Given this year’s events in Baghdad, the barbarity and butchering in Burundi, the pollution, disease and confusion that continue to spread across our bright blue-green gem of a world, every human living on this world, and aware of its precarious state, would whole-heartedly agree that this is no way to run a planet.
But we readers of The Urantia Book have come to believe in a well-designed, well-managed universe. We assume with confidence that the Paradise Deities make no mistakes. We have great faith in the ability of our own Michael of Nebadon to run his local universe successfully. The presence of Trinity Observers on Salvington and the Constellation capitals is our guarantee that our problems do not stem from there.
So it is out here on the worlds of space, where the lowest of the descending Sons come face to face with the ascending children of time, in the ranks of the Lanonandek rulers of the inhabited worlds, that we find the origin and source of our woes. Those crucial decisions that doomed Urantia to its difficult path were all triggered by Lanonandek Sons. From the bottom of page 392:
Since Lanonandeks are a somewhat lower order of sonship than the Melchizedeks and the Voroncladeks, they are of even greater service in the subordinate units of the universe, for they are capable of drawing nearer the lower creatures of the intelligent races. They also stand in greater danger of going astray, of departing from the acceptable technique of universe government, But these Lanonandeks, especially the primary order; are the most able and versatile of all local universe administrators. In executive ability they are excelled only by Gabriel and his unrevealed associates. [Paper 35:8.9, page 392.9]
Then warning bells start sounding:
The large number of these Sons who have lapsed from integrity does not indicate any fault in creatorship. They could have been made divinely perfect, but they were so created that they might better understand and draw near to, the evolutionary creatures dwelling on the worlds of time and space [Paper 35:9.7, page 393.7]
And here is the crux of the problem:
It is the contention of our high rulers that, while such free-choosing Sons make excessive trouble in the earlier ages of the universe, when things are fully sifted and finally settled the gains of higher loyalty and fuller volitional service on the part of these thoroughly tested Sons will far more than compensate for the confusion and tribulations of earlier times. [Paper 35:9.10, page 393.10]
Michael himself has chosen to set things up this way. His design of his Lanonandeks is perfectly in accord with his larger, future plans for his universe of Nebadon. So, if we were to ask Michael what these larger plans and purposes might be, what exactly is it he is attempting out here in space and time, he might say something like this:
“The universe of Nebadon is my technique for turning you fragile, precious ascenders into adjuster-fused first stage spirits. As such, you will be like caterpillars able to become Finaliter butterflies, given time in the cocoon of Havona”.
If we were to ask Michael’s Paradise Father why he wants “Finaliters”, he might say something like:
“My eternal infinite absolute is a very big place, and my Trinity of Trinities has plans. However, these plans depend upon a crucial ingredient. A team of ones like me, but sub-infinite, able to penetrate and to engage the non-time sequence required to actualize those absolute realms. Your experience with time and sequence, your determination to survive and succeed, your personality fused to my absolute adjuster roots make you ideal for the task”.
The Master Architects might add,
“Indeed, and it is only on this largest stage that you humans really make any sense.”