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not including Doodles
not including Doodles
Page 111 of 131, posts 551 - 555 of 651
Adam's Reactions
Realization
Adam hears of Eve's error. Both Adam and Eve are "reproved...for disobedience," and told that "they had disobeyed" and "they had defaulted." They are advised by Solonia, heed some of this angel's advice, disregard some.
Adam is "heartbroken and dejected," and for Eve has "only pity and sympathy."
Betrayal
Unable to bear the idea of continuing without his mate, Adam intentionally seeks out Laotta and "with premeditation committed the folly of Eve."
Abandonment
Then Adam "wandered in solitude" for thirty days. "Not in fifty years" did Adam's older children recover from the shock of the default, and "especially" Adam's thirty days away. The pregnant Eve is in "complete ignorance of his whereabouts or fate" and "never" fully recovered from his month's absence.
Return
Adam returns and with Eve begins to plan for the future. (Eve "experienced a satisfaction of joy and gratitude that never was effaced by their long and difficult life partnership of toiling service.")
After the Garden
Departure
Bereft of supermortal advice or assistance, under siege from the Nodites, Adam confers with followers and they decide to leave the garden, going east.
Bereavement
Three days out, two thirds of those Adamic children over the age of twenty choose to leave the planet.
Adam and Eve have it confirmed that they are in default (although not considered in rebellion), and consequently are mortal.
The journey to the new garden takes a year. While on the road Eve gives birth to Cain, son of Cano, and Laotta gives birth to Adam's daughter Sansa. Laotta dies in childbirth. Eve suffered in childbirth but survived. Eve nurses and rears Sansa.
Second Garden
Restarting
The existing occupants fled the Tigris-Euphrates lands. Adam's company arrive and begin fortifying their new home.
Abel, the first post-default child of Adam and Eve, is born.
Religion Degrades
Adam, "burdened" and "depressed spiritually," delegates authority. The religion of Adam's company is already degrading — animal sacrifice is no longer discouraged (which plays a part in Cain and Abel's quarrels).
More Tragedy
Cain, twenty, slays his eighteen-year-old half-brother Abel. Cain is encouraged to leave the new garden. He later becomes instrumental in re-establishing and keeping peace with the Nodites.
Mortal Life
Adam spends most of his time training his children, which paves the way for a smoother transition upon his eventual demise. Their life is hard. The new garden had to be started from scratch. Adam and Eve are even reduced to sometimes eating meat.
Adam's Seed
With Eve as "the head of a commission...on race improvement," Adam impregnates one thousand six hundred eighty-two non-Adamic, mostly Nodite, women. All but 112 of these children survive to adulthood, reared in their mothers' tribes. Mixed-race conceptions cause difficulties in childbirth. Laotta died giving birth to Adam's daughter. Although there is no mention how many of these nearly seventeen hundred women were condemned to death for conceiving by Adam, presumably many were. And Adam and Eve must have recognized in advance that these mothers were human sacrifices for the mission of racial uplift. Harsh.
Fate of Adam and Eve
Adam's Death
Adam and Eve received Thought Adjusters soon after their degradation to mortality. They were comforted by a cryptic message from their universe sovereign Michael, from which Adam inferred that the Paradise Son might bestow himself upon this poor world. They were reassured in the hope of resurrection.
Eve died "of a weakened heart" after five hundred eleven years on Urantia. Adam died "of what might be termed old age" after five hundred thirty years. They were buried in the center of the temple of divine service.
This ended four hundred seventy thousand years of continuous existence of a material representative of superhuman government on our world.
Survival
Three days after Adam's death, by order of Lanaforge, Adam and Eve were repersonalized in a special dispensational resurrection. They progressed through Jerusem citizenship and returned to Edenic residency, but now as ascendant citizens. They are currently on the Urantia advisory board of twenty-four.
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In response to a quote from The Urantia Book regarding the internment of rebel midwayers, posted on alt.religion.urantia-book, a correspondent asked:
How do you explain what is going on these days in the U.S.A. and on this planet?
Many glib and superficial answers to this generality occur to me. :)
But more seriously, friend, what would you like explained? Not all superhuman beings are revealed in the UB, but it is usually interpreted that all those who were rebels have been interned. Except one, the chief rebel of our world, Caligastia, the "devil" himself. While some UB students like to believe that Caligastia has been hauled off as well, and some "revelation update" alleged psychics also support this view, they do so without any cause from the UB itself.
I sometimes think we can almost trace the travels of Caligastia, for example deserting Hitler and cleaving to Mao, or in modern days dallying in the Middle East or the Balkans. But his virus, regardless of his continuing presence, is still the chief contagion and contaminant of our world's spirit. We should all pray for the infection's utter elimination.
