This paper was
part of a presentation called
Origin and Destiny – God’s Purpose and Plan by Stuart
R. Kerr, III
It was delivered at The
Urantia Book Fellowship’s 2002 International Conference
The Supreme Being
The final papers of the third section of The URANTIA Book provide us with a
vision of the glorious fulfillment and final destiny of the Father's vast
creative enterprise. This vision is manifesting itself in the divine person of
the Supreme Being. The Supreme Being is God actualizing in time and space. He
is evolutionary God. He is God, not as existential sovereign ruling over his
creation from boundless eternity and with infinite power, but rather as
experiential God as he is progressively realized over time and throughout
space. The Supreme Being has a beginning in time. In fact, his origin begins
with the very inception of time itself. Nevertheless, the evolution of his
becoming real and contactable as a person of experiential Deity will coincide
with the finalization of the Father's plan to bring his grand creation to a
settled stage of "light and life". This will be the cosmic
culmination of the Father's purpose and plan (at least on the Deity level of
Supremacy) achieved in time and manifested throughout his grand universe. This
is the destiny of the Father's grand creation – the co-ordinate settling of the
entire grand universe in "light and life" and the final emergence of
the Supreme Being.
The growth of the Supreme Being encompasses the
unifying coordination of the evolving “power” of the grand universe creation
under the personal influence of the Supreme Creators. The Supreme Creators
bring the Father’s plan for the time-space universes into existence. These
Supreme Creators are comprised of the seven Master Spirits of Paradise (each
having influence over one of the seven superuniverses within the grand
universe), the twenty-one superuniverse Ancients of Days (divided into
coordinating groups of three within each of the seven superuniverses), and the
well-nigh countless local universe Creator Sons and Mother Spirits (each
collaborative pair exercising creative control over one of these many local
universes). This personality-driven effort of power-mobilization by these
universe Creators is manifested over the total of the grand universe, and it
all converges in that aspect of the Supreme that is designated as the Almighty Supreme.
The URANTIA
Book
broadly defines “power” as not only encompassing the actualizing control by the
universe Creators over “the electronic level of material or linear-gravity-responsive
matter in the grand universe”, but the terminology of power “is also employed
to designate sovereignty”. [The URANTIA
Book, P.9 - §4] For example, as the local universe Creator Sons exercise
their creative prerogatives in the initiation and development of the localized
physical universes, they also enhance their “power” over these same creations
by earning their rights of sovereignty in their divine rule over these same
creations. And all of this coordination by these divine personalities of power,
both physical and sovereign, contribute to the growth of the Supreme.
This effort of personality/power coordination is
further conditioned by the cumulative decisions and actions of all the personal
will-creatures who participate in this great endeavor – this includes mortal
creatures such as ourselves. The Supreme Being is the power-personalizing and
spirit-deifying culmination of the evolution of the Father’s plans whereby
progress is promoted upon effort, creature achievement is gained through
perseverance, and personal growth is predicated on faith.
By thus ordaining the experience-evolution of the Supreme, the Father has made it possible for finite creatures to exist in the universes and, by experiential progression, sometime to attain the divinity of Supremacy.
[The URANTIA Book, P.1266 - §3]
The evolving Deity level of the Supreme encompasses
the time-space conditioning, personality-unification of three phases of
experiential Deity reality – the control of spirit
over matter through mind. In the whole of the grand
universe, Supreme Mind directs the
universe power of the Almighty Supreme,
and all of this effort is unified in the unifying spirit of God the Supreme. This Deity level of
Supremacy will someday power-mind-spirit personalize the Supreme Being as
evolutionary-experiential self [see chart – “Power-Personality Synthesis”].
The Supreme Being is the unification of three phases of Deity reality:
God the Supreme, the spiritual unification of certain finite aspects of the
Paradise Trinity; the Almighty Supreme, the power unification of the grand
universe Creators; and the Supreme Mind, the individual contribution of the
Third Source and Center and his co-ordinates to the reality of the Supreme
Being.
