4:0. God’s Relation to the Universe
P54:1, 4:0.1 The Universal Father has an eternal purpose
pertaining to the material, intellectual, and spiritual phenomena of the
universes, which he is executing throughout all time. God created the universes
of his own free and sovereign will, and he created them in accordance with his
all-wise and eternal purpose. It is doubtful whether anyone except the Paradise
Residents really knows very much about the eternal purpose of God.
P54:2, 4:0.2 It is easy to deduce that the purpose in creating
the perfect central universe and Heaven was purely the satisfaction of the
divine nature. Heaven may serve as the pattern creation for all other universes
and as the finishing school for the pilgrims of time on their way to Paradise;
however, such a supernal creation must exist primarily for the satisfaction of
the perfect and infinite Creator.
P54:3, 4:0.3 The amazing plan for perfecting evolutionary
mortals and, after their attainment of Paradise is by no means the exclusive
occupation of the universe intelligences. There are, indeed, many other
fascinating pursuits that occupy the time and enlist the energies of the
celestial hosts.
P54:4, 4:1.1 For ages the inhabitants of Earth have misunderstood the providence of God. There is a providence of divine outworking on your world, but it is not the childish, arbitrary, and material ministry many mortals have conceived it to be. The providence of God consists in the interlocking activities of the celestial beings and the divine spirits who, in accordance with cosmic law, unceasingly work in the unity of God and for the spiritual advancement of his universe children.
P54:5, 4:1.2 Can you not advance in your concept of God's
dealing with man to that level where you recognize that the watchword of the
universe is progress? Through long ages the human race has struggled to
reach its present position. Throughout all these millenniums Providence has been
working out the plan of progressive evolution. The two thoughts are not opposed
in practice, only in man's mistaken concepts. Divine providence is never arrayed
in opposition to true human progress, either temporal or spiritual. Providence
is always consistent with the unchanging and perfect nature of the supreme God.
P55:1, 4:1.3 "God is faithful and just." "His
faithfulness is established in the very skies." "Your faithfulness is
to all generations; you have established the earth and it abides." "He
is a faithful Creator."
P55:2, 4:1.4 There is no limitation of the forces that the
Father may use to uphold his purpose and sustain his creatures. "The
eternal God is our refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms."
"He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the
shadow of the Almighty." "Behold, he who keeps us shall neither
slumber nor sleep." "We know that all things work together for good to
those who love God," "for the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous,
and his ears are open to their prayers."
P55:3, 4:1.5 God upholds "all things by the word of his
power." And when new worlds are born, God not only creates, but he
"preserves them all." God constantly upholds all things material and
all beings spiritual. The universes are eternally stable. There is stability in
the midst of apparent instability. There is an underlying order and security in
the midst of the energy upheavals and the physical cataclysms of the starry
realms.
P55:4, 4:1.6 The Universal Father has not withdrawn from the
management of the universes; he is not an inactive Deity. If God should retire
as the present upholder of all creation, there would immediately occur a
universal collapse. Except for God, there would be no such thing as reality.
At this very moment, as during the remote ages of the past and in the eternal
future, God continues to uphold. The divine reach extends around the circle of
eternity. The universe is not wound up like a clock to run just so long and then
cease to function; all things are constantly being renewed. The Father
unceasingly pours forth energy, light, and life. The work of God is literal as
well as spiritual. "He stretches out the north over the empty space and
hangs the earth upon nothing."
P55:5, 4:1.7 A being of my order is able to discover ultimate
harmony and to detect far-reaching and profound co-ordination in the routine
affairs of universe administration. Much that seems disjointed and haphazard to
the mortal mind appears orderly and constructive to my understanding. But there
is very much going on in the universes that we do not fully comprehend. We have
a general understanding of how these agencies and personalities operate and
intimately familiarity with the workings of the accredited spirit intelligences
of the grand universe. Notwithstanding our knowledge of the phenomena of the
universes, we are constantly confronted with cosmic reactions that we cannot
fully fathom. We are continually encountering apparently fortuitous conspiracies
of the interassociation of forces, energies, intellects, and spirits, which we
cannot satisfactorily explain.
