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Paper 3: The Attributes of God
God is omnipresent; he alone can be in numberless places simultaneously. He rules in the local universes through his Creator Sons who are discernible to lower orders of beings and can compensate for God's invisibility. God is greater than all of his combined creations. Although he exists throughout the universes, the universes can never encompass his infinity. God pervades the physical universes of the past, present, and future. He is the primordial foundation of material creation.
Individually, humans are indwelt by Father fragments, and the effective presence of God within each person is conditioned by the degree of cooperation provided. Fluctuations of God's presence are not due to whims of the Father but are directly determined by the mortal's choice to receive him. God has freely bestowed himself without limit or favor.
God is energy. He is the cause of all physical phenomena; he controls all power. The power of God does not function blindly, but it is nearly impossible to explain the nature of his laws. From the limitations of our mortal perspective, many actions of the Creator may seem arbitrary and cruel, but God's actions are always purposeful, intelligent, kind, and wise.
God knows all things. He is the only personality who knows the number of all the stars and planets. His consciousness is universal, his circuit encompasses all personalities. God is never subject to surprise. The potential force, wisdom, and love of God is not reduced by his self-bestowal on subordinate creatures and creations. If creation should continue eternally, the power of God's control from the Isle of Paradise would be adequate for such an eternally increasing creation; God would still possess the same potential as if his power had never poured forth into the universe. Likewise, sending Father fragments to indwell the mortals of numerous worlds in no way lessens the wisdom and perfection of truth of the all-powerful Father.
The nearest approach to God is through love. Finite mind cannot know the infinity of the Father, but it can feel the Father's love.
The uncertainties of life do not contradict the universal sovereignty of God. Creature life is beset with certain inevitabilities. To develop courage, we must grapple with hardships. To develop altruism, we must experience social inequality. Hope results from being faced with insecurity, and faith arises when we live in such a way that we know less than we can believe. The love of truth is created only in an environment where falsehood is possible. Idealism comes as we struggle for a better world. Loyalty cannot emerge unless we live with the possibility of betrayal, and unselfishness results only if we have a self-life to forsake. To appreciate pleasure we must live in a world where pain and suffering are possible. The only evolutionary world without error would be a world without free intelligence. Man must be fallible if he is to be free.
The sovereignty of God is unlimited. The universe was not inevitable. It was not an accident, neither is it self-existent; it is subject to the will of the Father. God the Father loves us, God the Son serves us, and God the Spirit inspires us in the adventure of finding the Father.