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New trouble started when King Ahab tried to buy land from Naboth. His Phoenician wife forged Ahab’s name to papers directing that Naboth’s land be confiscated on the charge that he had blasphemed the names of “Elohim and the king.” He and his sons were promptly executed. The vigorous Elijah appeared on the scene denouncing Ahab for the murder of the Naboths. Thus Elijah, one of the greatest of the prophets, began his teaching as a defender of the old land mores as against the land-selling attitude of the Baalim, against the attempt of the cities to dominate the country. But the reform did not succeed until the country landlord Jehu joined forces with the gypsy chieftain Jehonadab to destroy the prophets (real estate agents) of Baal at Samaria.

It had been arranged that the Nazareth party should gather in the region of the temple at midforenoon on the first day of the week after the Passover festival had ended. This they did and started out on the return journey to Nazareth. Jesus had gone into the temple to listen to the discussions while his parents awaited the assembly of their fellow travelers. Presently the company prepared to depart, the men going in one group and the women in another as was their custom in journeying to and from the Jerusalem festivals. Jesus had gone up to Jerusalem in company with his mother and the women. Being now a young man of the consecration, he was supposed to journey back to Nazareth in company with his father and the men. But as the Nazareth party moved on toward Bethany, Jesus was completely absorbed in the discussion of angels, in the temple, being wholly unmindful of the passing of the time for the departure of his parents. And he did not realize that he had been left behind until the noontime adjournment of the temple conferences.

The type of personality bestowed upon Urantia mortals has a potentiality of seven dimensions of self-expression or person-realization. These dimensional phenomena are realizable as three on the finite level, three on the absonite level, and one on the absolute level. On subabsolute levels this seventh or totality dimension is experiencible as the fact of personality. This supreme dimension is an associable absolute and, while not infinite, is dimensionally potential for subinfinite penetration of the absolute.

Mary was thrilled with expectation. She anticipated that the promise of Gabriel was nearing fulfillment. She expected all Palestine soon to be startled and stunned by the miraculous revelation of her son as the supernatural king of the Jews. But to all of the many questions which his mother, James, Jude, and Zebedee asked, Jesus only smilingly replied: “It is better that I tarry here for a while; I must do the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

The second presentation of the Trinity was made by Adam and Eve in the first and second gardens. These teachings had not been wholly obliterated even in the times of Machiventa Melchizedek about thirty-five thousand years later, for the Trinity concept of the Sethites persisted in both Mesopotamia and Egypt but more especially in India, where it was long perpetuated in Agni, the Vedic three-headed fire god.

Not since the times of Jesus has the factual identity of the Paradise Trinity been known on Urantia (except by a few individuals to whom it was especially revealed) until its presentation in these revelatory disclosures. But though the Christian concept of the Trinity erred in fact, it was practically true with respect to spiritual relationships. Only in its philosophic implications and cosmological consequences did this concept suffer embarrassment: It has been difficult for many who are cosmic minded to believe that the Second Person of Deity, the second member of an infinite Trinity, once dwelt on Urantia; and while in spirit this is true, in actuality it is not a fact. The Michael Creators fully embody the divinity of the Eternal Son, but they are not the absolute personality.

It was shortly after nine o’clock when this procession of death arrived at Golgotha, and the Roman soldiers set themselves about the task of nailing the two brigands and the Son of Man to their respective crosses.

Mating is purely an act of self-perpetuation associated with varying degrees of self-gratification; marriage, home building, is largely a matter of self-maintenance, and it implies the evolution of society. Society itself is the aggregated structure of family units. Individuals are very temporary as planetary factors — only families are continuing agencies in social evolution. The family is the channel through which the river of culture and knowledge flows from one generation to another.

By the time of Adam’s arrival most of the plants of that section of the world were growing in Eden. Already had many of the fruits, cereals, and nuts been greatly improved. Many modern vegetables and cereals were first cultivated here, but scores of varieties of food plants were subsequently lost to the world.

As an institution, marriage, from its early beginnings down to modern times, pictures the social evolution of the biologic propensity for self-perpetuation. The perpetuation of the evolving human species is made certain by the presence of this racial mating impulse, an urge which is loosely called sex attraction. This great biologic urge becomes the impulse hub for all sorts of associated instincts, emotions, and usages—physical, intellectual, moral, and social.

