divine Son, we regard as a miracle—the operation of universal laws beyond our understanding. Jesus of Nazareth was a miraculous person. [UB 120:4.5]
| The Start of a Worthy New Tradition | Volume 9, Number 1, 2008 (Summer) — Index | The Urantia Book Is Not What It Used To Be |