^7:4.6 3. The Plan of Mercy Ministry. When the attainment plan and the bestowal plan had been formulated and proclaimed, alone and of himself, the Infinite Spirit projected and put in operation the tremendous and universal enterprise of mercy ministry. This is the service so essential to the practical and effective operation of both the attainment and the bestowal undertakings, and the spiritual personalities of the Third Source and Centre all partake of the spirit of mercy ministry which is so much a part of the nature of the Third Person of Deity. Not only in creation but also in administration, the Infinite Spirit functions truly and literally as the conjoint executive of the Father and the Son.

^7:4.7 ¶ The Eternal Son is the personal trustee, the divine custodian, of the Father’s universal plan of creature ascension. Having promulgated the universal mandate, “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect,” the Father intrusted the execution of this tremendous undertaking to the Eternal Son; and the Eternal Son shares the fostering of this supernal enterprise with his divine co-ordinate, the Infinite Spirit. Thus do the Deities effectively co-operate in the work of creation, control, evolution, revelation, and ministration — and if required, in restoration and rehabilitation.

5. THE SPIRIT OF BESTOWAL

^7:5.1 The Eternal Son without reservation joined with the Universal Father in broadcasting that tremendous injunction to all creation: “Be you perfect, even as your Father in Havona is perfect.” And ever since, that invitation-command has motivated all the survival plans and the bestowal projects of the Eternal Son and his vast family of co-ordinate and associated Sons. And in these very bestowals the Sons of God have become to all evolutionary creatures “the way, the truth, and the life.”

^7:5.2 ¶ The Eternal Son cannot contact directly with human beings as does the Father through the gift of the prepersonal Thought Adjusters, but the Eternal Son does draw near to created personalities by a series of downstepping gradations of divine sonship until he is enabled to stand in man’s presence and, at times, as man himself.

^7:5.3 The purely personal nature of the Eternal Son is incapable of fragmentation. The Eternal Son ministers as a spiritual influence or as a person, never otherwise. The Son finds it impossible to become a part of creature experience in the sense that the Father-Adjuster participates therein, but the Eternal Son compensates this limitation by the technique of bestowal. What the experience of fragmented entities means to the Universal Father, the incarnation experiences of the Paradise Sons mean to the Eternal Son.

^7:5.4 The Eternal Son comes not to mortal man as the divine will, the Thought Adjuster indwelling the human mind, but the Eternal Son did come to mortal man on Urantia when the divine personality of his Son, Michael of Nebadon, incarnated in the human nature of Jesus of Nazareth. To share the experience of created personalities, the Paradise Sons of God must assume the very natures of such creatures and incarnate their divine personalities as the actual creatures themselves. Incarnation, the secret of Sonarington, is the technique of the Son’s escape from the otherwise all-encompassing fetters of personality absolutism.

^7:5.5 ¶ Long, long ago the Eternal Son bestowed himself upon each of the circuits of the central creation for the enlightenment and advancement of all the inhabitants and pilgrims of Havona, including the ascending pilgrims of time. On none of these seven bestowals did he function as either an ascender or a Havoner. He existed as himself. His experience was unique; it was not with or as a human or other pilgrim but in some way associative in the superpersonal sense.

^7:5.6 Neither did he pass through the rest that intervenes between the inner Havona circuit and the shores of Paradise. It is not possible for him, an absolute being, to suspend consciousness of personality, for in him centre all lines of spiritual gravity. And during the times of these bestowals the central Paradise lodgement of spiritual luminosity was undimmed, and the Son’s grasp of universal spirit gravity was undiminished.

^7:5.7 ¶ The bestowals of the Eternal Son in Havona are not within the scope of human imagination; they were transcendental. He added to the experience of all Havona then and subsequently, but we do not know whether he added to the supposed experiential capacity of his existential nature. That would fall within the bestowal mystery of the Paradise Sons. We do, however, believe that whatever the Eternal Son acquired on these bestowal missions, he has ever since retained; but we do not know what it is.

^7:5.8 ¶ Whatever our difficulty in comprehending the bestowals of the Second Person of Deity, we do comprehend the Havona bestowal of a Son of the Eternal Son, who literally passed through the circuits of the central universe and actually shared those experiences which constitute an ascender’s preparation for Deity attainment. This was the original Michael, the first-born Creator Son, and he passed through the life experiences of the ascending pilgrims from circuit to circuit, personally journeying a stage of each circle with them in the days of Grandfanda, the first of all mortals to attain Havona.

^7:5.9 Whatever else this original Michael revealed, he made the transcendent bestowal of the Original Mother Son real to the creatures of Havona. So real, that forevermore each pilgrim of time who labours in the adventure of making the Havona circuits is cheered and strengthened by the certain knowledge that the Eternal Son of God seven times abdicated the power and glory of Paradise to participate in the experiences of the time-space pilgrims on the seven circuits of progressive Havona attainment.

^7:5.10 ¶ The Eternal Son is the exemplary inspiration for all the Sons of God in their ministrations of bestowal throughout the universes of time and space. The co-ordinate Creator Sons and the associate Magisterial Sons, together with other unrevealed orders of sonship, all partake of this wonderful willingness to bestow themselves upon the varied orders of creature life and as the creatures themselves. Therefore, in spirit and because of kinship of nature as well as fact of origin, it becomes true that in the bestowal of each Son of God upon the worlds of space, in and through and by these bestowals, the Eternal Son has bestowed himself upon the intelligent will creatures of the universes.

^7:5.11 In spirit and nature, if not in all attributes, each Paradise Son is a divinely perfect portraiture of the Original Son. It is literally true, whosoever has seen a Paradise Son has seen the Eternal Son of God.

6. THE PARADISE SONS OF GOD

^7:6.1 The lack of a knowledge of the multiple Sons of God is a source of great confusion on Urantia. And this ignorance persists in the face of such statements as the record of a conclave of these divine personalities: “When the Sons of God proclaimed joy, and all of the Morning Stars sang together.” Every millennium of sector standard time the various orders of the divine Sons forgather for their periodic conclaves.

^7:6.2 The Eternal Son is the personal source of the adorable attributes of mercy and service which so abundantly characterize all orders of the descending Sons of God as they function throughout creation. All the divine nature, if not all the infinity of attributes, the Eternal Son unfailingly transmits to the Paradise Sons who go out from the eternal Isle to reveal his divine character to the universe of universes.

^7:6.3 ¶ The Original and Eternal Son is the offspring-person of the “first” completed and infinite thought of the Universal Father. Every time the Universal Father and the Eternal Son jointly project a new, original, identical, unique, and absolute personal thought, that very instant this creative idea is perfectly and finally personalized in the being and personality of a new and original Creator Son. In spirit nature, divine wisdom, and co-ordinate creative power, these Creator Sons are potentially equal with God the Father and God the Son.