Teacher-Brother Dave's Compilation of TOPICAL STUDIES from THE NEW EPOCHAL REVELATION OF TRUTH. Topical Study number 106 “WORSHIP Revealed in Great Detail" [Part 3] Teacher-Brother Dave's initial comments: I am presenting some of my Topical Studies from the fully public domain, 2097 page, Fifth Epochal Revelation of Truth and with my added comments. The Revealed text is free of copyright, so you may freely share individually these supernal quotes with your friends and relatives. But my order of selections, font types for emphasis and my added comments are Copyright 2012 through 2019 by Dave@PureChristians.org All Rights Reserved. Contact me first about using the whole Study or group of Studies. These will be published here each Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8:00 PM CDT.] [My added comments of explanation below are in these square brackets] The earlier Parts 1 - on of prior Study 95 start on this page; click this link: Topical Study 95 PAPER 48. The Morontia [Soul] Life 4. The Reversion Directors [celestial humorists] [Paper:Section.Paragraph numbers] 48:4.16 The need for the relaxation and diversion of humor is greatest in those orders of ascendant beings who are subjected to sustained stress in their upward struggles. The two extremes of life have little need for humorous diversions. Primitive men have no capacity therefor, and beings of Paradise perfection have no need thereof. The hosts of Havona are naturally a joyous and exhilarating assemblage of supremely happy personalities. On Paradise the quality of worship obviates the necessity for reversion activities. But among those who start their careers far below the goal of Paradise perfection, there is a large place for the ministry of the reversion directors. PAPER 49. The Inhabited Worlds PAPER 52. Planetary Mortal Epochs 1. Primitive Man 52:1.1 From the time of man’s emergence from the animal level — when he can choose to worship the Creator — to the arrival of the Planetary Prince, [500,000 years ago, the first human couple, Andon and Fonta, was created here 993,504 years ago] mortal will creatures are called primitive men. There are six basic types or races of primitive men, and these early peoples successively appear in the order of the [first six] spectrum colors, beginning with the red. The length of time consumed in this early life evolution varies greatly on the different worlds, ranging from one hundred and fifty thousand years to over one million years of Urantia time. 52:1.7 All mortals who are indwelt by Thought Adjusters [God's Spirit indwelling your mind -- God's perfect will] are potential worshipers; they have been “lighted by the true light,” and they possess capacity for seeking reciprocal contact with divinity. Nevertheless, the early or biologic religion of primitive man is largely a persistence of animal fear coupled with ignorant awe and tribal superstition. The survival of superstition in the Urantia [Earth] races is hardly complimentary to your evolutionary development nor compatible with your otherwise splendid achievements in material progress. But this early fear religion serves a very valuable purpose in subduing the fiery tempers of these primitive creatures. It is the forerunner of civilization and the soil for the subsequent planting of the seeds of revealed religion by the Planetary Prince and his ministers. 52:1.8 Within one hundred thousand years from the time man acquires erect posture, the Planetary Prince usually arrives, having been dispatched by the System Sovereign upon the report of the Life Carriers that will is functioning, even though comparatively few individuals have thus developed. Primitive mortals usually welcome the Planetary Prince and his visible staff; in fact, they often look upon them with awe and reverence, almost with worshipfulness, if they are not restrained. PAPER 53. The Lucifer Rebellion 3. The Lucifer Manifesto 53:3.3 #2. The universe government of the Creator Son — [our Sovereign Savior Jesus Christ] Michael. Lucifer contended that the local systems should be autonomous. He protested against the right of Michael, the Creator Son, to assume sovereignty of Nebadon in the name of a hypothetical Paradise Father and require all personalities to acknowledge allegiance to this unseen Father. He asserted that the whole plan of worship was a clever scheme to aggrandize the Paradise Sons. He was willing to acknowledge Michael as his Creator-father but not as his God and rightful ruler. 4. Outbreak of the Rebellion 53:4.1 The Lucifer manifesto was issued at the annual conclave of Satania [a system of one thousand human-inhabited worlds when this first age is completed] on the sea of glass, in the presence of the assembled hosts of Jerusem, [system spiritual headquarters] on the last day of the year, about two hundred thousand years ago, Urantia time. Satan proclaimed that worship could be accorded the universal forces — physical, intellectual, and spiritual — but that allegiance could be acknowledged only to the actual and present ruler, Lucifer, the “friend of men and angels” and the “God of [false] liberty.” PAPER 54. Problems of the Lucifer Rebellion 2. The Theft of Liberty 54:2.5 No being in all the universe has the rightful liberty to deprive any other being of true liberty, the right to love and be loved, the privilege of worshiping God and of serving his fellows. PAPER 55. The Spheres of Light and Life 1. The Morontia Temple 55:1.4 The average morontia temple seats about three hundred thousand spectators. These edifices are not used for worship, play, or for receiving broadcasts; they are devoted to the special ceremonies of the planet, such as: communications with the System Sovereign or with the Most Highs, special visualization ceremonies designed to reveal the personality presence of spirit beings, and silent cosmic contemplation. The schools of cosmic philosophy here conduct their graduation exercises, and here also do the mortals of the realm receive planetary recognition for achievements of high social service and for other outstanding attainments. 