Teacher-Brother Dave's Compilation of TOPICAL STUDIES from THE NEW EPOCHAL REVELATION OF TRUTH. Topical Study number 105 “Our Freedoms in Spiritual Liberty” [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 53. The Lucifer Rebellion [Lucifer was a Son of God who was four levels under our local universe of Nebadon Sovereign Creator Son of God Jesus Christ Michael. Lucifer was in charge of only one ten-thousanth of Nebadon – as a System Sovereign. He rebelled against God the Universal Father and Jesus about 200,000 years ago. Lucifer’s assistant was Satan, and under Satan was Caligastia our former Planetary Prince of Urantia (Earth). They both joined in the rebellion with Lucifer. When Jesus was Incarnate here, in A.D. 30- on, Jesus removed all authority and powers from these three rebels. Lucifer and Satan are now confined up on a spiritual prison world. They can not possess or harm any humans since then.] 4. Outbreak of the Rebellion [Paper:Section.Paragraph numbers] 53:4.4 While there had been two previous rebellions in Nebadon, [our local universe made by, and evolving in, Jesus Christ Michael] they were in distant constellations. Lucifer held that these insurrections were unsuccessful because the majority of the intelligences failed to follow their leaders. He contended that “majorities rule,” that “mind is infallible.” The freedom allowed him by the universe rulers apparently sustained many of his nefarious contentions. He defied all his superiors; yet they apparently took no note of his doings. He was given a free hand to prosecute his seductive plan without let or hindrance. 53:4.6 Gabriel [the Chief Executive of Nebadon under our Christ Michael] was personally present throughout all these disloyal proceedings and only announced that he would, in due time, speak for Michael, and that all beings would be left free and unmolested in their choice; that the “government of the Sons for the Father desired only that loyalty and devotion which was voluntary, wholehearted, and sophistry-proof.” 5. Nature of the Conflict 53:5.3 From the outbreak of rebellion to the day of his enthronement as sovereign ruler of Nebadon, [Jesus Christ] Michael never interfered with the rebel forces of Lucifer; they were allowed to run a free course for almost two hundred thousand years of Urantia time. [Earth time.] [Jesus] Christ Michael now has ample power and authority to deal promptly, even summarily, with such outbreaks of disloyalty, but we doubt that this sovereign authority would lead him to act differently if another such upheaval should occur. PAPER 54. Problems of the Lucifer Rebellion 0. Introduction 54:0.1 EVOLUTIONARY man finds it difficult fully to comprehend the significance and to grasp the meanings of evil, error, sin, and iniquity. Man is slow to perceive that contrastive perfection and imperfection produce potential evil; that conflicting truth and falsehood create confusing error; that the divine endowment of freewill choice eventuates in the divergent realms of sin and righteousness; that the persistent pursuit of divinity leads to the kingdom of God as contrasted with its continuous rejection, which leads to the domains of iniquity. 54:0.2 The Gods [of the Paradise Trinity] neither create evil nor permit sin and rebellion. Potential evil is time-existent in a universe embracing differential levels of perfection meanings and values. Sin is potential in all realms where imperfect beings are endowed with the ability to choose between good and evil. The very conflicting presence of truth and untruth, fact and falsehood, constitutes the potentiality of error. The deliberate choice of evil constitutes sin; the willful rejection of truth is error; the persistent pursuit of sin and error is iniquity. 1. True and False Liberty 54:1.1 Of all the perplexing problems growing out of the Lucifer rebellion, none has occasioned more difficulty than the failure of immature evolutionary mortals to distinguish between true and false liberty. 54:1.2 True liberty is the quest of the ages and the reward of evolutionary progress. False liberty is the subtle deception of the error of time and the evil of space. Enduring liberty is predicated on the reality of justice — intelligence, maturity, fraternity, and equity. 54:1.3 Liberty is a self-destroying technique of cosmic existence when its motivation is unintelligent, unconditioned, and uncontrolled. True liberty is progressively related to reality and is ever regardful of social equity, cosmic fairness, universe fraternity, and divine obligations. 54:1.4 Liberty is suicidal when divorced from material justice, intellectual fairness, social forbearance, moral duty, and spiritual values. Liberty is nonexistent apart from cosmic reality, and all personality reality is proportional to its divinity relationships. 54:1.5 Unbridled self-will and unregulated self-expression equal unmitigated selfishness, the acme of ungodliness. Liberty without the associated and ever-increasing conquest of self is a figment of egoistic mortal imagination. Self-motivated liberty is a conceptual illusion, a cruel deception. License masquerading in the garments of liberty is the forerunner of abject bondage. 