Far from these texts

Presently, the atmosphere became more settled and cooled sufficiently to start precipitation of rain on the hot rocky surface of the planet. For thousands of years Urantia was enveloped in one vast and continuous blanket of steam. And during these ages the sun never shone upon the earth’s surface.

And this is about all that appears on the records of Salvington regarding the first Michael bestowal. Nothing more appears until after one hundred years of Urantia time, when there was recorded the fact of Michael’s return and unannounced resumption of the direction of universe affairs. But a strange record is to be found on the Melchizedek world, a recital of the service of this unique Melchizedek Son of the emergency corps of that age. This record is preserved in a simple temple which now occupies the foreground of the home of the Father Melchizedek, and it comprises the narration of the service of this transitory Melchizedek Son in connection with his assignment to twenty-four missions of universe emergency. And this record, which I have so recently reviewed, ends thus:

Science, not religion, really emancipated woman; it was the modern factory which largely set her free from the confines of the home. Man’s physical abilities became no longer a vital essential in the new maintenance mechanism; science so changed the conditions of living that man power was no longer so superior to woman power.

The Andites were the best all-round human stock to appear on Urantia since the days of the pure-line violet peoples. They embraced most of the highest types of the surviving remnants of the Adamite and Nodite races and, later, some of the best strains of the yellow, blue, and green men.

In general, the life of the preceding period continued to evolve and spread. The cat family dominated the animal life, and marine life was almost at a standstill. Many of the horses were still three-toed, but the modern types were arriving; llamas and giraffelike camels mingled with the horses on the grazing plains. The giraffe appeared in Africa, having just as long a neck then as now. In South America sloths, armadillos, anteaters, and the South American type of primitive monkeys evolved. Before the continents were finally isolated, those massive animals, the mastodons, migrated everywhere except to Australia.

Since the condensation of the earth’s hydrosphere, first into the world ocean and subsequently into the Pacific Ocean, this latter body of water should be visualized as then covering nine tenths of the earth’s surface. Meteors falling into the sea accumulated on the ocean bottom, and meteors are, generally speaking, composed of heavy materials. Those falling on the land were largely oxidized, subsequently worn down by erosion, and washed into the ocean basins. Thus the ocean bottom grew increasingly heavy, and added to this was the weight of a body of water at some places ten miles deep.

Every one hundred years of Urantia time, the Jerusem corps of twenty-four planetary supervisors designates one of their number to sojourn on your world to act as their executive representative, as resident governor general. During the times of the preparation of these narratives this executive officer was changed, the nineteenth so to serve being succeeded by the twentieth. The name of the current planetary supervisor is withheld from you only because mortal man is so prone to venerate, even to deify, his extraordinary compatriots and superhuman superiors.

In this way the life that was planted on Urantia evolved until the ice age, when man himself first appeared and began his eventful planetary career. And this appearance of primitive man on earth during the ice age was not just an accident; it was by design. The rigors and climatic severity of the glacial era were in every way adapted to the purpose of fostering the production of a hardy type of human being with tremendous survival endowment.

Evolutionary religion makes no provision for change or revision; unlike science, it does not provide for its own progressive correction. Evolved religion commands respect because its followers believe it is The Truth; “the faith once delivered to the saints” must, in theory, be both final and infallible. The cult resists development because real progress is certain to modify or destroy the cult itself; therefore must revision always be forced upon it.

Even the religion which succeeded Zoroastrianism in Persia was markedly influenced by it. When the Iranian priests sought to overthrow the teachings of Zoroaster, they resurrected the ancient worship of Mithra. And Mithraism spread throughout the Levant and Mediterranean regions, being for some time a contemporary of both Judaism and Christianity. The teachings of Zoroaster thus came successively to impress three great religions: Judaism and Christianity and, through them, Mohammedanism.