P55:6, 4:1.8 We may be competent to trace out and to analyze
the working of all phenomena directly resulting from the functioning of the
Universal Father and the Infinite Spirit, and, to a large extent, the Isle of
Paradise but often our perplexity is occasioned by encountering what appears to
be the performance of their mysterious co-ordinates, the three Absolutes of
potentiality. These Absolutes seem to supersede matter, to transcend mind, and
to supervene spirit. We may be constantly confused and often perplexed by our
inability to comprehend these complex transactions that we attribute to the
presences and performances of the Unqualified Absolute, the Deity Absolute, and
the Universal Absolute.
P56:1, 4:1.9 These Absolutes must be the not-fully-revealed
presences abroad in the universe which, in the phenomena of space potency and in
the function of other superultimates, render it impossible for physicists,
philosophers, or even religionists to predict with certainty as to just how the
primordials of force, concept, or spirit will respond to demands made in a
complex reality situation involving supreme adjustments and ultimate values.
P56:2, 4:1.10 There is also an organic unity in the universes
of time and space which seems to underlie the whole fabric of cosmic events.
This living presence of the evolving Supreme Being, this Immanence of the
Projected Incomplete, is inexplicably manifested ever and anon by what appears
to be an amazingly fortuitous co-ordination of apparently unrelated universe
happenings. This must be the function of Providence -- the realm of the Supreme
Being and the Conjoint Actor.
P56:3, 4:1.11 We are inclined to believe that it is this
far-flung and generally unrecognizable control of the co-ordination and
interassociation of all phases and forms of universe activity that causes such a
variegated and apparent medley of physical, mental, moral, and spiritual
phenomena so unerringly to work out to the glory of God and for the good of men.
P56:6, 4:2.2 Therefore, nature, as mortal man understands it,
presents the underlying foundation and fundamental background of a changeless
Deity and his immutable laws, modified by, fluctuating because of, and
experiencing upheavals through, the working of the local plans, purposes,
patterns, and conditions which have been inaugurated and are being carried out
by the local universe, constellation, system, and planetary forces and
personalities.
P56:7, 4:2.3 Nature is a time-space resultant of two cosmic
factors: first, the immutability, perfection, and rectitude of Paradise Deity,
and second, the experimental plans, executive blunders, insurrectionary errors
and incompleteness of development. Nature therefore carries a uniform,
unchanging, majestic, and marvelous thread of perfection from the circle of
eternity; but in each universe, on each planet, and in each individual life,
this nature is modified, qualified, and perchance marred by the acts, the
mistakes, and the disloyalties of the creatures of the evolutionary systems and
universes; and therefore must nature ever be of a changing mood, whimsical
withal, though stable underneath, and varied in accordance with the operating
procedures of a local universe.
P57:1, 4:2.4 Nature is the perfection of Paradise divided by
the incompletion of the unfinished universes. This quotient is thus expressive
of both the perfect and the partial, of both the eternal and the temporal.
Continuing evolution modifies nature by augmenting the content of Paradise
perfection and by diminishing the content of the disharmony of relative reality.
P57:2, 4:2.5 God is not personally present in nature or in any
of the forces of nature, for the phenomenon of nature is the superimposition of
the imperfections of progressive evolution and, sometimes, the consequences of
insurrectionary rebellion, upon the Paradise foundations of God's universal law.
As it appears on such a world as Earth, nature can never be the adequate
expression, the true representation, the faithful portrayal, of an all-wise and
infinite God.
P57:3, 4:2.6 Nature on Earth is a qualification of the laws of
perfection by the evolutionary plans of the local universe. What a travesty to
worship nature because it is in a limited, qualified sense pervaded by God;
because it is a phase of the universal and, therefore, divine power! Nature also
is a manifestation of the unfinished, the incomplete, the imperfect outworking
of the development, growth, and progress of a universe experiment in cosmic
evolution.