54:1.6 True liberty is the associate of genuine self-respect; false liberty is the consort of self-admiration. True liberty is the fruit of self-control; false liberty, the assumption of self-assertion. Self-control leads to altruistic service; self-admiration tends towards the exploitation of others for the selfish aggrandizement of such a mistaken individual as is willing to sacrifice righteous attainment for the sake of possessing unjust power over his fellow beings. 54:1.7 Even wisdom is divine and safe only when it is cosmic in scope and spiritual in motivation. 54:1.8 There is no error greater than that species of self-deception which leads intelligent beings to crave the exercise of power over other beings for the purpose of depriving these persons of their natural liberties. The golden rule of human fairness cries out against all such fraud, unfairness, selfishness, and unrighteousness. Only true and genuine liberty is compatible with the reign of love and the ministry of mercy. 54:1.9 How dare the self-willed creature encroach upon the rights of his fellows in the name of personal liberty when the Supreme Rulers of the universe stand back in merciful respect for these prerogatives of will and potentials of personality! No being, in the exercise of his supposed personal liberty, has a right to deprive any other being of those privileges of existence conferred by the Creators and duly respected by all their loyal associates, subordinates, and subjects. 54:1.10 Evolutionary man may have to contend for his material liberties with tyrants and oppressors on a world of sin and iniquity or during the early times of a primitive evolving sphere, but not so on the morontia worlds [higher soul reality Heavens] or on the [higher] spirit spheres. War is the heritage of early evolutionary man, but on worlds of normal advancing civilization physical combat as a technique of adjusting racial misunderstandings has long since fallen into disrepute. 2. The Theft of Liberty 54:2.1 With the Son and in the Spirit did God project eternal Havona, [One billion high spiritual spheres [Heavens that we will ascend up and through] that orbit around the nuclear Isle of Paradise] and ever since has there obtained the eternal pattern of co-ordinate participation in creation -- sharing. This pattern of sharing is the master design for every one of the Sons and Daughters of God [our Creator Son Jesus and our creative Holy Spirit who co-rule Nebadon] who go out into space to engage in the attempt to duplicate in time the central universe of eternal perfection. 54:2.2 Every creature of every evolving universe who aspires to do the Father’s will is destined to become the partner of the time-space Creators in this magnificent adventure of experiential perfection attainment. Were this not true, the Father would have hardly endowed such creatures with creative free will, neither would he indwell them, actually go into partnership with them by means of his own spirit. 54:2.3 Lucifer’s folly was the attempt to do the nondoable, to short-circuit time in an experiential universe. Lucifer’s crime was the attempted creative disenfranchisement of every personality in [your system of 619 human-inhabited planets,] the unrecognized abridgment of the creature’s personal participation — freewill participation — in the long evolutionary struggle to attain the status of light and life both individually and collectively. In so doing this onetime Sovereign of your system set the temporal purpose of his own will directly athwart the eternal purpose of God’s will as it is revealed in the bestowal of free will upon all personal creatures. The Lucifer rebellion thus threatened the maximum possible infringement of the freewill choice of the ascenders and servers of [your system] — a threat forevermore to deprive every one of these beings of the thrilling experience of contributing something personal and unique to the slowly erecting monument to experiential wisdom which will sometime exist as [your] perfected system. Thus does the Lucifer manifesto, masquerading in the habiliments of liberty, stand forth in the clear light of reason as a monumental threat to consummate the theft of personal liberty and to do it on a scale that has been approached only twice in all the history of Nebadon. 54:2.4 In short, what God had given men and angels Lucifer would have taken away from them, that is, the divine privilege of participating in the creation of their own destinies and of the destiny of this local system of inhabited worlds. 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. 3. The Time Lag of Justice 54:3.1 The moral will creatures of the evolutionary worlds are always bothered with the unthinking question as to why the all-wise Creators permit evil and sin. They fail to comprehend that both are inevitable if the creature is to be truly free. The free will of evolving man or exquisite angel is not a mere philosophic concept, a symbolic ideal. Man’s ability to choose good or evil is a universe reality. This liberty to choose for oneself is an endowment of the Supreme Rulers, and they will not permit any being or group of beings to deprive a single personality in the wide universe of this divinely bestowed liberty — not even to satisfy such misguided and ignorant beings in the enjoyment of this misnamed personal liberty. 