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In one group of variable stars the period of light fluctuation is directly dependent on luminosity, and knowledge of this fact enables astronomers to utilize such suns as universe lighthouses or accurate measuring points for the further exploration of distant star clusters. By this technique it is possible to measure stellar distances most precisely up to more than one million light-years. Better methods of space measurement and improved telescopic technique will sometime more fully disclose the ten grand divisions of the superuniverse of Orvonton; you will at least recognize eight of these immense sectors as enormous and fairly symmetrical star clusters.

One of your near-by suns, which started life with about the same mass as yours, has now contracted almost to the size of Urantia, having become forty thousand times as dense as your sun. The weight of this hot-cold gaseous-solid is about one ton per cubic inch. And still this sun shines with a faint reddish glow, the senile glimmer of a dying monarch of light.

The day in Satania, as reckoned on Jerusem, is a little less (1 hour, 4 minutes, 15 seconds) than three days of Urantia time. These times are generally known as Salvington or universe time, and Satania or system time. Standard time is universe time.

Seraphim are initiated as ministering spirits by serving as observers on the lowest of the evolutionary worlds. After this experience they return to the associate worlds of the headquarters of the assigned constellation to begin their advanced studies and more definitely to prepare for service in some particular local system. Following this general education they are advanced to the service of some one of the local systems. On the architectural worlds associated with the capital of some Nebadon system our seraphim complete their training and are commissioned as ministering spirits of time.

The Most High Assistants are a group of volunteering beings, of origin outside the local universe, who are temporarily assigned as central and superuniverse representatives to, or observers of, the local creations. Their number varies constantly but is always far up in the millions.

Ultimatons function by mutual attraction, responding only to the circular Paradise-gravity pull. Without linear-gravity response they are thus held in the universal space drift. Ultimatons are capable of accelerating revolutionary velocity to the point of partial antigravity behavior, but they cannot, independent of force organizers or power directors, attain the critical escape velocity of deindividuation, return to the puissant-energy stage. In nature, ultimatons escape the status of physical existence only when participating in the terminal disruption of a cooled-off and dying sun.

The supervisor seraphim, the third order of local universe angels, are assigned to the service of the constellations. They make their headquarters on the capital spheres and minister extensively to the encircling morontia-training worlds. In Norlatiadek the seventy major spheres, together with the seven hundred minor satellites, are inhabited by the univitatia, the permanent citizens of the constellation. All these architectural worlds are fully administered by the various groups of native life, for the greater part unrevealed but including the efficient spironga and the beautiful spornagia. Being the mid-point in the morontia-training regime, as you might suspect, the morontia life of the constellations is both typical and ideal.

Usually the violet peoples do not begin to amalgamate with the planetary natives until their own group numbers over one million. But in the meantime the staff of the Planetary Prince proclaims that the children of the Gods have come down, as it were, to be one with the races of men; and the people eagerly look forward to the day when announcement will be made that those who have qualified as belonging to the superior racial strains may proceed to the Garden of Eden and be there chosen by the sons and daughters of Adam as the evolutionary fathers and mothers of the new and blended order of mankind.

The secondary midway creatures are indigenous to the Adamic missions. As with the corporeal staff of the Planetary Prince, the descendants of the Material Sons and Daughters are of two orders: their physical children and the secondary order of midway creatures. These material but ordinarily invisible planetary ministers contribute much to the advancement of civilization and even to the subjection of insubordinate minorities who may seek to subvert social development and spiritual progress.

Local or linear gravity becomes fully operative with the appearance of the atomic organization of matter. Preatomic matter becomes slightly gravity responsive when activated by X ray and other similar energies, but no measurable linear-gravity pull is exerted on free, unattached, and uncharged electronic-energy particles or on unassociated ultimatons.

Urantia is comparatively isolated on the outskirts of Satania, your solar system, with one exception, being the farthest removed from Jerusem, while Satania itself is next to the outermost system of Norlatiadek, and this constellation is now traversing the outer fringe of Nebadon. You were truly among the least of all creation until Michael’s bestowal elevated your planet to a position of honor and great universe interest. Sometimes the last is first, while truly the least becomes greatest.

Such children of the local universe are enabled to repossess themselves of much of their former human memory experience through having it retold by the associated seraphim and cherubim and by consulting the records of the mortal career filed by the recording angels. This they can do with undoubted assurance because the surviving soul, of experiential origin in the material and mortal life, while having no memory of mortal events, does have a residual experiential-recognition-response to these unremembered events of past experience.

The signal for a System Sovereign to act in the matter of assigning a ruler to a given planet is the reception of a request from the Life Carriers for the dispatch of an administrative head to function on this planet whereon they have established life and developed intelligent evolutionary beings. All planets which are inhabited by evolutionary mortal creatures have assigned to them a planetary ruler of this order of sonship.

Morontia Companions are trained for service by the Melchizedeks on a special planet near Salvington; they do not pass through the central Melchizedek schools. In service they range from the lowest mansion worlds of the systems to the highest study spheres of Salvington, but they are seldom encountered on the inhabited worlds. They serve under the general supervision of the Sons of God and under the immediate direction of the Melchizedeks.

During your periodic visits to Edentia, though the entire planet is open to your inspection, most of your time will be spent in that administrative triangle whose number corresponds to that of your current residential world. You will always be welcome as an observer in the legislative assemblies.

It was over two years of system time from the beginning of the “war in heaven” until the installation of Lucifer’s successor. But at last the new Sovereign came, landing on the sea of glass with his staff. I was among the reserves mobilized on Edentia by Gabriel, and I well remember the first message of Lanaforge to the Constellation Father of Norlatiadek. It read: “Not a single Jerusem citizen was lost. Every ascendant mortal survived the fiery trial and emerged from the crucial test triumphant and altogether victorious.” And on to Salvington, Uversa, and Paradise went this message of assurance that the survival experience of mortal ascension is the greatest security against rebellion and the surest safeguard against sin. This noble Jerusem band of faithful mortals numbered just 187,432,811.

With the emergence of human groupings, this Planetary Prince arrives to inaugurate human civilization and to focalize human society. Your world of confusion is no criterion of the early days of the reign of the Planetary Princes, for it was near the beginning of such an administration on Urantia that your Planetary Prince, Caligastia, cast his lot with the rebellion of the System Sovereign, Lucifer. Your planet has pursued a stormy course ever since.

Gabriel and his staff are not teachers; they are administrators. They were never known to depart from their regular work except when Michael was incarnated on a creature bestowal. During such bestowals Gabriel was ever attendant on the will of the incarnated Son, and with the collaboration of the Union of Days, he became the actual director of universe affairs during the later bestowals. Gabriel has been closely identified with the history and development of Urantia ever since the mortal bestowal of Michael.

We do not look for a removal of the present Satania restrictions until the Ancients of Days make final disposition of the archrebels. The system circuits will not be reinstated so long as Lucifer lives. Meantime, he is wholly inactive.

From Salvington, broadcasts are simultaneously directed to the constellation headquarters, the system headquarters, and to individual planets. All higher orders of celestial beings are able to utilize this service for communication with their fellows scattered throughout the universe. The universe broadcast is extended to all inhabited worlds regardless of their spiritual status. Planetary intercommunication is denied only those worlds under spiritual quarantine.