The lectures and discussions in this school of religion began at ten o’clock every morning in the week. The afternoon sessions started at three o’clock, and the evening debates opened at eight o’clock. Cymboyton or one of his three sons always presided at these sessions of teaching, discussion, and debate. The founder of this unique school of religions lived and died without ever revealing his personal religious beliefs.

The first Deity-creating act of the Infinite Spirit, functioning apart from the Trinity but in some unrevealed association with the Father and the Son, personalized in the existence of the Seven Master Spirits of Paradise, the distributors of the Infinite Spirit to the universes.

At about the time the eight apostles were being awakened, those who had fled up the ravine were returning, and they all gathered together near the olive press to debate what should be done. In the meantime, Simon Peter and John Zebedee, who had hidden among the olive trees, had already gone on after the mob of soldiers, guards, and servants, who were now leading Jesus back to Jerusalem as they would have led a desperate criminal. John followed close behind the mob, but Peter followed afar off. After John Mark’s escape from the clutch of the soldier, he provided himself with a cloak which he found in the tent of Simon Peter and John Zebedee. He suspected the guards were going to take Jesus to the home of Annas, the high priest emeritus; so he skirted around through the olive orchards and was there ahead of the mob, hiding near the entrance to the gate of the high priest’s palace.

There are spirits: spirit entities, spirit presences, personal spirits, prepersonal spirits, superpersonal spirits, spirit existences, spirit personalities—but neither mortal language nor mortal intellect are adequate. We may however state that there are no personalities of “pure mind”; no entity has personality unless he is endowed with it by God who is spirit. Any mind entity that is not associated with either spiritual or physical energy is not a personality. But in the same sense that there are spirit personalities who have mind there are mind personalities who have spirit. Majeston and his associates are fairly good illustrations of mind-dominated beings, but there are better illustrations of this type of personality unknown to you. There are even whole unrevealed orders of such mind personalities, but they are always spirit associated. Certain other unrevealed creatures are what might be termed mindal- and physical-energy personalities. This type of being is nonresponsive to spirit gravity but is nonetheless a true personality—is within the Father’s circuit.

The Seven Master Spirits do not directly invade the material minds of the individual creatures on the evolutionary worlds of space. The mortals of Urantia do not experience the personal presence of the mind-spirit influence of the Master Spirit of Orvonton. If this Master Spirit does attain any sort of contact with the individual mortal mind during the earlier evolutionary ages of an inhabited world, it must occur through the ministry of the local universe Creative Spirit, the consort and associate of the Creator Son of God who presides over the destinies of each local creation. But this very Creative Mother Spirit is, in nature and character, quite like the Master Spirit of Orvonton.

The multitude continued to increase throughout the week. On Sabbath Jesus hastened away to the hills, but when Sunday morning came, the crowds returned. Jesus spoke to them in the early afternoon after the preaching of Peter, and when he had finished, he said to his apostles: “I am weary of the throngs; let us cross over to the other side that we may rest for a day.”

It was the custom of the Galilean Jews for the mother to bear the responsibility for a child’s training until the fifth birthday, and then, if the child were a boy, to hold the father responsible for the lad’s education from that time on. This year, therefore, Jesus entered upon the fifth stage of a Galilean Jewish child’s career, and accordingly on August 21, 2 b.c., Mary formally turned him over to Joseph for further instruction.

Mortals acquire real spirit identity just before they leave the local universe headquarters for the receiving worlds of the minor sectors of the superuniverse. Passing from the final morontia stage to the first or lowest spirit status is but a slight transition. The mind, personality, and character are unchanged by such an advance; only does the form undergo modification. But the spirit form is just as real as the morontia body, and it is equally discernible.

Since the personalization of the Third Source, the First Source no more personally participates in universe creation. The Universal Father delegates everything possible to his Eternal Son; likewise does the Eternal Son bestow all possible authority and power upon the Conjoint Creator.

V. FRAGMENTED ENTITIES OF DEITY. This order of living existence, originating in the Universal Father, is best typified by the Thought Adjusters, though these entities are by no means the only fragmentations of the prepersonal reality of the First Source and Center. The functions of the other-than-Adjuster fragments are manifold and little known. Fusion with an Adjuster or other such fragment constitutes the creature a Father-fused being.