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The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
PAPER 113
SERAPHIC GUARDIANS OF DESTINY
113:0.1
HAVING presented the narratives of the Ministering
Spirits of Time and the Messenger Hosts of Space, we
come to the consideration of the guardian angels,
seraphim devoted to the ministry to individual mortals,
for whose elevation and perfection all of the vast
survival scheme of spiritual progression has been
provided. In past ages on Urantia, these destiny
guardians were about the only group of angels that had
recognition. The planetary seraphim are indeed
ministering spirits sent forth to do service for those
who shall survive. These attending seraphim have
functioned as the spiritual helpers of mortal man in all
the great events of the past and the present. In many a
revelation "the word was spoken by angels"; many of the
mandates of heaven have been "received by the ministry
of angels."
113:0.2
Seraphim are the traditional angels of heaven; they are
the ministering spirits who live so near you and do so
much for you. They have ministered on Urantia since the
earliest times of human intelligence.
1. THE GUARDIAN ANGELS
113:1.1
The teaching about guardian angels is not a myth;
certain groups of human beings do actually have personal
angels. It was in recognition of this that Jesus, in
speaking of the children of the heavenly kingdom, said:
"Take heed that you despise not one of these little
ones, for I say to you, their angels do always behold
the presence of the spirit of my Father."
113:1.2
Originally, the seraphim were definitely assigned to the
separate Urantia races. But since the bestowal of
Michael, they are assigned in accordance with human
intelligence, spirituality, and destiny. Intellectually,
mankind is divided into three classes:
113:1.3
1. The subnormal minded -- those who do not exercise
normal will power; those who do not make average
decisions. This class embraces those who cannot
comprehend God; they lack capacity for the intelligent
worship of Deity. The subnormal beings of Urantia have a
corps of seraphim, one company, with one battalion of
cherubim, assigned to minister to them and to witness
that justice and mercy are extended to them in the life
struggles of the sphere.
113:1.4
2. The average, normal type of human mind. From the
standpoint of seraphic ministry, most men and women are
grouped in seven classes in accordance with their status
in making the circles of human progress and spiritual
development.
113:1.5
3. The supernormal minded -- those of great decision and
undoubted potential of spiritual achievement; men and
women who enjoy more or less contact with their
indwelling Adjusters; members of the various reserve
corps of destiny. No matter in what circle a human
happens to be, if such an individual becomes enrolled in
any of the several reserve corps of destiny, right then
and there, personal seraphim are assigned, and from that
time until the earthly career is finished, that mortal
will enjoy the continuous ministry and unceasing
watchcare of a guardian angel. Also, when any human
being makes the
supreme decision, when there is a real betrothal with
the Adjuster, a personal guardian is immediately
assigned to that soul.
113:1.6
In the ministry to so-called normal beings, seraphic
assignments are made in accordance with the human
attainment of the circles of intellectuality and
spirituality. You start out in your mind of mortal
investment in the seventh circle and journey inward in
the task of self-understanding, self-conquest, and
self-mastery; and circle by circle you advance until (if
natural death does not terminate your career and
transfer your struggles to the mansion worlds) you reach
the first or inner circle of relative contact and
communion with the indwelling Adjuster.
113:1.7
Human beings in the initial or seventh circle have one
guardian angel with one company of assisting cherubim
assigned to the watchcare and custody of one thousand
mortals. In the sixth circle, a seraphic pair with one
company of cherubim is assigned to guide these ascending
mortals in groups of five hundred. When the fifth circle
is attained, human beings are grouped in companies of
approximately one hundred, and a pair of guardian
seraphim with a group of cherubim is placed in charge.
Upon attainment of the fourth circle, mortal beings are
assembled in groups of ten, and again charge is given to
a pair of seraphim, assisted by one company of cherubim.