[The URANTIA Book, P.251 - §1]
The emergence of the Supreme Being will signal the final victory of spirit over matter through the mediation of mind. He will emerge by virtue of the cumulative free-will decisions and actions of all volitional personalities participating in the grand creation of the Father's universe. The Supreme Being represents the final synthesis of personality and power in a perfectly unified universe. His emergence will glorify the infinite love and wisdom that the Father has progressively revealed to his finite, though perfecting children in time and space.
The Supreme Being, now
actualizing in the evolutionary universes, is the Deity correlator and
synthesizer of time-space divinity, of triune Paradise Deity in experiential
association with the Supreme Creators of time and space. When finally
actualized, this evolutionary Deity will constitute the eternal fusion of the
finite and the infinite--the everlasting and indissoluble union of experiential
power and spirit personality.
[The URANTIA Book, P.11 - §3]
Origin and Destiny:
There is good reason for studying the origin, nature, and destiny of God’s purpose and plan in the order that it is presented in The URANTIA Book. We are told that there is good reason for initiating any presentation of this revelatory magnitude in this manner. The primal volitional act of creation by the Universal Father establishes destiny. He is the First Source and Center of all reality; he is the origin and destiny of all personal beings throughout the universe of universes; he is the inceptor, realizer, and consummator of his creation; “in him all things consist”.
In such a far-flung universe of universes there is always great danger
of succumbing to the error of the circumscribed viewpoint, to the evil inherent
in a segmentalized conception of reality and divinity.
For example: The human mind would ordinarily crave to approach the
cosmic philosophy portrayed in these revelations by proceeding from the simple
and the finite to the complex and the infinite, from human origins to divine destinies.
But that path does not lead to spiritual
wisdom. Such a procedure is the easiest path to a certain form of genetic knowledge, but at best it can
only reveal man's origin; it reveals little or nothing about his divine
destiny.
[The URANTIA Book, P.215 - §1,2]
The comprehension of the origin, function, and
destiny of universe reality affords us as God’s children to view more clearly
our present status and circumstance. Only the contemplation of divine causes
can provide insight into final effects, and this insight will have profound
impact on how we interpret our values, our meanings, and our factual existence.
It is not enough that the ascending mortal should know something of
the relations of Deity to the genesis and manifestations of cosmic reality; he
should also comprehend something of the relationships existing between himself
and the numerous levels of existential and experiential realities, of potential
and actual realities. Man's terrestrial orientation, his cosmic insight, and
his spiritual directionization are all enhanced by a better comprehension of
universe realities and their techniques of interassociation, integration, and
unification.
[The URANTIA Book, P.1162 - §1]
The mortal and finite mind of man must think and
evaluate within a universe framework to better understand “truth, beauty, and
goodness, morality, ethics, duty, love, divinity, origin, existence, purpose,
destiny, time, space, even Deity”. [The
URANTIA Book, P.1260 - §3] We must have a starting point, a concept of
beginnings, and it is within our innate intellectual ability to form such a
universe frame in which “to grasp universe relationships and to understand the
meaning values of divinity”. [The URANTIA
Book, P.1269 - §7] Without such a conceptual framework, we will “utterly
fail to perceive the final and completed evolutionary goal of either personal
attainment or cosmic destiny.” [The
URANTIA Book, P.215 - §5] Without such a framework, we are prone to “commit
the supreme philosophical blunder by oversimplifying cosmic evolutionary
(experiential) reality, thus leading to the distortion of facts, to the
perversion of truth, and to the misconception of destinies”. [The URANTIA Book, P.215 - §6]
The conceptual revelations presented throughout The URANTIA Book harmonize synergistically
with living faith – they enhance one’s comprehension of God’s purpose and
plans, not only for us, but for the whole of creation as well. Rather than
posing conflicts to one’s evolving beliefs, The
URANTIA Book coordinates and expands developing viewpoints in a way that
adds an intellectual depth to an individual’s existing spiritual insights. And
it is with such an expansion of faith-bolstered cosmic insight that enable us,
as ascending sons and daughters of the Universal Father, to better discern
“facts”, to more clearly recognize “truth”, and to more accurately conceive of
final “destinies”.