4. The Mercy Time Lag 54:4.3 The very fact that an evil-doing creature can actually choose to do wrong — commit sin — establishes the fact of free-willness and fully justifies any length delay in the execution of justice provided the extended mercy might conduce to repentance and rehabilitation. [Our Father God has infinite love and lavish mercy ministry to all humans and all beings !] 54:4.4 Most of the liberties which Lucifer sought he already had; others he was to receive in the future. All these precious endowments were lost by giving way to impatience and yielding to a desire to possess what one craves now and to possess it in defiance of all obligation to respect the rights and liberties of all other beings composing the universe of universes. Ethical obligations are innate, divine, and universal. 54:4.7 The mercy delays of time are by the mandate of the free will of the Creators. There is good to be derived in the universe from this technique of patience in dealing with sinful rebels. While it is all too true that good cannot come of evil to the one who contemplates and performs evil, it is equally true that all things (including evil, potential and manifest) work together for good to all beings who know God, love to do his will, and are ascending Paradiseward according to his eternal plan and divine purpose. 5. The Wisdom of Delay 54:5.9 Reason #8. The Faithful of Days on [our Norlatiadek Constellation spiritual headquarters] Edentia advised the Constellation Fathers to allow the rebels free course to the end that all sympathy for these evildoers should be the sooner uprooted in the hearts of every present and future citizen of Norlatiadek — every mortal, morontia, [soul] or spirit creature. 54:5.10 Reason #9. On Jerusem [our system spiritual headquarters] the personal representative of the Supreme Executive of Orvonton [our superuniverse number 7 of 7] counseled Gabriel [our Nebadon universe Chief Executive under Jesus Christ Michael] to foster full opportunity for every living creature to mature a deliberate choice in those matters involved in the Lucifer Declaration of Liberty. The issues of rebellion having been raised, the Paradise emergency adviser of Gabriel portrayed that, if such full and free opportunity were not given all Norlatiadek creatures, then would the Paradise quarantine against all such possible halfhearted or doubt-stricken creatures be extended in self-protection against the entire constellation. To keep open the Paradise doors of ascension to the beings of Norlatiadek, it was necessary to provide for the full development of rebellion and to insure the complete determination of attitude on the part of all beings in any way concerned therewith. 6. The Triumph of Love 54:6.9 One error of human thinking respecting these problems consists in the idea that all evolutionary mortals on an evolving planet would choose to enter upon the Paradise career if sin had not cursed their world. The ability to decline survival does not date from the times of the Lucifer rebellion. Mortal man has always possessed the endowment of freewill choice regarding the Paradise career. [It is totally your God-given freewill decision of Eternal Import: To Be an ascending Eternalized Son of God, or to be not. There is no sub-human, barbaric “hell”.] PAPER 66. The Planetary Prince of Urantia 8. Misfortunes of Caligastia 66:8.2 It should be noted that both Lucifer and Caligastia had been patiently instructed and lovingly warned respecting their critical tendencies and the subtle development of their pride of self and its associated exaggeration of the feeling of self-importance. But all of these attempts to help had been misconstrued as unwarranted criticism and as unjustified interference with personal liberties. Both Caligastia [our former Planetary Prince of Urantia, now deposed and replaced by Jesus] and Lucifer judged their friendly advisers as being actuated by the very reprehensible motives which were beginning to dominate their own distorted thinking and misguided planning. They judged their unselfish advisers by their own evolving selfishness. 66:8.6 The doctrine of a personal devil on Urantia, though it had some foundation in the planetary presence of the traitorous and iniquitous Caligastia, was nevertheless wholly fictitious in its teachings that such a “devil” could influence the normal human mind against its free and natural choosing. Even before [Jesus Christ] Michael’s bestowal on Urantia, neither Caligastia nor [his assistant] Daligastia was ever able to oppress mortals or to coerce any normal individual into doing anything against the human will. The free will of man is supreme in moral affairs; even the indwelling Thought Adjuster [God’s Spirit will within you] refuses to compel man to think a single thought or to perform a single act against the choosing of man’s own will. PAPER 67. The Planetary Rebellion 1. The Caligastia Betrayal 67:1.2 In the course of this inspection Satan informed Caligastia of Lucifer’s then proposed “Declaration of Liberty,” and as we now know, the Prince agreed to betray the planet upon the announcement of the rebellion. The loyal universe personalities look with peculiar disdain upon Prince Caligastia because of this premeditated betrayal of trust. The Creator Son [Jesus] voiced this contempt when he said: “You are like your leader, Lucifer, and you have sinfully perpetuated his iniquity. He was a falsifier from the beginning of his self-exaltation because he abode not in the truth.” 