113:1.8
When a mortal mind breaks through the inertia of animal
legacy and attains the third circle of human
intellectuality and acquired spirituality, a personal
angel (in reality two) will henceforth be wholly and
exclusively devoted to this ascending mortal. And thus
these human souls, in addition to the ever-present and
increasingly efficient indwelling Thought Adjusters,
receive the undivided assistance of these personal
guardians of destiny in all their efforts to finish the
third circle, traverse the second, and attain the first.
2. THE DESTINY GUARDIANS
113:2.1
Seraphim are not known as guardians of destiny until
such time as they are assigned to the association of a
human soul who has realized one or more of three
achievements: has made a supreme decision to become
Godlike, has entered the third circle, or has been
mustered into one of the reserve corps of destiny.
113:2.2
In the evolution of races a guardian of destiny is
assigned to the very first being who attains the
requisite circle of conquest. On Urantia the first
mortal to secure a personal guardian was Rantowoc, a
wise man of the red race of long ago.
113:2.3
All angelic assignments are made from a group of
volunteering seraphim, and these appointments are always
in accordance with human needs and with regard to the
status of the angelic pair -- in the light of seraphic
experience, skill, and wisdom. Only seraphim of long
service, the more experienced and tested types, are
assigned as destiny guards. Many guardians have gained
much valuable experience on those worlds which are of
the non-Adjuster fusion series. Like the Adjusters, the
seraphim attend these beings for a single lifetime and
then are liberated for new assignment. Many guardians on
Urantia have had this previous practical experience on
other worlds.
113:2.4
When human beings fail to survive, their personal or
group guardians may repeatedly serve in similar
capacities on the same planet. The seraphim develop a
sentimental regard for individual worlds and entertain a
special affection for certain races and types of mortal
creatures with whom they have been so closely and
intimately associated.
113:2.5
The angels develop an abiding affection for their human
associates; and you would, if you could only visualize
the seraphim, develop a warm affection for them.
Divested of material bodies, given spirit forms, you
would be very near the angels in many attributes of
personality. They share most of your emotions and
experience some additional ones. The only emotion
actuating you which is somewhat difficult for them to
comprehend is the legacy of animal fear that bulks so
large in the mental life of the average inhabitant of
Urantia. The angels really find it hard to understand
why you will so persistently allow your higher
intellectual powers, even your religious faith, to be so
dominated by fear, so thoroughly demoralized by the
thoughtless panic of dread and anxiety.
113:2.6
All seraphim have individual names, but in the records
of assignment to world service they are frequently
designated by their planetary numbers. At the universe
headquarters they are registered by name and number. The
destiny guardian of the human subject used in this
contactual communication is number 3 of group 17, of
company 126, of battalion 4, of unit 384, of legion 6,
of host 37, of the 182,314th seraphic army of Nebadon.
The current planetary assignment number of this seraphim
on Urantia and to this human subject is 3,641,852.
113:2.7
In the ministry of personal guardianship, the assignment
of angels as destiny guardians, seraphim always
volunteer their services. In the city of this visitation
a certain mortal was recently admitted to the reserve
corps of destiny, and since all such humans are
personally attended by guardian angels, more than one
hundred qualified seraphim sought the assignment. The
planetary director selected twelve of the more
experienced individuals and subsequently appointed the
seraphim whom they selected as best adapted to guide
this human being through his life journey. That is, they
selected a certain pair of equally qualified seraphim;
one of this seraphic pair will always be on duty.
113:2.8
Seraphic tasks may be unremitting, but either of the
angelic pair can discharge all ministering
responsibilities. Like cherubim, seraphim usually serve
in pairs, but unlike their less advanced associates, the
seraphim sometimes work singly. In practically all their
contacts with human beings they can function as
individuals. Both angels are required only for
communication and service on the higher circuits of the
universes.
113:2.9
When a seraphic pair accept guardian assignment, they
serve for the remainder of the life of that human being.
The complement of being (one of the two angels) becomes
the recorder of the undertaking. These complemental
seraphim are the recording angels of the mortals of the
evolutionary worlds. The records are kept by the pair of
cherubim (a cherubim and a sanobim) who are always
associated with the seraphic guardians, but these
records are always sponsored by one of the seraphim.