Setting the Cosmic stage:
The Universal Father sets the cosmic stage for our
spiritual ascension as a finite reality; this stage is conditioned by time and
space, it has a beginning and it has a fore-ordained destiny. This creation is
experiential – events occur in time-conditioned sequences, and they are
constrained within limiting spatial boundaries. The reality of the finite
cosmos originates within the eternal purposes of the Universal Father. These
purposes are brought to fruition over time and in space, and the total and
evolved finite is culminated in the Deity of the Supreme. The Supreme is the
great avenue through which the love of the Father flows outward to all
creation, and the Supreme is the great avenue through which finite creatures
pass inward in their quest of the Father, who is love.
The actualizing Supreme Being of time and space
expands with the evolutionary universes and identifies with all creature
growth. In some ways, the Supreme Being can be thought of as our cosmic mother
– she grows as we grow and we grow as an integral part of her growth. In our
ascending careers as universe creatures, we are faithfully nurtured by our divine
Mother, the Supreme: "All soul-evolving humans are literally the
evolutionary sons of God the Father and God the Mother, the Supreme
Being." [The URANTIA Book, P.1289 -
§1] As the Supreme Being evolves within the grand universe, all finite
reality within the grand universe grows with her. When this process reaches
full completion in the far-distant future, when all potential growth within the
Supreme is forever exhausted, the Supreme will have actualized as a contactable
person of Deity that we all perceive and know. The thrilling adventure of
finite experience as such will end.
Our participation in the carrying out of God’s
purposes and plans initiates in our identification with supreme goals,
especially with those goals that contribute to the realization of the Supreme
Being. Up to that momentous occasion when an ascending mortal irrevocably
commits himself to the Father's eternal will, prior to such a moment when his
soul becomes forever "fused" with the indwelling spark of the Father
(the Thought Adjuster), a mortal ascender is highly influenced by the maternal
qualities of the Mother Supreme. This very life is derived from the
mother-potentials of the Supreme in whom "we actually live, move, and have
our being."
The Supreme Being did not create man, but man was literally created
out of, his very life was derived from, the potentiality of the Supreme. Nor
does he evolve man; yet is the Supreme himself the very essence of evolution.
From the finite standpoint, we actually live, move, and have our being within
the immanence of the Supreme.
[The URANTIA Book, P.1283 - §1]
After Adjuster fusion, and as we proceed with our
progressive and experiential universe careers, the influence of the Universal
Father begins to become increasingly manifest – his influence increasingly
beckons to us as we traverse the central universe of eternity towards Paradise.
Upon admission to the Corps of the
Finality, a mortal ascender attains perfected status as both the eternal
finaliter son of the Paradise Father and as the eternal universe child of the
Mother Supreme.
Such a magnificent universe self thus becomes the eternal finaliter
son of the Paradise Father as well as the eternal universe child of the Mother
Supreme, a universe self qualified to represent both the Father and Mother of
universes and personalities in any activity or undertaking pertaining to the
finite administration of created, creating, or evolving things and beings.
[The URANTIA Book, P.1289 - §0]
Upon our realization of perfected self-will on
Paradise, we will have attained a status as sixth-stage finaliters. We will
have completed six phases of our ascendancy career, but we cannot be accounted
for having yet achieved our final destiny. It is conjectured that there awaits
for us a seventh unrevealed destiny, "still another and unrevealed career
in universe assignment." [The
URANTIA Book, P.204 - §6] Until then, we will resume our grand universe
careers in the assistance of the actualizing Supreme Being towards the
perfecting of the evolving superuniverses of time and space into unified light
and life. It is here where we will begin to fully realize within our perfected
natures both our debt to the mother inheritance of the Supreme as well as our
indebtedness to the maternal qualities of the Eternal Mother Son and the
Infinite Mother Spirit.
While ascending mortals achieve power comprehension of the Almighty on
the capitals of the superuniverses and personality comprehension of the Supreme
on the outer circuits of Havona, they do not actually find the Supreme Being as
they are destined to find the Paradise Deities. Even the finaliters,
sixth-stage spirits, have not found the Supreme Being, nor are they likely to
until they have achieved seventh-stage-spirit status, and until the Supreme has
become actually functional in the activities of the future outer universes.