5. Immediate Results of Rebellion 67:5.1 Great confusion reigned in Dalamatia [the city headquarters of the former Planetary Prince] and thereabout for almost fifty years after the instigation of rebellion. The complete and radical reorganization of the whole world was attempted; revolution displaced evolution as the policy of cultural advancement and racial improvement. Among the superior and partially trained sojourners in and near Dalamatia there appeared a sudden advancement in cultural status, but when these new and radical methods were attempted on the outlying peoples, indescribable confusion and racial pandemonium was the immediate result. Liberty was quickly translated into license by the half-evolved primitive men of those days. 67:5.2 Very soon after the rebellion the entire staff of sedition were engaged in energetic defense of the city against the hordes of semisavages who besieged its walls as a result of the doctrines of liberty which had been prematurely taught them. And years before the beautiful headquarters went down beneath the southern waves, the misled and mistaught tribes of the Dalamatia hinterland had already swept down in semisavage assault on the splendid city, driving the secession staff and their associates northward. 67:5.3 The Caligastia scheme for the immediate reconstruction of human society in accordance with his ideas of individual freedom and group liberties, proved a swift and more or less complete failure. Society quickly sank back to its old biologic level, and the forward struggle began all over, starting not very far in advance of where it was at the beginning of the Caligastia regime, this upheaval having left the world in confusion worse confounded. PAPER 68. The Dawn of Civilization 4. Evolution of the Mores 68:4.4 Prior to the liberating and liberalizing instruction of the Dalamatia teachers, ancient man was held a helpless victim of the ritual of the mores; the primitive savage was hedged about by an endless ceremonial. Everything he did from the time of awakening in the morning to the moment he fell asleep in his cave at night had to be done just so — in accordance with the folkways of the tribe. He was a slave to the tyranny of usage; his life contained nothing free, spontaneous, or original. There was no natural progress toward a higher mental, moral, or social existence. 5. Land Techniques—Maintenance Arts 68:5.4 2. The hunting stage. The invention of weapon tools enabled man to become a hunter and thus to gain considerable freedom from food slavery. A thoughtful Andonite who had severely bruised his fist in a serious combat rediscovered the idea of using a long stick for his arm and a piece of hard flint, bound on the end with sinews, for his fist. Many tribes made independent discoveries of this sort, and these various forms of hammers represented one of the great forward steps in human civilization. Today some Australian natives have progressed little beyond this stage. PAPER 69. Primitive Human Institutions 5. The Beginnings of Capital 69:5.15 Though capital has tended to liberate man, it has greatly complicated his social and industrial organization. The abuse of capital by unfair capitalists does not destroy the fact that it is the basis of modern industrial society. Through capital and invention the present generation enjoys a higher degree of freedom than any that ever preceded it on earth. This is placed on record as a fact and not in justification of the many misuses of capital by thoughtless and selfish custodians. 8. Slavery as a Factor in Civilization 69:8.11 While the ideal of society is universal freedom, idleness should never be tolerated. All able-bodied persons should be compelled to do at least a self-sustaining amount of work. 9. Private Property 69:9.7 In earliest times women were the property of the community, and the mother dominated the family. The early chiefs owned all the land and were proprietors of all the women; marriage required the consent of the tribal ruler. With the passing of communism, women were held individually, and the father gradually assumed domestic control. Thus the home had its beginning, and the prevailing polygamous customs were gradually displaced by monogamy. (Polygamy is the survival of the female-slavery element in marriage. Monogamy is the slave-free ideal of the matchless association of one man and one woman in the exquisite enterprise of home building, offspring rearing, mutual culture, and self-improvement.) 69:9.16 Private ownership brought increased liberty and enhanced stability; but private ownership of land was given social sanction only after communal control and direction had failed, and it was soon followed by a succession of slaves, serfs, and landless classes. But improved machinery is gradually setting men free from slavish toil. The next part of this Topical Study will be published here Monday, May 27, 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)