P57:4, 4:2.7 The apparent defects of the natural world are not
indicative of any such corresponding defects in the character of God. Rather are
such observed imperfections merely the inevitable stop-moments in the exhibition
of the ever-moving reel of the infinity picture. It is these very
defect-interruptions of perfection-continuity that make it possible for the
finite mind of material man to catch a fleeting glimpse of divine reality in
time and space. The material manifestations of divinity appear defective to the
evolutionary mind of man only because mortal man persists in viewing the
phenomena of nature through natural eyes, human vision unaided by revelation,
its compensatory substitute on the worlds of time.
P57:6, 4:3.1 All too long has man thought of God as one like himself. God is not, never was, and never will be jealous of man or any other being in the universe of universes. Knowing that the God intended man to be the masterpiece of the planetary creation, to be the ruler of all the earth, the sight of his being dominated by his own baser passions, the spectacle of his bowing down before idols of wood, stone, gold, and selfish ambition -- these sordid scenes stir God to be jealous for man, but never of him.
P57:7, 4:3.2
The eternal God is incapable of wrath and anger in the sense of these human
emotions and as man understands such reactions. These sentiments are mean and
despicable; they are hardly worthy of being called human, much less divine; and
such attitudes are utterly foreign to the perfect nature and gracious character
of the Universal Father.
P58:2, 4:3.4
God repents of nothing he has ever done, now does, or ever will do. He is
all-wise as well as all-powerful. Man's wisdom grows out of the trials and
errors of human experience; God's wisdom consists in the unqualified perfection
of his infinite universe insight, and this divine foreknowledge effectively
directs the creative free will.
P58:3, 4:3.5
The Universal Father never does anything that causes subsequent sorrow or
regret. The Father neither
makes mistakes, harbors regrets, nor experiences sorrows, he is a being with a
father's affection, and his heart is undoubtedly grieved when his children fail
to attain the spiritual levels they are capable of reaching with the assistance
which has been so freely provided by his Messengers.
P58:4, 4:3.6
The infinite goodness of the Father is beyond the comprehension of the finite
mind of time; hence must there always be afforded a contrast with comparative
evil (not sin) for the effective exhibition of all phases of relative goodness.
Perfection of divine goodness can be discerned by mortal imperfection of insight
only because it stands in contrastive association with relative imperfection in
the relationships of time and matter in the motions of space.
P58:6, 4:4.1 God is the only stationary, self-contained, and
changeless being in the whole universe of universes, having no outside, no
beyond, no past, and no future. God is purposive energy (creative spirit) and
absolute will, and these are self-existent and universal.
P58:7, 4:4.2 Since God is self-existent, he is absolutely
independent. The very identity of God is inimical to change. "I, the Lord,
change not." God is immutable; but not until you achieve Paradise status
can you even begin to understand how God can pass from simplicity to complexity,
from identity to variation, from quiescence to motion, from infinity to
finitude, from the divine to the human, and from unity to duality. And God can
thus modify the manifestations of his absoluteness because divine immutability
does not imply immobility; God has will -- he is will.
P58:8, 4:4.3 God is the being of absolute self-determination;
there are no limits to his universe reactions save those which are self-imposed,
and his freewill acts are conditioned only by those divine qualities and perfect
attributes which inherently characterize his eternal nature. Therefore is God
related to the universe as the being of final goodness plus a free will of
creative infinity.
P58:9, 4:4.4 The Father-Absolute is the creator of the central
and perfect universe. Personality, goodness, and numerous other characteristics,
God shares with man and other beings, but infinity of will is his alone. God is
limited in his creative acts only by the sentiments of his eternal nature and by
the dictates of his infinite wisdom. God personally chooses only that which is
infinitely perfect, hence the supernal perfection of the central universe fully
shares his divinity, even phases of his absoluteness, they are not altogether
limited by that finality of wisdom which directs the Father's infinity of will.
The Father is infinite and eternal, but to deny the possibility of his
volitional self-limitation amounts to a denial of this very concept of his
volitional absoluteness.
