I am working on a new Talking Points page, titled “God: an Earthling’s Primer; Nature of Our Heavenly Father.” This discussion is based on the first five papers of The Urantia Book, a revelation published in 1955 that presents a comprehensive description of the nature of our Father in Heaven and His magnificent creation. This posting covers the first two papers while the next posting will cover the other three.
How can we begin to understand our Heavenly Father, God? He is so much above and beyond us that our mortal minds have difficulty with the very idea; our efforts to understand Him are certain to fall far short of our goal, nevertheless they are a necessary first baby step toward God.
Our Universal Father[1]
The Universal Father is the God of all creation, the First Source and Center of all things and beings. First think of God as a creator, then as a controller, and lastly as an infinite upholder.[2] The starry systems are made to be inhabited by many types of free will creatures who can seek to worship their Heavenly Father, receive the divine love, and love Him in return. From His abode on Paradise our Father has sent out His supreme decree: “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect.”[3] The very fact we have been given this command is confirmation that this amazing prospect is possible; our Heavenly Father would not ask us to do the non-doable. It may take a few million years, but after our resurrection on the mansion worlds, if we so chose, we will have ongoing life into future eternity; it is certainly possible for each of us to become perfect!
Our Heavenly Father has not revealed His name; He is known by many names indicating the creature’s understanding of our Father. Among these names are: First Source and Universe Center, First Creative Source and Divine Center, Father of Universes, Infinite Upholder, Divine Controller, and Father of Lights. On planets like Urantia, our native sphere, which are inhabited by sex creatures He is known by names indicating His fatherly relationship with us, such as Heavenly Father, or just Father. We also know Him as God.
Physical beings such as us have difficulty even to begin to understand Father because He is spirit not physical. The painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel depicting God giving Adam the spark of life is a magnificent work of art, but it gives a mistaken impression: God is spirit not physical. While our Father might seem to be impossibly distant from us, this is not the case because Father actually dwells within each of us. His presence within is indicated by our capacity for knowing God, our urge to find God, and our desire to do His will.[4]
It is up to each of us who have been granted this revelation, The Urantia Book, to share these truths with our sisters and brothers; to exemplify these uplifting teachings in our daily lives.
Our Heavenly Father is not invisible because He wants to hide from us; rather it is because He is spirit.[5] We are firmly grounded in physical reality; therefore we have difficulty comprehending any part of spirit reality. Spirit reality is a totally different energy continuum from physical reality. While He is invisible to material mind, the spiritualized mind can discern Him by faith. Our Heavenly Father is certainly real and our faith declares this.
There sojourns within each moral being of this planet a fragment of God, a part and parcel of divinity. It is not yet yours by right of possession, but it is designedly intended to be one with you if you survive the mortal existence. (Urantia Book, 26.5) This is a profound mystery, how our Heavenly Father can be at the center of creation on Paradise and simultaneously exist within the mind of every mortal on every inhabited planet throughout all creation. In our spiritual experience Father is not a mystery, but when we attempt to explain such experience to material minded sisters and brothers, mystery appears. It is not possible to make material minds fully aware of spiritual truths.
We can imagine our Heavenly Father has to be a personality totally beyond anything we could possibly comprehend; in addition we equally well know that the Universal Father cannot possibly be anything less than an eternal, infinite, true, good, and beautiful personality.[6] Being absolutely perfect in all aspects might be a disadvantage except for the fact that He literally exists within the mind of every struggling mortal on every inhabited world. Our afflictions afflict Him and our triumphs lift Him up. Our total existence takes place within our Heavenly Father.