113:2.10
For purposes of rest and recharging with the life energy
of the universe circuits, the guardian is periodically
relieved by her complement, and during her absence the
associated cherubim functions as the recorder, as is
also the case when the complemental seraphim is
similarly absent.
3. RELATION TO OTHER SPIRIT INFLUENCES
113:3.1
One of the most important things a destiny guardian does
for her mortal subject is to effect a personal
co-ordination of the numerous impersonal spirit
influences which indwell, surround, and impinge upon the
mind and soul of the evolving material creature. Human
beings are personalities, and it is exceedingly
difficult for nonpersonal spirits and prepersonal
entities to make direct contact with such highly
material and discretely personal minds. In the ministry
of the guarding angel all of these influences are more
or less unified and made more nearly appreciable by the
expanding moral nature of the evolving human
personality.
113:3.2
More especially can and does this seraphic guardian
correlate the manifold agencies and influences of the
Infinite Spirit, ranging from the domains of the
physical controllers and the adjutant mind-spirits up to
the Holy Spirit of the Divine Minister and to the
Omnipresent Spirit presence of the Paradise Third Source
and Center. Having thus unified and made more personal
these vast ministries of the Infinite Spirit, the
seraphim then undertakes to correlate this integrated
influence of the Conjoint Actor with the spirit
presences of the Father and the Son.
113:3.3
The Adjuster is the presence of the Father; the Spirit
of Truth, the presence of the Sons. These divine
endowments are unified and co-ordinated on the lower
levels of human spiritual experience by the ministry of
the guardian seraphim. The angelic servers are gifted in
combining the love of the Father and the mercy of the
Son in their ministry to mortal creatures.
113:3.4
And herein is revealed the reason why the seraphic
guardian eventually becomes the personal custodian of
the mind patterns, memory formulas, and soul realities
of the mortal survivor during that interval between
physical death and morontia resurrection. None but the
ministering children of the Infinite Spirit could thus
function in behalf of the human creature during this
phase of transition from one level of the universe to
another and higher level. Even when you engage in your
terminal transition slumber, when you pass from time to
eternity, a high supernaphim likewise shares the transit
with you as the custodian of creature identity and the
surety of personal integrity.
113:3.5
On the spiritual level, seraphim make personal many
otherwise impersonal and prepersonal ministries of the
universe; they are co-ordinators. On the intellectual
level they are the correlators of mind and morontia;
they are interpreters. And on the physical level they
manipulate terrestrial environment through their liaison
with the Master Physical Controllers and through the
co-operative ministry of the midway creatures.
113:3.6
This is a recital of the manifold and intricate function
of an attending seraphim; but how does such a
subordinate angelic personality, created but a little
above the universe level of humanity, do such difficult
and complex things? We do not really know, but we
conjecture that this phenomenal ministry is in some
undisclosed manner facilitated by the unrecognized and
unrevealed working of the Supreme Being, the actualizing
Deity of the evolving universes of time and space.
Throughout the entire realm of progressive survival in
and through the Supreme Being, seraphim are an essential
part of continuing mortal progression.
4. SERAPHIC DOMAINS OF ACTION
113:4.1
The guardian seraphim are not mind, though they do
spring from the same source that also gives origin to
mortal mind, the Creative Spirit. Seraphim are mind
stimulators; they continually seek to promote
circle-making decisions in human mind. They do this, not
as does the Adjuster, operating from within and through
the soul, but rather from the outside inward, working
through the social, ethical, and moral environment of
human beings. Seraphim are not the divine Adjuster lure
of the Universal Father, but they do function as the
personal agency of the ministry of the Infinite Spirit.
113:4.2
Mortal man, subject to Adjuster leading, is also
amenable to seraphic guidance. The Adjuster is the
essence of man's eternal nature; the seraphim is the
teacher of man's evolving nature -- in this life the
mortal mind, in the next the morontia soul. On the
mansion worlds you will be conscious and aware of
seraphic instructors, but in the first life men are
usually unaware of them.