5. The Acme of Material Development 55:5.5 Schools are vastly improved and are devoted to the training of mind and the expansion of soul. The art centers are exquisite and the musical organizations superb. The temples of worship with their associated schools of philosophy and experiential religion are creations of beauty and grandeur. The open-air arenas of worship assembly are equally sublime in the simplicity of their artistic appointment. PAPER 56. Universal Unity 4. Personality Unification 56:4.5 Philosophically, cosmically, and with reference to differential levels and locations of manifestation, you may and perforce must conceive of the functioning of plural Deities and postulate the existence of plural Trinities; but in the worshipful experience of the personal contact of every worshiping personality throughout the master universe, God is one; and that unified and personal Deity is our Paradise parent, God the Father, the bestower, conservator, and Father of all personalities from mortal man on the inhabited worlds to the Eternal Son on the central Isle of Light. 6. Unification of Evolutionary Deity 56:6.3 The material-minded creatures of the evolutionary worlds of the seven superuniverses [with 700,000 local universes total; and 10,000,000 human-inhabited planets in each local universe, and about ten billion humans living on each planet] can comprehend Deity unity only as it is evolving in this power-personality synthesis of the Supreme Being. On any level of existence God cannot exceed the conceptual capacity of the beings who live on such a level. Mortal man must, through the recognition of truth, the appreciation of beauty, and the worship of goodness, evolve the recognition of a God of love and then progress through ascending deity levels to the comprehension of the Supreme. Deity, having been thus grasped as unified in power, can then be personalized in spirit to creature understanding and attainment. [God the Supreme can grow and experience here with and as us; God the Universal Father on Paradise is Existential -- spaceless and timeless -- Infinite, Omnipresent and Eternal !] 10. Truth, Beauty, and Goodness 56:10.1 As the worlds settled in life and light progress from the initial stage to the seventh epoch, they successively grasp for the realization of the reality of God the Sevenfold, ranging from the adoration of the Creator Son to the worship of his Paradise Father. Throughout the continuing seventh stage of such a world’s history the ever-progressing mortals grow in the knowledge of God the Supreme, while they vaguely discern the reality of the overshadowing ministry of God the Ultimate. [There is also God the Absolute, and all three are a part of God the Infinite Father I AM !] 56:10.3 Philosophy you somewhat grasp, and divinity you comprehend in worship, social service, and personal spiritual experience, but the pursuit of beauty — cosmology — you all too often limit to the study of man’s crude artistic endeavors. Beauty, art, is largely a matter of the unification of contrasts. Variety is essential to the concept of beauty. The supreme beauty, the height of finite art, is the drama of the unification of the vastness of the cosmic extremes of Creator and creature. Man finding God and God finding man — the creature becoming perfect as is the Creator — that is the supernal achievement of the supremely beautiful, the attainment of the apex of cosmic art. PART III. The History of Urantia Papers 57 - 119 [NOTE: the rest of this study below will be edited, text highlighted, and my comments of explanation will be added tomorrow, Tuesday, June 25 around noon.] PAPER 62. The Dawn Races of Early Man 5. The First Human Beings 62:5.4 Many new emotions early appeared in these human twins. They experienced admiration for both objects and other beings and exhibited considerable vanity. But the most remarkable advance in emotional development was the sudden appearance of a new group of really human feelings, the worshipful group, embracing awe, reverence, humility, and even a primitive form of gratitude. Fear, joined with ignorance of natural phenomena, is about to give birth to primitive religion. 6. Evolution of the Human Mind 62:6.5 Imagine our joy one day — the twins were about ten years old — when the spirit of worship made its first contact with the mind of the female twin and shortly thereafter with the male. We knew that something closely akin to human mind was approaching culmination; and when, about a year later, they finally resolved, as a result of meditative thought and purposeful decision, to flee from home and journey north, then did the spirit of wisdom begin to function on Urantia and in these two now recognized human minds. 7. Recognition as an Inhabited World 62:7.6 These messages from Salvington, Edentia, and Jerusem formally marked the termination of the Life Carriers’ agelong supervision of the planet. For ages we had been on duty, assisted only by the seven adjutant mind-spirits and the Master Physical Controllers. And now, will, the power of choosing to worship and to ascend, having appeared in the evolutionary creatures of the planet, we realized that our work was finished, and our group prepared to depart. Urantia being a life-modification world, permission was granted to leave behind two senior Life Carriers with twelve assistants, and I was chosen as one of this group and have ever since been on Urantia. PAPER 63. The First Human Family 6. Onagar—The First Truth Teacher 63:6.1 As the Andonic dispersion extended, the cultural and spiritual status of the clans retrogressed for nearly ten thousand years until the days of Onagar, who assumed the leadership of these tribes, brought peace among them, and for the first time, led all of them in the worship of the “Breath Giver to men and animals.” 