Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 21
THE PARADISE CREATOR SONS
1. The Creator Sons are the makers and rulers of the local universes of time and space. These universe creators and sovereigns are of dual origin, embodying the characteristics of God the Father and God the Son. But each Creator Son is different from every other; each is unique in nature as well as in personality; each is the "only‑begotten Son" of the perfect deity ideal of his origin ... Sometimes we refer to the sovereign of your universe of Nebadon as Christ Michael.
2. The order of Michael knows the grand universe from one end to the other; there is no essential experience of any of the children of time and space in which the Michaels have not personally participated; they are in fact partakers not only of the divine nature but also of your nature, meaning all natures, from the highest to the lowest.
3. Each Creator Son is the only‑begotten and only‑begettable offspring of the perfect union of the original concepts of the two infinite and eternal and perfect minds of the ever‑existent Creators of the universe of universes...Each Creator Son is the absolute of the united deity concepts which constitute his divine origin.
4. Some Creator Sons appear to be more like God the Father; others more like God the Son. For example: The trend of administration in the universe of Nebadon suggests that its Creator and ruling Son is one whose nature and character more resemble that of the Eternal Mother Son.
5. I do not know the exact number of Creator Sons in existence, but I have good reasons for believing that there are more than seven hundred thousand...But concerning the destiny of the Michaels beyond seven hundred thousand, we have never been informed.
6. A Creator Son is permitted to choose the space site of his future cosmic activity, but before he may begin even the physical organization of his universe, he must spend a long period of observation devoted to the study of the efforts of his older brothers in various creations located in the superuniverse of his projected action. And prior to all this, the Michael Son will have completed his long and unique experience of Paradise observation and Havona training.
7. Within any superuniverse, one half of their inherent attributes are quite alike, being derived from the uniform Creative Spirits; the other half vary, being derived from the diversified Creator Sons. But such diversity does not characterize those creatures of sole origin in the Creative Spirit nor those imported be beings who are native to the central or superuniverses.
8. When a Michael Son is absent from his universe, its government is directed by the first‑born native being, the Bright and Morning Star, the local universe chief executive. The advice and counsel of the Union of Days is invaluable at such times. The fact of creatorship implies the fullness of sovereignty, but the Michaels choose to experientially earn it, thereby retaining the full co‑operation of all Paradise personalities attached to the local universe administration. We know of no Michael who ever did otherwise; but they all could, they are truly freewill Sons.
10. Before the completion of the bestowal career a Creator Son rules with certain self-imposed limitations of sovereignty, but subsequent to his finished bestowal service he rules by virtue of his actual experience in the form and likeness of his manifold creatures. When a Creator has seven times sojourned among his creatures, when the bestowal career is finished, then is he supremely settled in universe authority; he has become a Master Son, a sovereign and supreme ruler.
11. In settling the question of sovereignty in a local universe, the Creator Son is not only demonstrating his own fitness to rule but is also revealing the nature and portraying the sevenfold attitude of the Paradise Deities ... These primary Paradise Sons are the real revealers of the Father's loving nature and beneficent authority, the same Father who, in association with the Son and the Spirit, is the universal head of all power, personality, and government throughout all the universal realms.
12. In the final bestowal a Creator Son appears as a member of one of the higher mortal races on some inhabited world, usually as a member of that racial group which contains the largest hereditary legacy of the Adamic stock which has previously been imported to upstep the physical status of the animal‑origin peoples. Only once in his sevenfold career as a bestowal Son is a Paradise Michael born of woman as you have the record of the babe of Bethlehem. Only once does he live and die as a member of the lowest order of the evolutionary will creatures.
13. It is of record that the divine Son of last appearance on your planet was a Paradise Creator Son who had completed six phases of his bestowal career; consequently, when he gave up the conscious grasp of the incarnated life on Urantia, he could, and did, truly say, "It is finished" ‑ it was literally finished. His death on Urantia completed his bestowal career; it was the last step in fulfilling the sacred oath of a Paradise Creator Son. And when this experience has been acquired, such Sons are supreme universe sovereigns; no longer do they rule as vicegerents of the Father but in their own right and name as "King of Kings and Lord of Lords."...Concerning his local universe, "all power in heaven and on earth" was relegated to this triumphant and enthroned Master Son.
14. In person the Master Sons are identical with the Creator Sons, but they have undergone such a unique bestowal experience that they are commonly regarded as a different order. When a Creator deigns to effect a bestowal, a real and permanent change is destined to take place...Such beings embody all that can be secured from divine parentage and embrace everything to be derived from perfected‑creature experience. Why should man bemoan his lowly origin and enforced evolutionary career when the very Gods must pass through an equivalent experience before they are accounted experientially worthy and competent finally and fully to rule over their universe domains!
15. With the achievement of supreme local universe sovereignty, there passes from a Michael Son the power and opportunity to create entirely new types of creature beings during the present universe age. But a Master Son’s loss of power to originate entirely new orders of beings in no way interferes with the work of life elaboration already established and in process of unfoldment ... This is the first step, the beginning, of a settled administration in any local universe.
16. The elevation of a sevenfold bestowal Son to the unquestioned sovereignty of his universe means the beginning of the end of agelong uncertainty and relative confusion. Subsequent to this event, that which cannot be sometimes spiritualized will eventually be disorganized; that which cannot be sometime co‑ordinated with cosmic reality will eventually be destroyed ... That which mercy cannot rehabilitate justice will eventually annihilate.
17. A Master Son may at will vary the order of the spiritual adjudication and evolutionary adjustment of the inhabited planets. And such Sons do make and carry out the plans of their own choosing in all matters of special planetary needs, in particular regarding the worlds of their creature sojourn and still more concerning the realm of terminal bestowal, the planet of incarnation in the likeness of mortal flesh.
18. No one may with finality of authority presume to discuss either the natures or the destinies of the sevenfold Master Sovereigns of the local universes; nevertheless, we all speculate much regarding these matters ... It is highly probably that these undisclosed creator powers will remain self‑contained throughout the present universe age. But sometime in the far‑distant future, in the now mobilizing universes of outer space, we believe that the liaison between the sevenfold Master Son and a seventh‑stage Creative Spirit may attain to absonite levels of service attended by the appearance of new things, meanings, and values on transcendental levels of ultimate universe significance ... we believe that in eternity the Michaels are literally destined to be "the way, the truth, and the life,," ever blazing the path for all universe personalities as it leads from supreme divinity through ultimate absonity to eternal deity finality.
Discussion Questions
1. Contrast the concept of creation in Christianity with that of the Creator Son.
2. Will the term Christ Michael and his description as the “only begotten Son” help Christians take a positive attitude toward the Urantia Synopsis of Papers?
3. How is Christ Michael more like the Eternal Son than the Universal Father?
4. How is the extensive training and bestowal requirements of Creator Sons likely to effect our attitude toward the long career to Paradise?
5. Why has Christ Michael given us a more complete vision of universe reality in the Urantia Synopsis of Papers than that given most planets at our stage of evolution?
6. Now that we are at the beginning of “settled administration” in our universe, what might we expect in the future of our world?
7. What are some of the activities on our planet that will be disorganized or destroyed?
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