P59:1, 4:4.5 God's absoluteness pervades all levels of
universe reality. And the whole of this absolute nature is subject to the
relationship of the Creator to his universe creature family. His vast family
relationship with the creatures of time God is governed by divine sentiment.
First and last -- eternally -- the infinite God is a Father. Of all the
possible titles by which he might appropriately be known, God of all creation is
the Universal Father.
P59:2, 4:4.6 In God the Father freewill performances are not
ruled by power, nor are they guided by intellect alone; the divine personality
is defined as consisting in spirit and manifesting himself to the universes as
love. In all his personal relations with the creature personalities of the
universes, the First Source and Center is always and consistently a loving
Father. God is a Father in the highest sense of the term. He is eternally
motivated by the perfect idealism of divine love, and that tender nature finds
its strongest expression and greatest satisfaction in loving and being loved.
P59:3, 4:4.7 In science, God is the First Cause; in religion,
the universal and loving Father; in philosophy, the one being who exists by
himself, not dependent on any other being for existence but beneficently
conferring reality of existence on all things and upon all other beings. But it
requires revelation to show that the First Cause of science and the
self-existent Unity of philosophy are the God of religion, full of mercy and
goodness and pledged to effect the eternal survival of his children on Earth.
P59:4, 4:4.8 We crave the concept of the Infinite, but we
worship the experience-idea of God, our anywhere and any-time capacity to grasp
the personality and divinity factors of our highest concept of Deity.
P59:5, 4:4.9 The consciousness of a victorious human life on
Earth is born of that creature faith which dares to challenge each recurring
episode of existence when confronted with the awful spectacle of human
limitations, by the unfailing declaration: Even if we cannot do this, there
lives in us one who can and will do it, a part of the Father-Absolute of the
universe of universes. And that is "the victory which overcomes the world,
even your faith.
P60:2, 4:5.3 The people of Earth continue to suffer from the
influence of primitive concepts of God. The God who goes on a rampage in the
storm; who shake the earth in their wrath and strike down men in their anger;
who inflict their judgments of displeasure in times of famine and flood -- this
is the God of primitive religion; it is not the God who lives and rule the
universes. Such concepts are a relic of the times when men supposed that the
universe was under the guidance and domination of the whims of such an imaginary
God. But mortal man is beginning to realize that he lives in a realm of
comparative law and order as far as concerns the administrative policies and
conduct of the Supreme Creator. .
P60:3, 4:5.4 The barbarous idea of appeasing an angry God, of
propitiating an offended Lord, of winning the favor of Deity through sacrifices
and penance and even by the shedding of blood, represents a religion wholly
puerile and primitive, a philosophy unworthy of an enlightened age of science
and truth. Such beliefs are utterly repulsive to the celestial beings and the
divine ruler who serve and reign in the universe. It is an affront to God to
believe, hold, or teach that innocent blood must be shed in order to win his
favor or to divert the fictitious divine wrath.
P60:4, 4:5.5 It was believed that "without the shedding
of blood there could be no remission of sin." They had not found
deliverance from the old and pagan idea that the Gods could not be appeased
except by the sight of blood, though Moses did make a distinct advance when he
forbade human sacrifices and substituted therefore, in the primitive minds of
his childlike Bedouin followers, the ceremonial sacrifice of animals.
P60:5, 4:5.6 The bestowal of God’s Messenger Jesus was
inherent in the situation of closing a planetary age; it was inescapable, and it
was not made necessary for the purpose of winning the favor of God.
What a travesty upon the infinite character of God! This teaching that
his fatherly heart in all its austere coldness and hardness was so untouched by
the misfortunes and sorrows of his creatures that his tender mercies were not
forthcoming until he saw his blameless Messenger bleeding and dying upon the
cross!
P60:6, 4:5.7 But the inhabitants of Earth are to find
deliverance from these ancient errors and pagan superstitions respecting the
nature of the Universal Father. The revelation of the truth about God is
appearing, and the human race is destined to know the Universal Father in all
that beauty of character and loveliness.