© 1959 William S. Sadler
© 1961 Urantia Foundation
Ability is that which you inherit, while skill is what you acquire. Life is not real to one who cannot do some one thing well, expertly. Skill is one of the real sources of the satisfaction of living. Ability implies the gift of foresight, farseeing vision. UB 160:4.11
Ability is the practical measure of life’s opportunities. You will never be held responsible for the accomplishment of that which is beyond your abilities. UB 171:8.10
Space potency is a prereality: it is the domain of the Unqualified Absolute and is responsive only to the personal grasp of the Universal Father, notwithstanding that it is seemingly modifiable by the presence of the Primary Master Force Organizers. On Uversa, space potency is spoken of as ABSOLUTA. UB 42:2.5
The absolute level is beginningless, endless, timeless, and spaceless. For example: On Paradise, time and space are nonexistent; the time-space status of Paradise is absolute. This level Is Trinity attained, existentially. by the Paradise Deities, but, this third level of unifying Deity expression is not fully unified experientially. Whenever, wherever, and however the absolute level of Deity functions, Paradise-absolute values and meanings are manifest. UB 0:1.13
The eternal Isle is composed of a single form of materialization—stationary systems of reality. This literal substance of Paradise is a homogeneous organization of space potency not to be found elsewhere in all the wide universe of universes. It has received many names in different universes, and the Melchizedeks of Nebadon long since named it absolutum. This Paradise source material is neither dead nor alive: it is -the original nonspiritual expression of the First Source and Center; it is Paradise, and Paradise is without duplicate. UB 11:2.9
Philosophers commit their gravest error when they are misled into the fallacy of abstraction, the practice of focusing the attention upon one aspect of reality and then of pronouncing such an isolated aspect to be the whole truth. UB 2:7.5
From the time viewpoint, the Actual is that which was and is: the Potential is that which is becoming and will be: the Original is that which is. From the eternity viewpoint, the differences between the Original, the Actual, and the Potential are not thus apparent. These triune qualities are not so distinguished on Paradise-eternity levels. In eternity all is—only has all not yet been revealed in time and space. From a creature’s viewpoint, actuality is substance, potentiality is capacity. Actuality exists centermost and expands therefrom into peripheral infinity; UB 115:3.11
And for a long time there will live on earth those timid, fearful, and hesitant Individuals who will prefer thus to secure their religious consolations, even though, in so casting their lot with the religions of authority, they compromise the sovereignty of personality, debase the dignity of self—respect, and utterly surrender the right to participate in that most thrilling and inspiring of all possible human experiences: the personal quest for truth, the exhilaration of facing the perils of intellectual discovery, the determination to explore the realities of personal religious experience, the supreme satisfaction of experiencing the personal triumph of the actual realization of the victory of spiritual faith over intellectual doubt as it is honestly won in the supreme adventure of all human existence—man seeking God, for himself and as himself, and finding him. UB 155:5.10
Affectation is the ridiculous effort of the ignorant to appear wise, the attempt of the barren soul to appear rich. UB 48:7.17
On Jerusem the ascenders from these isolated worlds occupy a residential sector by themselves and are known as the agondonters, meaning evolutionary will creatures who can believe without seeing, persevere when isolated, and triumph over insuperable difficulties even when alone. UB 50:7.2
Service of one’s fellows. UB 3:5.7
Ambition is dangerous until it is fully socialized. You have not truly acquired any virtue until your acts make you worthy of it. UB 48:7.19
The angelic hosts are a separate order of created beings; they are entirely different from the material order of mortal creatures, and they function as a distinct group of universe intelligences. Angels are not of that group of creatures called the “Sons of God” in the Scriptures: neither are they the glorified spirits of mortal men who have gone on to progress through the mansions on high. Angels are a direct creation, and they do not reproduce themselves. The angelic hosts have only a spiritual kinship with the human race. As man progresses in the journey to the Father in Paradise, he does traverse a state of being at one time analogous to the state of the angels, but mortal man never becomes an angel.
The Angels never die as man does. The angels are immortal unless, perchance, they become involved in sin as did some of them with the deceptions of Lucifer. The angels are the spirit servants in heaven, and they are neither all-wise nor all-powerful. But all of the loyal angels are truly pure and holy. UB 167:7.2
Anger is a material manifestation which represents, in a general way, the measure of the failure of the spiritual nature to gain control of the combined intellectual and physical natures. Anger indicates your lack of tolerant brotherly love plus your lack of self—respect and self—control. Anger depletes the health, debases the mind, and handicaps the spirit teacher of man’s soul. Have you not read in the Scriptures that “wrath kills the foolish man,” and that man “tears himself in his anger”? That “he who is slow of wrath is of great understanding,” while “he who is hasty of temper exalts folly”? You all know that”a soft answer turns away wrath,” and how “grievous words stir up anger.” Discretion defers anger, while “he who has no control over his own self is like a defenseless city without walls.” “Wrath is cruel and anger is outrageous.” “Angry men stir up strife, while the furious multiply their transgressions.” “Be not hasty in spirit, for anger rests in the bosom of fools.” UB 149:4.2
From this day on the term apostle was employed to distinguish the chosen family of Jesus’ advisers from the vast multitude of believing disciples who subsequently followed him. UB 137:1.7
Love of the beautiful and ever-advancing appreciation of the artistic touch of all creative manifestations on all levels of reality. UB 56:10.7
Art results from man’s attempt to escape from the lack of beauty in his material environment; it is a gesture toward the morontia level. UB 196:3.30
Hence materialism, atheism, is the maximation of ugliness, the climax of the finite antithesis of the beautiful. UB 56:10.4
When once you grasp the idea of God as a true and loving Father, the only concept which Jesus ever taught, you must forthwith, in all consistency, utterly abandon all those primitive notions about God as an offended monarch, a stern and all-powerful ruler whose chief delight is to detect his subjects in wrongdoing and to see that they are adequately punished, unless some being almost equal to himself should volunteer to suffer for then, to die as a substitute and in their stead. The whole idea of ransom and atonement Is incompatible with the concept of God as it was taught and exemplified by Jesus of Nazareth. The infinite love of God is not secondary to anything in the divine nature. All this concept of atonement and sacrificial salvation is rooted and grounded in selfishness.
This entire idea of the ransom of the atonement places salvation upon a plane of unreality; such a concept is purely philosophic. UB 188:4.8