63:6.2 Andon’s philosophy had been most confused; he had barely escaped becoming a fire worshiper because of the great comfort derived from his accidental discovery of fire. Reason, however, directed him from his own discovery to the sun as a superior and more awe-inspiring source of heat and light, but it was too remote, and so he failed to become a sun worshiper. 63:6.3 The Andonites early developed a fear of the elements — thunder, lightning, rain, snow, hail, and ice. But hunger was the constantly recurring urge of these early days, and since they largely subsisted on animals, they eventually evolved a form of animal worship. To Andon, the larger food animals were symbols of creative might and sustaining power. From time to time it became the custom to designate various of these larger animals as objects of worship. During the vogue of a particular animal, crude outlines of it would be drawn on the walls of the caves, and later on, as continued progress was made in the arts, such an animal god was engraved on various ornaments. 63:6.4 Very early the Andonic peoples formed the habit of refraining from eating the flesh of the animal of tribal veneration. Presently, in order more suitably to impress the minds of their youths, they evolved a ceremony of reverence which was carried out about the body of one of these venerated animals; and still later on, this primitive performance developed into the more elaborate sacrificial ceremonies of their descendants. And this is the origin of sacrifices as a part of worship. This idea was elaborated by Moses in the Hebrew ritual and was preserved, in principle, by the Apostle Paul as the doctrine of atonement for sin by “the shedding of blood.” PAPER 64. The Evolutionary Races of Color 1. The Andonic Aborigines 64:1.7 The groups going west became less contaminated with the backward stocks of mutual ancestral origin than those going east, who mingled so freely with their retarded animal cousins. These unprogressive individuals drifted southward and presently mated with the inferior tribes. Later on, increasing numbers of their mongrel descendants returned to the north to mate with the rapidly expanding Andonic peoples, and such unfortunate unions unfailingly deteriorated the superior stock. Fewer and fewer of the primitive settlements maintained the worship of the Breath Giver. This early dawn civilization was threatened with extinction. 4. The Neanderthal Races 64:4.12 During these spiritually dark ages the culture of superstitious mankind reached its lowest levels. The Neanderthalers really had no religion beyond a shameful superstition. They were deathly afraid of clouds, more especially of mists and fogs. A primitive religion of the fear of natural forces gradually developed, while animal worship declined as improvement in tools, with abundance of game, enabled these people to live with lessened anxiety about food; the sex rewards of the chase tended greatly to improve hunting skill. This new religion of fear led to attempts to placate the invisible forces behind these natural elements and culminated, later on, in the sacrificing of humans to appease these invisible and unknown physical forces. And this terrible practice of human sacrifice has been perpetuated by the more backward peoples of Urantia right on down to the twentieth century. 64:4.13 These early Neanderthalers could hardly be called sun worshipers. They rather lived in fear of the dark; they had a mortal dread of nightfall. As long as the moon shone a little, they managed to get along, but in the dark of the moon they grew panicky and began the sacrifice of their best specimens of manhood and womanhood in an effort to induce the moon again to shine. The sun, they early learned, would regularly return, but the moon they conjectured only returned because they sacrificed their fellow tribesmen. As the race advanced, the object and purpose of sacrifice progressively changed, but the offering of human sacrifice as a part of religious ceremonial long persisted. 6. The Six Sangik Races of Urantia 64:6.7 Because of this great retrogression the red men seemed doomed when, about sixty-five thousand years ago, Onamonalonton appeared as their leader and spiritual deliverer. He brought temporary peace among the American red men and revived their worship of the “Great Spirit.” Onamonalonton lived to be ninety-six years of age and maintained his headquarters among the great redwood trees of California. Many of his later descendants have come down to modern times among the Blackfoot Indians. 64:6.15 They traveled far from the influences of the spiritual headquarters of the world and drifted into great darkness following the Caligastia apostasy; but there occurred one brilliant age among this people when Singlangton, about one hundred thousand years ago, assumed the leadership of these tribes and proclaimed the worship of the “One Truth.” 64:6.23 About five hundred years after Caligastia’s downfall a widespread revival of learning and religion of a primitive sort — but none the less real and beneficial — occurred. Orlandof became a great teacher among the blue race and led many of the tribes back to the worship of the true God under the name of the “Supreme Chief.” This was the greatest advance of the blue man until those later times when this race was so greatly upstepped by the admixture of the Adamic stock. 