[The URANTIA Book, P.641 - §5]
In and through the experience of finaliter attainment the experiential
mother qualities of the ascending self become tremendously affected by contact
and infusion with the spirit presence of the Eternal Son and the mind presence
of the Infinite Spirit. Then, throughout the realms of finaliter activity in
the grand universe, there appears a new awakening of the latent mother
potential of the Supreme, a new realization of experiential meanings, and a new
synthesis of experiential values of the entire ascension career. It appears
that this realization of self will continue in the universe careers of the
sixth-stage finaliters until the mother inheritance of the Supreme attains to
finite synchrony with the Adjuster inheritance of the Father. This intriguing
period of grand universe function represents the continuing adult career of the
ascendant and perfected mortal.
[The URANTIA Book, P.1288 - §5]
Man's Contribution to the
Supreme:
The Supreme Being's very struggle for personal
expression in the grand universe, the very evolution of his sovereign divinity,
is directly dependent upon the free-will decisions of every personality in
finite existence – the whole of his being is predicated on the totality of
their combined actions. The Supreme Being carries on the struggle to achieve
actualization of all that is yet to be expressed.
When a human being chooses eternal survival, he is cocreating destiny;
and in the life of this ascending mortal the finite God finds an increased
measure of personality self-realization and an enlargement of experiential
sovereignty.
[The URANTIA Book, P.1283 - §4]
The act of the creature's choosing to do the will of
the Father is of cosmic value and universe meaning. The choice by man to seek
the Paradise Father, to seek the adventure of the ascending career, promotes
the inevitable destiny of the Supreme in the inexorable flow of time within the
stream of eternity. Mortal man has been given “control over the destiny of an
infinitesimal fraction of the future of the Supreme. For as man attains human
destiny, so does the Supreme achieve destiny on deity levels.” [The URANTIA Book, P.1285 - §1]
If a mortal creature chooses to reject his eternal
career, the Supreme is inevitably delayed, accorded by the loss of this
creature's experiential contribution to the evolution of this finite God of
Supremacy. This experiential depravation must eventually be compensated by
substitutional or collateral experience; the Supreme must await the action of
another creature at some future time who will present an equivalent
contribution to the Supreme.
But if a creature rejects the eternal career, that part of the Supreme
which was dependent on this creature's choice experiences inescapable delay, a
deprivation which must be compensated by substitutional or collateral
experience; as for the personality of the nonsurvivor, it is absorbed into the
oversoul of creation, becoming a part of the Deity of the Supreme.
[The URANTIA Book, P.1283 - §4]
Man's personality comes from the Father and is
therefore eternal; it will eventually achieve Deity destiny. Man's personality, with regard to
identity, is a conditioned eternal reality, and man must choose to be
individually present at the attainment of such destiny. ''The cycle is
foreordained, but man's participation therein is optional, personal, and
experiential." [The URANTIA Book,
P.1232 - §3] The personality of each human being represents a unique,
irreplaceable expression of meaning-value to the finite. The personality of
such a non-surviving mortal being will be absorbed into the oversoul of
creation – it will coalesce into the unifying Deity of the Supreme as a drop of
water returns to the sea. This absorbed personality will never again find
identical expression as it did in conjunction with the rejecting mortal
creature.
When the sentence of annihilation is decreed for a
sin-identified being, he instantly ceases to be a cosmic personality entity.
That creature who has rejected the Father’s gift of life and has by-passed his
opportunity to participate in the promotion of the Father’s purposes and plan
is deprived forevermore of a continuing life vehicle as his personal assurance
of eternal life. The insular personality of that individual is absorbed into
the oversoul of the Supreme Being; it becomes an integral part of the evolving
experience of the Supreme. The personality values of the non-survivor persist
as a factor in the personality of the actualizing Supreme Being, whereas the
individualized identity of that personality-endowed creature ceases to exist
forevermore.