That said, I would add,
In general, when weak and dissolute mortals are supposed to be under the influence of devils and demons, they are merely being dominated by their own inherent and debased tendencies, being led away by their own natural propensities. The devil has been given a great deal of credit for evil which does not belong to him. Caligastia has been comparatively impotent since the cross of Christ.
—The Lucifer Rebellion: The Son of Man on Urantia [UP53 §8 ¶9 p610]
Worth a read in its entirety if you wish to peruse the question in greater depth.
Worth a read in its entirety if you wish to peruse the question in greater depth.
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Some not-so-serious thinking about the reasons given in The Urantia Book why Jesus used clay and spittle to heal the blind man
Jesus made use of the clay and the spittle and directed him to wash in the symbolic pool of Siloam for three reasons…
And what were these three reasons? Welll…
1. This was not a miracle response to the individual's faith. This was a wonder which Jesus chose to perform for a purpose of his own, but which he so arranged that this man might derive lasting benefit therefrom.
Okay, we'll take their word for it that this action was taken so the man could benefit lastingly, which in the further development of the story does seem to prove true.
2. As the blind man had not asked for healing, and since the faith he had was slight, these material acts were suggested for the purpose of encouraging him. He did believe in the superstition of the efficacy of spittle, and he knew the pool of Siloam was a semisacred place. But he would hardly have gone there had it not been necessary to wash away the clay of his anointing. There was just enough ceremony about the transaction to induce him to act.
This doesn't seem so much like a second reason as an expansion of the first. [Shrug]
3. But Jesus had a third reason for resorting to these material means in connection with this unique transaction: This was a miracle wrought purely in obedience to his own choosing, and thereby he desired to teach his followers of that day and all subsequent ages to refrain from despising or neglecting material means in the healing of the sick. He wanted to teach them that they must cease to regard miracles as the only method of curing human diseases.
This is the reason why I'm writing. This has always struck me as, well, lame. Strained. I've always felt it was, like, what Sadler (or some Midwayer) thought Jesus might have meant.
After all, there was (we may presume) no real material efficacy in this treatment. Its logic is inconsistent. This miracle was wrought to teach us not to regard miracles as the only method of curing disease? It would seem more to suggest that material means are more or less placebo in nature. That, as some religionists have supposed, the efficacy of a system lies not in innate physical propensities but in the belief of the patient. Doctors are well acquainted with the "miraculous" potentials of the placebo. One article I read not long ago said that in tests, even hair growth has been stimulated by placebo. If we believe in magic, it works. When we cease to believe in magic and believe in science, magic ceases to work, but science works. If we believe in allopathy, it works. Alternatively, if we believe in homeopathy, it works. That's not what the UB says, but it is more like what one might interpret from Jesus' use of holy mud and spit, especially in light of the first two reasons given.
Right now, I'm doing my best to believe that my prescription of penicillin will keep me from losing this swollen thumb, or worse, infected by catbite. Oh, I believe! I believe! But I also believe all healing comes from God, whatever the route.
Hello?
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A correspondent in alt.religion.urantia-book wondered about eternal life. The Jews, he said, direct inheritors of the teachings of Melchizedek, have no belief system regarding eternal life. He wondered, what if there is no afterlife?
Something I've always thought: If there is no afterlife, by the time I find out, I'll never know, and I won't get a chance to yell at anybody about it! [grin]
Actually, the Jews do have a concept of the afterlife, at least some do. It's typically Jewishly exquisite. I've seen it called the Great Mercy and it goes like this. (Forgive me if I err--this is from readings about twenty-five, thirty years ago.) Maybe the Creator sees fit to grant something beyond this life. If so, that's his Great Mercy. If he doesn't, he doesn't. (At this point, I think, you give a casual shrug in Yiddish and say, "Enh!" or "Nu!") It doesn't change one's Duty in this life, to obey the Commandments, etc.
I really like that attitude so much better than the overmuch concern of so many Christians and others with personal salvation, which is, at base, just a form of selfish desire and fraught with a tendency to deny the importance of this life except as it leads to salvation, rather than just the assurance of faith in God's love and, well, Great Mercy. "This life, this moment, this is all the Heaven you get right now, so live as if you're already in the presence of God" sounds good to me.
And, whah! b'gosh! here it is right here in that fat blue book!
All this concept of atonement and sacrificial salvation is rooted and grounded in selfishness. Jesus taught that service to one's fellows is the highest concept of the brotherhood of spirit believers. Salvation should be taken for granted by those who believe in the fatherhood of God. The believer's chief concern should not be the selfish desire for personal salvation but rather the unselfish urge to love and, therefore, serve one's fellows even as Jesus loved and served mortal men.
—Urantia Paper 188, Section 4, Paragraph 9, page 2017.
, Section 4, Paragraph 9, page 2017.That's the commandment to keep!
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