64:6.26 Isolated in Africa, the indigo peoples, like the red man, received little or none of the race elevation which would have been derived from the infusion of the Adamic stock. Alone in Africa, the indigo race made little advancement until the days of Orvonon, when they experienced a great spiritual awakening. While they later almost entirely forgot the “God of Gods” proclaimed by Orvonon, they did not entirely lose the desire to worship the Unknown; at least they maintained a form of worship up to a few thousand years ago. PAPER 65. The Overcontrol of Evolution 0. Introduction 65:0.6 The mechanical-nonteachable levels of organismal environmental response are the domains of the physical controllers. The adjutant mind-spirits activate and regulate the adaptative or nonmechanical-teachable types of mind — those response mechanisms of organisms capable of learning from experience. And as the spirit adjutants thus manipulate mind potentials, so do the Life Carriers exercise considerable discretionary control over the environmental aspects of evolutionary processes right up to the time of the appearance of human will — the ability to know God and the power of choosing to worship him. 7. Evolutionary Mind Levels 65:7.7 The adjutants function exclusively in the evolution of experiencing mind up to the level of the sixth phase, the spirit of worship. At this level there occurs that inevitable overlapping of ministry — the phenomenon of the higher reaching down to co-ordinate with the lower in anticipation of subsequent attainment of advanced levels of development. And still additional spirit ministry accompanies the action of the seventh and last adjutant, the spirit of wisdom. Throughout the ministry of the spirit world the individual never experiences abrupt transitions of spirit co-operation; always are these changes gradual and reciprocal. PAPER 66. The Planetary Prince of Urantia 5. Organization of the One Hundred 66:5.13 #6. The college of revealed religion. This body was slow in functioning. Urantia civilization was literally forged out between the anvil of necessity and the hammers of fear. But this group had made considerable progress in their attempt to substitute Creator fear for creature fear (ghost worship) before their labors were interrupted by the later confusion attendant upon the secession upheaval. The head of this council was Hap. 66:5.14 None of the Prince’s staff would present revelation to complicate evolution; they presented revelation only as the climax of their exhaustion of the forces of evolution. But Hap did yield to the desire of the inhabitants of the city for the establishment of a form of religious service. His group provided the Dalamatians with the seven chants of worship and also gave them the daily praise-phrase and eventually taught them “the Father’s prayer,” which was: 66:5.21 Before the Prince’s arrival, bathing had been an exclusively religious ceremonial. It was indeed difficult to persuade primitive men to wash their bodies as a health practice. Lut finally induced the religious teachers to include cleansing with water as a part of the purification ceremonies to be practiced in connection with the noontime devotions, once a week, in the worship of the Father of all. 7. Life in Dalamatia 66:7.2 The interiors of the central temple of worship and the ten council mansions of the supervising groups of supermen were indeed beautiful works of art. And while the residential buildings were models of neatness and cleanliness, everything was very simple and altogether primitive in comparison with later-day developments. At this headquarters of culture no methods were employed which did not naturally belong on Urantia. PAPER 69. Primitive Human Institutions 6. Fire in Relation to Civilization 69:6.4 Though Andon, the discoverer of fire, avoided treating it as an object of worship, many of his descendants regarded the flame as a fetish or as a spirit. They failed to reap the sanitary benefits of fire because they would not burn refuse. Primitive man feared fire and always sought to keep it in good humor, hence the sprinkling of incense. Under no circumstances would the ancients spit in a fire, nor would they ever pass between anyone and a burning fire. Even the iron pyrites and flints used in striking fire were held sacred by early mankind. 69:6.6 The early myths about how fire came down from the gods grew out of the observations of fire caused by lightning. These ideas of supernatural origin led directly to fire worship, and fire worship led to the custom of “passing through fire,” a practice carried on up to the times of Moses. And there still persists the idea of passing through fire after death. The fire myth was a great bond in early times and still persists in the symbolism of the Parsees. PAPER 70. The Evolution of Human Government 7. Primitive Clubs and Secret Societies 70:7.15 Secret societies contributed to the building up of social castes chiefly by the mysterious character of their initiations. The members of these societies first wore masks to frighten the curious away from their mourning rites — ancestor worship. Later this ritual developed into a pseudo seance at which ghosts were reputed to have appeared. The ancient societies of the “new birth” used signs and employed a special secret language; they also forswore certain foods and drinks. They acted as night police and otherwise functioned in a wide range of social activities. The next Part of this Topical Study will be published here Wednesday, June 26, 2019 at about 8:00 PM CDT (new Study material here usually each Mon. Wed. and Fri. at 8:00 PM CDT)] Past TOPICAL STUDIES 93 and 94 Past TOPICAL STUDY 1-on Spiritual High-Lights of Jesus Christ Spiritual High-Lights of the Fifth Epochal Revelation FIFTH EPOCHAL REVELATION (full text and my added comments) INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES (shorter, with some FER)