Our Thought Adjusters bring with them to those
mortal candidates for indwelling predetermined plans for their intellectual and
spiritual development. The plans for these model careers have been lovingly and
considerately determined and foreordained by themselves and the Personalized
Adjusters of Divinington, and these offered programs for attaining the ideal
life have been duly certified by the attached Personalized Adjuster to Urantia.
However, mortal beings are not enforced to adopt these plans.
The great challenge that has been given to mortal man is this: Will you decide to personalize the experiencible value meanings of the cosmos into your own evolving selfhood? or by rejecting survival, will you allow these secrets of Supremacy to lie dormant, awaiting the action of another creature at some other time who will in his way attempt a creature contribution to the evolution of the finite God? But that will be his contribution to the Supreme, not yours.
[The URANTIA Book, P.1284 - §6]
And so the decision awaits each of you as it once
awaited each of us: Will you fail the God of time, who is so dependent upon the
decisions of the finite mind? will you fail the Supreme personality of the
universes by the slothfulness of animalistic retrogression? will you fail the
great brother of all creatures, who is so dependent on each creature? can you
allow yourself to pass into the realm of the unrealized when before you lies
the enchanting vista of the universe career--the divine discovery of the
Paradise Father and the divine participation in the search for, and the
evolution of, the God of Supremacy?
[The URANTIA Book, P.1285 - §2]
Predestination and
Providence:
From an eternity perspective, the someday-to-be-completed evolution of
the Supreme Being is a foregone conclusion. The exact path by which he evolves,
however, is not determined. There are many pathways for reaching the top of a
mountain; the final achievement of this effort remains the same regardless of
the method of approach. Much like the biblical miracle of God’s “separating the
waters” and allowing Moses and the chosen people to pass, God has by his own
inviolable act of infinite and absolute free will separated the
all-encompassing waters of infinity and provided a safe haven for his beloved
and free-willed children. This safe haven is nestled deeply within the
nurturing bosom of the Supreme.
In certain aspects, the choice-actions precipitated
by the human mind are wholly unpredictable. We are far more than isolated
material beings bound by unbreakable chains in a tyrannical river of time. We
are not inexorably circumscribed to a personal fate that is inflexibly fixed
from all eternity.
Having thus provided for the growth of the immortal soul and having liberated man's inner self from the fetters of absolute dependence on antecedent causation, the Father stands aside. Now, man having thus been liberated from the fetters of causation response, at least as pertains to eternal destiny, and provision having been made for the growth of the immortal self, the soul, it remains for man himself to will the creation or to inhibit the creation of this surviving and eternal self which is his for the choosing. No other being, force, creator, or agency in all the wide universe of universes can interfere to any degree with the absolute sovereignty of the mortal free will, as it operates within the realms of choice, regarding the eternal destiny of the personality of the choosing mortal. As pertains to eternal survival, God has decreed the sovereignty of the material and mortal will, and that decree is absolute.
[The URANTIA Book, P.71 - §3]
Providence does not mean that God has decided all things for us and in advance. God loves us too much to do that, for that would be nothing short of cosmic tyranny. Man does have relative powers of choice.
[The URANTIA Book, P.1304 - §3]
This freedom from absolute predestination may be
primarily due to the Universal Father's eternity decision to lovingly provide
for a creation where creature free will is of tantamount sanctity. It is
certainly a possible repercussion of the incomplete evolutionary status of the
Supreme Being. There appears to be a providential unity in the evolving
universes of time and space that is providing a base of purposed continuity to
the whole fabric of cosmic events. There is a driving cosmic flow of time and
events that draws all things and beings into its powerful and swirling
whitewaters and eddies. There is a powerful indication that all experiences,
lives, ages, and epochs that successively occur in the cosmos are demonstrating
an accounting for and correlation with "the transactions of time with the
underlying purposes and basic reactions of eternity." [The URANTIA Book, P.364 - §5]
As regards an individual life, the duration of a realm, or the chronology of any connected series of events, it would seem that we are dealing with an isolated stretch of time; everything seems to have a beginning and an end. And it would appear that a series of such experiences, lives, ages, or epochs, when successively arranged, constitutes a straightaway drive, an isolated event of time flashing momentarily across the infinite face of eternity. But when we look at all this from behind the scenes, a more comprehensive view and a more complete understanding suggest that such an explanation is inadequate, disconnected, and wholly unsuited properly to account for, and otherwise to correlate, the transactions of time with the underlying purposes and basic reactions of eternity.