113:4.3
Seraphim function as teachers of men by guiding the
footsteps of the human personality into paths of new and
progressive experiences. To accept the guidance of a
seraphim rarely means attaining a life of ease. In
following this leading you are sure to encounter, and if
you have the courage, to traverse, the rugged hills of
moral choosing and spiritual progress.
113:4.4
The impulse of worship largely originates in the spirit
promptings of the higher mind adjutants, reinforced by
the leadings of the Adjuster. But the urge to pray so
often experienced by God-conscious mortals very often
arises as the result of seraphic influence. The guarding
seraphim is constantly manipulating the mortal
environment for the purpose of augmenting the cosmic
insight of the human ascender to the end that such a
survival candidate may acquire enhanced realization of
the presence of the indwelling Adjuster and thus be
enabled to yield increased co-operation with the
spiritual mission of the divine presence.
113:4.5
While there is apparently no communication between the
indwelling Adjusters and the encompassing seraphim, they
always seem to work in perfect harmony and exquisite
accord. The guardians are most active at those times
when the Adjusters are least active, but their ministry
is in some manner strangely correlated. Such superb
co-operation could hardly be either accidental or
incidental.
113:4.6
The ministering personality of the guardian seraphim,
the God presence of the indwelling Adjuster, the
encircuited action of the Holy Spirit, and the
Son-consciousness of the Spirit of Truth are all
divinely correlated into a meaningful unity of spiritual
ministry in and to a mortal personality. Though hailing
from different sources and different levels, these
celestial influences are all integrated in the
enveloping and evolving presence of the Supreme Being.
5. SERAPHIC MINISTRY TO MORTALS
113:5.1
Angels do not invade the sanctity of the human mind;
they do not manipulate the will of mortals; neither do
they directly contact with the indwelling Adjusters. The
guardian of destiny influences you in every possible
manner consistent with the dignity of your personality;
under no circumstances do these angels interfere with
the free action of the human will. Neither angels nor
any other order of universe personality have power or
authority to curtail or abridge the prerogatives of
human choosing.
113:5.2
Angels are so near you and care so feelingly for you
that they figuratively "weep because of your willful
intolerance and stubbornness." Seraphim do not shed
physical tears; they do not have physical bodies;
neither do they possess wings. But they do have
spiritual emotions, and they do experience feelings and
sentiments of a spiritual nature which are in certain
ways comparable to human emotions.
113:5.3
The seraphim act in your behalf quite independent of
your direct appeals; they are executing the mandates of
their superiors, and thus they function regardless of
your passing whims or changing moods. This does not
imply that you may not make their tasks either easier or
more difficult, but rather that angels are not directly
concerned with your appeals or with your prayers.
113:5.4
In the life of the flesh the intelligence of angels is
not directly available to mortal men. They are not
overlords or directors; they are simply guardians. The
seraphim guard
you; they do not seek directly to influence you; you
must chart your own course, but these angels then act to
make the best possible use of the course you have
chosen. They do not (ordinarily) arbitrarily intervene
in the routine affairs of human life. But when they
receive instructions from their superiors to perform
some unusual exploit, you may rest assured that these
guardians will find some means of carrying out these
mandates. They do not, therefore, intrude into the
picture of human drama except in emergencies and then
usually on the direct orders of their superiors. They
are the beings who are going to follow you for many an
age, and they are thus receiving an introduction to
their future work and personality association.
113:5.5
Seraphim are able to function as material ministers to
human beings under certain circumstances, but their
action in this capacity is very rare. They are able,
with the assistance of the midway creatures and the
physical controllers, to function in a wide range of
activities in behalf of human beings, even to make
actual contact with mankind, but such occurrences are
very unusual. In most instances the circumstances of the
material realm proceed unaltered by seraphic action,
although occasions have arisen, involving jeopardy to
vital links in the chain of human evolution, in which
seraphic guardians have acted, and properly, on their
own initiative.