What is God Like?[7]
While it is indeed difficult for us to comprehend our Heavenly Father, we have an excellent example of His divine nature. His son Michael, whom we know as Jesus, chose our planet to live the life of a mortal of the flesh. In his life, Jesus portrayed the nature of our Heavenly father. The description of the life of Jesus takes up more than 700 pages in The Urantia Book; for many this is the easiest part of the revelation to understand. Learning about the life of Jesus helps us to better understand our Heavenly Father. The presence of a spark of our Heavenly Father within each of us means we have His assistance in our efforts to better understand Him. We also have the Spirit of Truth and other spirit guidance to help us reach out to Father. With all this assistance, as well as revelations in The Urantia Book, we can certainly gain a more satisfying concept of our Heavenly Father.
For mortal beings such as us, the infinity of our Father in Heaven is beyond our comprehension. The Universal Father is absolutely and without qualification infinite in all his attributes; and this fact, in and of itself, automatically shuts him off from all direct personal communication with finite material beings and other lowly created intelligences. (Urantia Book, 34.5) Because of this gulf between us there are many ways in which our Father in Heaven reaches down to each of us, bridging the gulf; we are certainly not alone in the cosmos. We have the Spirit of Truth, other spirit influence as well as our Guardian Angels. In these ways and in many others, in ways unknown to you and utterly beyond finite comprehension, does the Paradise Father lovingly and willingly downstep and otherwise modify, dilute, and attenuate his infinity in order that he may be able to draw nearer the finite minds of his creature children.[8] (Urantia Book, 35.1) Because our Father is both infinite and eternal, it is totally impossible for mortal beings to comprehend the plans and purposes of our Heavenly Father; such understanding as we gain comes from our personal experiences and our faith.
Even your olden prophets understood the eternal, never-beginning, never-ending, circular nature of the Universal Father. God is literally and eternally present in his universe of universes. He inhabits the present moment with all his absolute majesty and eternal greatness.[9] In the evolving worlds of time and space perfection is necessarily a relative term, an unattainable goal while we remain in this physical form. As we move closer to the eternal perfection of Paradise, we become closer to our Heavenly Father, and we move closer to the goal of the ages: Perfection. God’s primal perfection consists not in an assumed righteousness but rather in the inherent perfection of the goodness of his divine nature. He is final, complete, and perfect.[10]
A prominent characteristic of our Father is mercy, which is simply justice tempered by that wisdom which grows out of perfection of knowledge and the full recognition of the natural weaknesses and environmental handicaps of finite creatures.[11] Our Father in Heaven naturally knows all about each one of us, wants to lift up each individual to His presence, and in mercy He shows us the way. Mercy naturally results from our Father’s innate goodness and love. Mercy is justice interpreted through the lens of a profound understanding of the nature of incomplete beings, either lower spiritual beings or mortals such as us.
Our Heavenly Father naturally loves the creatures He has created. His love is not conditioned on what we might do; it is founded on His innate nature. In these discussions about our Father, we must realize our Heavenly Father is truly perfect in every respect. Most earthly fathers honestly strive to fulfill their fatherly duties; those who act otherwise stain the name father. When man loses sight of the love of a personal God, the kingdom of God becomes merely the kingdom of good. Notwithstanding the infinite unity of the divine nature, love is the dominant characteristic of all God’s personal dealings with his creatures.[12]
For evolutionary creatures such as us, the goodness of our Father in Heaven is perhaps the most important characteristic; other characteristics such as mercy, justice and love are based on the innate goodness of our Father. When dealing with our sisters and brothers we may expect goodness, but that does not always happen. In the physical universe we may see the divine beauty, in the intellectual world we may discern eternal truth, but the goodness of God is found only in the spiritual world of personal religious experience. In its true essence, religion is a faith-trust in the goodness of God.[13]
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This briefly summarizes Paper 1, starting at 21.1; this refers to the one column version of The Urantia Book in the format page.paragraph. All references are to The Urantia Book. ↑
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ibid ↑
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21.3 ↑
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24.1-4 ↑
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25.3 ↑
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27.4 ↑
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This briefly summarizes Paper 2, starting at 33.1 ↑
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35.1 ↑
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35.5 ↑
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36.3 ↑
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38.1 ↑
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40.5 ↑