The Book of Urantia - God's relationship with the Universe

For many ages the inhabitants of Urantia have misinterpreted the providence of God. There is a divine providence working in your world, but it is not the childish, arbitrary and material ministry that many mortals have conceived. The providence of God consists in the interwoven activities of heavenly beings and divine spirits who, according to cosmic laws, work ceaselessly for the honor of God and for the spiritual development of their children in the universe.

Can you not develop your conception of God's dealings with man to the point of recognizing that the motto of the universe is progress? Through prolonged ages the human race has struggled to reach its present state. Throughout all these millennia, Providence has been working on the plan of progressive evolution. These two ideas are not opposed in practice, but only in the misconceptions of man. Divine providence is never listed in opposition to true human progress, both temporal and spiritual. Providence is always in accord with the immutable and perfect nature of the supreme Lawgiver.

"God is faithful" and "all his commandments are just." "His faithfulness is established in the heavens." «Forever, O Lord, your word is established in the heavens. Your faithfulness is to all generations; You have laid the ground, and remain. " "He is a faithful Creator."

There are no limits to the forces and personalities that the Father can use to sustain his purpose and sustain his creatures. "The everlasting God is our refuge, and underneath are his everlasting arms." "He who dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." "Behold, he that keepeth us shall neither slumber nor sleep." "We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God," "because the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and their ears, attentive to their prayers."

God holds "all things by the word of his power." And when new worlds are born, it "sends its Sons and they are created". God not only creates, but "preserves them all." God constantly holds all material things and all spiritual beings. The universes are eternally stable. There is stability amid apparent instability. There is underlying order and security in the midst of the energy sidewalks and the physical cataclysms of the stellar domains.

The Universal Father has not withdrawn from the administration of universes; He is not an inactive Deity. If God ceased to be the present sustainer of all creation, there would immediately be a universal collapse. Except God, there would be no such thing as reality. At this very moment, as well as during the remote ages of the past and the eternal future, God continues to sustain. The divine reach extends around the circle of eternity. The universe is not twisted like a clock that walks for a certain time and then ceases to function; All things are constantly being renewed. The Father unceasingly spills energy, light and life. The work of God is as literal as it is spiritual. "He extends the north over empty space and suspends the earth over nothing."

A being of my order can discover the ultimate harmony and detect a deep and vast coordination in the routine affairs of universal administration. Many things that appear disconnected and fortuitous to mortal thought, are shown orderly and constructive to my understanding. But many things happen in the universe that I do not fully understand. For a long time I have studied and I have some knowledge about the forces, energies, minds, morontia, spirits and recognized personalities of the local universes and of the superuniverses. I have a general understanding of how these agencies and personalities operate and I am intimately acquainted with the mechanisms of the accredited spiritual intelligences of the grand universe. In spite of my knowledge of the phenomena of the universes, I am constantly confronted by cosmic reactions that I can not fully unravel. I continually encounter seemingly fortuitous conspiracies of the interassociation of forces, energies, intellects, and spirits that I can not explain satisfactorily.

I am entirely competent to describe and analyze the mechanism of all phenomena that result directly from the workings of the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, and, to a large extent, the Isle of Paradise. What gives rise to my perplexity is to find myself with what seems to be the performance of their mysterious coordinates, the three Absolutes of potentiality. These Absolutes seem to supplant matter, to transcend the mind, and to come to the spirit. I am continually confused and often perplexed by my inability to understand these complex transactions that I attribute to the presence and performance of the Unqualified Absolute, the Absolute of Deity, and the Universal Absolute.

These absolutes must be the presences not fully revealed in the broad universe which, in the phenomena of the power of space and in the function of other superlatterns, make it impossible for physicists, philosophers and even religious to predict with certainty how Primordials of strength, concept and spirit will respond to the demands made in a complex situation of reality that includes supreme adjustments and ultimate values.

There is also an organic unity in the universes of time and space that would seem to support the entire fabric of cosmic events. This living presence of the evolutionary Supreme Being, this Immanence of the Projected Incomplete is inexplicably manifested from time to time by what appears to be an astonishing and fortuitous co-ordination of seemingly disconnected events in the universe. This must be the function of Providence - the domain of the Supreme Being and the Joint Actor.

I am inclined to believe that it is precisely this widespread, generally unrecognizable control of the coordination and interassociation of all phases and forms of universal activity that makes a mixture so variegated and seemingly so confused with physical, mental, moral, and spiritual phenomena Work so unequivocally for the glory of God and for the good of men and angels.

But in the broadest sense the apparent "accidents" of the cosmos are undoubtedly part of the finite drama of the space-time adventure of the Infinite in its eternal manipulation of the Absolutes.