6. GUARDIAN ANGELS AFTER DEATH
113:6.1
Having told you something of the ministry of seraphim
during natural life, I will endeavor to inform you about
the conduct of the guardians of destiny at the time of
the mortal dissolution of their human associates. Upon
your death, your records, identity specifications, and
the morontia entity of the human soul -- conjointly
evolved by the ministry of mortal mind and the divine
Adjuster -- are faithfully conserved by the destiny
guardian together with all other values related to your
future existence, everything that constitutes you, the
real you, except the identity of continuing existence
represented by the departing Adjuster and the actuality
of personality.
113:6.2
The instant the pilot light in the human mind
disappears, the spirit luminosity which seraphim
associate with the presence of the Adjuster, the
attending angel reports in person to the commanding
angels, successively, of the group, company, battalion,
unit, legion, and host; and after being duly registered
for the final adventure of time and space, such an angel
receives certification by the planetary chief of
seraphim for reporting to the Evening Star (or other
lieutenant of Gabriel) in command of the seraphic army
of this candidate for universe ascension. And upon being
granted permission from the commander of this highest
organizational unit, such a guardian of destiny proceeds
to the first mansion world and there awaits the
consciousizing of her former ward in the flesh.
113:6.3
In case the human soul fails of survival after having
received the assignment of a personal angel, the
attending seraphim must proceed to the headquarters of
the local universe, there to witness to the complete
records of her complement as previously reported. Next
she goes before the tribunals of the archangels, to be
absolved from blame in the matter of the survival
failure of her subject; and then she goes back to the
worlds, again to be assigned to another mortal of
ascending potentiality or to some other division of
seraphic ministry.
113:6.4
But angels minister to evolutionary creatures in many
ways aside from the services of personal and group
guardianship. Personal guardians whose subjects do not
go immediately to the mansion worlds do not tarry there
in idleness awaiting the dispensational roll calls of
judgment; they are reassigned to numerous ministering
missions throughout the universe.
113:6.5
The guardian seraphim is the custodial trustee of the
survival values of mortal man's slumbering soul as the
absent Adjuster is the identity of such an immortal
universe being. When these two collaborate in the
resurrection halls of mansonia in conjunction with the
newly fabricated morontia form, there occurs the
reassembly of the constituent factors of the personality
of the mortal ascender.
113:6.6
The Adjuster will identify you; the guardian seraphim
will repersonalize you and then re-present you to the
faithful Monitor of your earth days.
113:6.7
And even so, when a planetary age ends, when those in
the lower circles of mortal achievement are forgathered,
it is their group guardians who reassemble them in the
resurrection halls of the mansion spheres, even as your
record tells: "And he shall send his angels with a great
voice and shall gather together his elect from one end
of the realm to another."
113:6.8
The technique of justice demands that personal or group
guardians shall respond to the dispensational roll call
in behalf of all nonsurviving personalities. The
Adjusters of such nonsurvivors do not return, and when
the rolls are called, the seraphim respond, but the
Adjusters make no answer. This constitutes the
"resurrection of the unjust," in reality the formal
recognition of the cessation of creature existence. This
roll call of justice always immediately follows the roll
call of mercy, the resurrection of the sleeping
survivors. But these are matters which are of concern to
none but the supreme and all-knowing Judges of survival
values. Such problems of adjudication do not really
concern us.
113:6.9
Group guardians may serve on a planet age after age and
eventually become custodians of the slumbering souls of
thousands upon thousands of sleeping survivors. They can
so serve on many different worlds in a given system
since the resurrection response occurs on the mansion
worlds.
113:6.10
All personal and group guardians in the system of
Satania who went astray in the Lucifer rebellion,
notwithstanding that many sincerely repented of their
folly, are to be detained on Jerusem until the final
adjudication of the rebellion. Already have the
Universal Censors arbitrarily taken from these
disobedient and unfaithful guardians all aspects of
their soul trusts and lodged these morontia realities
for safekeeping in the custody of volunteer seconaphim.
