© 1978 Jim McNelly
© 1978 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
Infinite eternities had passed on Paradise before the Universal Father decided that he had waited long enough. It was a sort of divine restlessness, what you might call a seven trillion year itch that caused the Father to pick up his tools and act as the Creator once again. He knew that he had to resolve that nagging question of sovereignty once and for all.
An ad ran in the heavenly chronicles calling for creators, messengers, surveyors, and the like. The Master Architects, unemployed since the unfolding of Havona, all applied. The Michael Sons and Creative Spirits were joyously anticipating the move to the suburbs and lined up at the portals of Paradise ready to move in and start raising a family,
There was quite a party on hand with music that hadn’t been heard in eons and the Father himself addressed the gathering. “Friends, I’ve got an idea I’d like to share with you,” he began. “I’ve worked out a plan for a tremendous time-space adventure that involves a creation totally different from Paradise, an imperfect universe, worlds of time and space, an evolutionary experience where beings are to be led to choose perfection.”
There was a gasp from the crowd. Imperfection? How could such a thing exist? Who wouldn’t choose perfection? They always had. Then the Father unfolded his plan, later to be called the ascension scheme, whereby men would be created in the divine image with the gift of personality, and that these same men would then be commanded to be perfect, even as the Paradise Father was perfect.
“I’m going to make them an offer they can’t refuse,” the Father God said. “All I will ask of men is that they believe, exhibit living faith, and I’ll take care of the rest.” He made sure that the path of perfection was one of increasing happiness, and that it was filled with good friends, plenty to eat, and excellent teachers in the schools.
To the astonishment of all but his closest friends, the Father conceived of bestowing a fragment of himself, a Thought Adjuster, with the idea of ultimately fusing with the new mortal personalities. “This should take care of the sovereignty question, mortals and I will earn it together!”
A few brief billion years passed and the Father thought he had the mystery monitored, when he heard of the poor isolated mortals on lovely, lonely Urantia. They knew only a little of his loving devotion and nothing of his remarkable ascension plan; why, they hardly even knew they were the sons of God!
Being the loving Father that he is, he decided to put together something special for the Urantia mortals. Already an emergency Melchizedek had opened the doors of truth and a Michael Son himself had incarnated and had promised to return any day. The Father knew that once Christ Michael returned the mortals would see his love revealed in its full glory and naturally choose the ascension plan. But the Father wanted mortal selectmen who would be mighty men among all the worlds of time. He wanted people who would believe without seeing and have faith on his word alone. He wanted “agondonters.”
Therefore, with his permission the Ancients of Days commissioned a mighty corps of truth revealers to prepare a text, a work to be called The URANTIA Book, that the Father might enlist a noble corps of faith sons and mighty messengers in the era prior to the return of his Son, Michael.
As his most recent act, the Father sent scores of his most experienced and advanced Adjusters to indwell the minds of those alive in the latter twentieth century and to lead them to form a temporal corps of volunteers, a “finite” Prince’s staff composed of living men and women. Of this group he had the greatest faith and highest hope, for these few mortals would have the unique opportunity to arise from darkness to perfection in a single lifetime. To those who knew the least of his nature in all of the universe, he was now to reveal the most.
At last the Father could see in a single generation what the fruits of his time-space adventure would be. Would men rally to his calling? Could men of isolation be brought to living perfection even without the presence of a visible Son? Perhaps now would man overcome his fears and come to know the Father’s plan, the greatest story of all time.
— Jim McNelly
Louisville, Colorado