The notion of two kinds of spirit ghosts made slow but sure progress throughout the world. This new dual spiritism did not have to spread from tribe to tribe; it sprang up independently all over the world. In influencing the expanding evolutionary mind, the power of an idea lies not in its reality or reasonableness but rather in its vividness and the universality of its ready and simple application.

Mankind on Urantia must solve its problems of mortal development with the human stocks it has — no more races will evolve from prehuman sources throughout all future time. But this fact does not preclude the possibility of the attainment of vastly higher levels of human development through the intelligent fostering of the evolutionary potentials still resident in the mortal races. That which we, the Life Carriers, do toward fostering and conserving the life strains before the appearance of human will, man must do for himself after such an event and subsequent to our retirement from active participation in evolution. In a general way, man’s evolutionary destiny is in his own hands, and scientific intelligence must sooner or later supersede the random functioning of uncontrolled natural selection and chance survival.

Some of the early associates of Van subsequently settled about the shores of the lake which still bears his name, and their traditions grew up about this locality. Ararat became their sacred mountain, having much the same meaning to later-day Vanites that Sinai had to the Hebrews. Ten thousand years ago the Vanite ancestors of the Assyrians taught that their moral law of seven commandments had been given to Van by the Gods upon Mount Ararat. They firmly believed that Van and his associate Amadon were taken alive from the planet while they were up on the mountain engaged in worship.

The end of this long period of the weak rule of the city priests was terminated by Sargon, the priest of Kish, who proclaimed himself king and started out on the conquest of the whole of Mesopotamia and adjoining lands. And for the time, this ended the city-states, priest-ruled and priest-ridden, each city having its own municipal god and its own ceremonial practices.

By fifty thousand years after the collapse of the planetary administration, earthly affairs were so disorganized and retarded that the human race had gained very little over the general evolutionary status existing at the time of Caligastia’s arrival three hundred and fifty thousand years previously. In certain respects progress had been made; in other directions much ground had been lost.

Each division of planetary celestial service is entitled to a liaison corps of these mortals of destiny standing. The average inhabited world employs seventy separate corps of destiny, which are intimately connected with the superhuman current conduct of world affairs. On Urantia there are twelve reserve corps of destiny, one for each of the planetary groups of seraphic supervision.

But the establishment of life on no world is ever experimental in the sense that something untried and unknown is attempted. The evolution of life is a technique ever progressive, differential, and variable, but never haphazard, uncontrolled, nor wholly experimental, in the accidental sense.

Contemporaneously with the birth of these Primates twins, another couple — a peculiarly retarded male and female of the mid-mammal tribe, a couple that were both mentally and physically inferior — also gave birth to twins. These twins, one male and one female, were indifferent to conquest; they were concerned only with obtaining food and, since they would not eat flesh, soon lost all interest in seeking prey. These retarded twins became the founders of the modern simian tribes. Their descendants sought the warmer southern regions with their mild climates and an abundance of tropical fruits, where they have continued much as of that day except for those branches which mated with the earlier types of gibbons and apes and have greatly deteriorated in consequence.

The last of the Sangik peoples to migrate from their center of race origin was the indigo man. About the time the green man was killing off the orange race in Egypt and greatly weakening himself in so doing, the great black exodus started south through Palestine along the coast; and later, when these physically strong indigo peoples overran Egypt, they wiped the green man out of existence by sheer force of numbers. These indigo races absorbed the remnants of the orange man and much of the stock of the green man, and certain of the indigo tribes were considerably improved by this racial amalgamation.

About twelve thousand years ago the era of the independent cities was dawning. And these primitive trading and manufacturing cities were always surrounded by zones of agriculture and cattle raising. While it is true that industry was promoted by the elevation of the standards of living, you should have no misconception regarding the refinements of early urban life. The early races were not overly neat and clean, and the average primitive community rose from one to two feet every twenty-five years as the result of the mere accumulation of dirt and trash. Certain of these olden cities also rose above the surrounding ground very quickly because their unbaked mud huts were short-lived, and it was the custom to build new dwellings directly on top of the ruins of the old.