7. SERAPHIM AND THE ASCENDANT CAREER
113:7.1
It is indeed an epoch in the career of an ascending
mortal, this first awakening on the shores of the
mansion world; there, for the first time, actually to
see your long-loved and ever-present angelic companions
of earth days; there also to become truly conscious of
the identity and presence of the divine Monitor who so
long indwelt your mind on earth. Such an experience
constitutes a glorious awakening, a real resurrection.
113:7.2
On the morontia spheres the attending seraphim (there
are two of them) are your open companions. These angels
not only consort with you as you progress through the
career of the transition worlds, in every way possible
assisting you in the acquirement of morontia and spirit
status, but they also avail themselves of the
opportunity to advance by study in the extension schools
for evolutionary seraphim maintained on the mansion
worlds.
113:7.3
The human race was created just a little lower than the
more simple types of the angelic orders. Therefore will
your first assignment of the morontia life be as
assistants to the seraphim in the immediate work
awaiting at the time you attain personality
consciousness subsequent to your liberation from the
bonds of the flesh.
113:7.4
Before leaving the mansion worlds, all mortals will have
permanent seraphic associates or guardians. And as you
ascend the morontia spheres, eventually it is the
seraphic guardians who witness and certify the decrees
of your eternal union with the Thought Adjusters.
Together they have established your personality
identities as children of the flesh from the worlds of
time. Then, with your attainment of the mature morontia
estate, they accompany you through Jerusem and the
associated worlds of system progress and culture. After
that they go with you to Edentia and its seventy spheres
of advanced socialization, and subsequently will they
pilot you to the Melchizedeks and follow you through the
superb career of the universe headquarters worlds. And
when you have learned the wisdom and culture of the
Melchizedeks, they will take you on to Salvington, where
you will stand face to face with the Sovereign of all
Nebadon. And still will these seraphic guides follow you
through the minor and major sectors of the superuniverse
and on to the receiving worlds of Uversa, remaining with
you until you finally enseconaphim for the long Havona
flight.
113:7.5
Some of the destiny guardians of attachment during the
mortal career follow the course of the ascending
pilgrims through Havona. The others bid their long-time
mortal associates a temporary farewell, and then, while
these mortals traverse the circles of the central
universe, these guardians of destiny achieve the circles
of Seraphington. And they will be in waiting on the
shores of Paradise when their mortal associates awaken
from the last transit sleep of time into the new
experiences of eternity. Such ascending seraphim
subsequently enter upon divergent services in the
finaliter corps and in the Seraphic Corps of Completion.
113:7.6
Man and angel may or may not be reunited in eternal
service, but wherever seraphic assignment may take them,
the seraphim are always in communication with their
former wards of the evolutionary worlds, the ascendant
mortals of time. The intimate associations and the
affectionate attachments of the realms of human origin
are never forgotten nor ever completely severed. In the
eternal ages men and angels will co-operate in the
divine service as they did in the career of time.
113:7.7
For seraphim, the surest way of achieving the Paradise
Deities is by successfully guiding a soul of
evolutionary origin to the portals of Paradise.
Therefore is the assignment of guardian of destiny the
most highly prized seraphic duty.
113:7.8
Only destiny guardians are mustered into the primary or
mortal Corps of the Finality, and such pairs have
engaged in the supreme adventure of identity at-oneness;
the two beings have achieved spiritual bi-unification on
Seraphington prior to their reception into the finaliter
corps. In this experience the two angelic natures, so
complemental in all universe functions, achieve ultimate
spirit two-in-oneness, repercussing in a new capacity
for the reception of, and fusion with, a non-Adjuster
fragment of the Paradise Father. And so do some of your
loving seraphic associates in time also become your
finaliter associates in eternity, children of the
Supreme and perfected sons of the Paradise Father.
113:7.9
Presented by the Chief of Seraphim stationed on Urantia.
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