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Where are the Daughters of God?
Marion Steward, Auckland, New Zealand
[Presented at the Australian & New Zealand Conference of Urantia Book readers, Sydney,1997]
Our mission here on this planet is to strive to become Godlike, but the leap from mortal kind like us to God is unimaginably huge, as the authors of The Urantia Book never tire of reminding us ! We are told that the most useful thing any of us could do here on Urantia is to study the life of Jesus. Christ Michael, in his bestowal mission here, was and is the ultimate role model for all of us ascenders. He named himself the Son of Man, and the Son of God.
The Universe is teeming with Sons of God, starting with the Eternal Son, then all the descending Sons, the Paradise Sons of God--Creator Sons, Magisterial Sons, and Trinity Teacher Sons; then the Local Universe Sons of God--Melchizedek Sons, Vorondadek Sons, Lanonandek Sons, and the Life Carriers; and numerous, unrevealed orders of Trinitized Sons. Then we have the ascending Sons-- Father-fused, Son-fused and Spirit-fused mortals, evolutionary seraphim, ascending Material Sons, Translated Midwayers, personalized Adjusters.
A reader could easily come to the conclusion, then, that to be Godlike means to become a Son of God,--but for those of us who find it difficult to see ourselves as sons, this poses a certain difficulty.
Of course, it may merely be a question of language. In the 1930s there was no such thing as being politically correct, and avoiding sexist and racist language. Perhaps the word 'son' was used because there is no word in English for 'adult child.' A Child of God, the Children of God--in English, the word has definite implications of immaturity, and while we certainly can be so regarded in terms of our entire universe career, nevertheless we do reach maturity at each stage of our lives. On those occasions when we are referred to as children, it is usually then followed by some reference to growing up to become Sons of God.
The authors frequently bemoan the paucity of the English language, and the constraints they suffered in rendering this revelation into print--limitations imposed both by deficiencies in the language, and by the lack of advanced spiritual concepts on Urantia. When we start to learn 'Nebadon-ese' and 'Satanian-ese' as we progress through the mansion worlds, then we will undoubtedly discover a whole new range of useful vocabulary items, which we will need to express our enlarged ideas of the universe. I look forward to reaching Havona, where "One hour's instruction is the equivalent of 10,000 years of the word-memory methods of Urantia."(303)
However, I tend to believe that they deliberately used 'son' and other such gender-specific words to represent roles and function, rather than physical descriptions. In one telling sentence, the Eternal Son is also called the Universal Mother, a statement which clearly goes far beyond issues of sex differentiation.
On reading further, some light is shed upon this. In the papers dealing with seraphim, there is the statement: "...in dealing with sex creatures it is our custom to speak of those beings of more direct descent from the Father and the Son as the sons of God, while referring to the children of the Spirit as the daughters of God." (419)
This is good news--the universe is revealed as being also teeming with daughters! The lists of all the children of the Spirit are very long--all the Higher Personalities of the spirit, the Universe Power Directors, the Messenger Hosts of space, the Ministering Spirits of the Superuniverses and of the Local Universes--a vast array of beings undertaking an incomprehensible number of vitally important tasks.
So what are these Daughters of God like? Do they behave differently to Sons? Can we mortal daughters learn from them? How do Daughters of God relate to Sons?
The most notable of all these, as far as we mortals are concerned, the daughter highest in status to whom we can relate, is the Creative Daughter Spirit, that individualization of the Infinite Spirit who comes and works with each Creator Son in the creation of and administration of a local universe. She is variously named as the Divine Minister, the Holy Spirit of the Local Universe, or the Local Universe Mother Spirit.
On p. 368 we read: "The Spirit ...enacts the role of a mother, always assisting the Son and being everlastingly indispensable to the administration of the universe....no Son could hope for final success without the incessant co-operation of the Divine Minister and her spirit helpers, the daughters of God." (368)
A study of the sections dealing with the Creator Son and the Daughter Spirit reveals a very close relationship of interdependence. Michael relies on the Spirit for her omnipresence, and she through him compensates for being bound by time. Together they can transcend both time and space. In the whole creation of the local universe, she is totally indispensable--she provides the mind for each creature, she provides the life spark, she creates the Seven Adjutant Spirits who foster the mind development of all creatures, and she ministers to all human beings through her own Holy Spirit.
This Daughter of God has many attributes which I would dearly love to emulate, but
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