[The URANTIA Book, P.364 - §5]
The Supreme appears to have some ability to forecast
and, to a limited extent, anticipate future evolutionary trends in his cosmos. This process is
referred to as the "Immanence of the
Projected Incomplete", and it is conjectured to originate from the
Supreme's sometime destiny to interact with and participate on the level of the
superfinite reality of the absonite; this is the Ultimate level of transcended
time and space. This predictive ability of the Supreme "appears to be an
amazingly fortuitous co-ordination of apparently unsettled universe happenings.
This must be the function of Providence--the realm of the Supreme Being and the
Conjoint Actor." [The URANTIA Book,
P.56 - §2]
Man himself develops a growing ability, over time,
to become supremely foresighted regarding both his own future along with the
evolving trends of the universe itself in its relentless march toward
perfection.
There is a providence in the evolving universes, and it can be discovered by creatures to just the extent that they have attained capacity to perceive the purpose of the evolving universes.
[The URANTIA Book, P.1305 - §5]
This cosmic providence of the Supreme, though, deals
strictly with the totality of the cosmos, and lone individuals only become
involved in this providential impact if their functional involvement has
importance to some higher total, be it the total race, nation, planet, or
higher.
Consider the sublime power and beauty of the
Father’s purpose and plan for us – we do have a very real choice in our own
destinies! Our individual futures are not foreordained! From eternity, the
Father could have conceivably seen “the end from the beginning”, and in one
sense he does. He clearly sees from eternity the someday-destined emergence of
the Supreme Being in full power and glory. But by the greatest miracle of all,
the Father allows us the incredible opportunity to become very real and
critically important co-creators of destiny, not so much as to the
determination of the final nature of the Supreme Being, but rather in how this
final nature emerges.
Consider the awesome God-given power that is at this
very moment in your own hands! Right now, this very second, you have within
your powers of personal choosing the ability to consecrate yourself to the
doing of the Father’s will. You can choose to align your will to his purposes,
to participate in the carrying out of his divine plans, and to share in the
glorious destiny of the perfected Supreme! The only power in all the universe
of universes that can prevent you from doing this is your self.
In the beginning the Father does all, but as the panorama of eternity unfolds in response to the will and mandates of the Infinite, it becomes increasingly apparent that creatures, even men, are to become God's partners in the realization of finality of destiny. And this is true even in the life in the flesh; when man and God enter into partnership, no limitation can be placed upon the future possibilities of such a partnership. When man realizes that the Universal Father is his partner in eternal progression, when he fuses with the indwelling Father presence, he has, in spirit, broken the fetters of time and has already entered upon the progressions of eternity in the quest for the Universal Father.
[The URANTIA Book, P.1299 - §2]
The
mortal mind can immediately think of a thousand and one things--catastrophic
physical events, appalling accidents, horrific disasters, painful illnesses,
and world-wide scourges--and ask whether such visitations are correlated in the
unknown maneuvering of this probable functioning of the Supreme Being. Frankly,
we do not know; we are not really sure. But we do observe that, as time passes,
all these difficult and more or less mysterious situations always work out for the welfare and progress of the universes. It
may be that the circumstances of existence and the inexplicable vicissitudes of
living are all interwoven into a meaningful pattern of high value by the
function of the Supreme and the overcontrol of the Trinity.
[The URANTIA Book, P.115 - §7]
The above quote poses
a truly challenging philosophical question to all of us. When it comes down
to the very heart of the Supreme's conjectured foreknowledge of events of
major import in the cosmos, fortuitous and disastrous, we may find it best
to exercise our faith that all things and events are, in the long run, contributing
to the overall betterment for each and every one of us. We ought to place
our full trust in our Universal Father's divine love and care for us; we should
encourage our faith that all manifestations of his handiwork can only be targeted
for enticing us to perfection and eternal satisfaction.