^21:3.6 2. Conjoint vicegerent sovereignty — the joint rule of the Paradise pair subsequent to the personality achievement of the Universe Mother Spirit.

^21:3.7 3. Augmenting vicegerent sovereignty — the advancing authority of a Creator Son during the period of his seven creature bestowals.

^21:3.8 4. Supreme sovereignty — the settled authority following the completion of the seventh bestowal. In Nebadon, supreme sovereignty dates from the completion of Michael’s bestowal on Urantia. It has existed just slightly over 1900 years of your planetary time.

^21:3.9 5. Augmenting supreme sovereignty — the advanced relationship growing out of the settling of a majority of the creature domains in light and life. This stage pertains to the unachieved future of your local universe.

^21:3.10 6. Trinitarian sovereignty — exercised subsequent to the settling of the entire local universe in light and life.

^21:3.11 7. Unrevealed sovereignty — the unknown relationships of a future universe age.

^21:3.12 ¶ In accepting the initial vicegerent sovereignty of a projected local universe, a Creator Michael takes an oath to the Trinity not to assume supreme sovereignty until the seven creature bestowals have been completed and certified by the superuniverse rulers. But if a Michael Son could not, at will, assert such unearned sovereignty, there would be no meaning in taking an oath not to do so.

^21:3.13 Even in the prebestowal ages a Creator Son rules his domain well-nigh supremely when there is no dissent in any of its parts. Limited rulership would hardly be manifest if sovereignty were never challenged. The sovereignty exercised by a prebestowal Creator Son in a universe without rebellion is no greater than in a universe with rebellion; but in the first instance sovereignty limitations are not apparent; in the second, they are.

^21:3.14 If ever the authority or administration of a Creator Son is challenged, attacked, or jeopardized, he is eternally pledged to uphold, protect, defend, and if necessary retrieve his personal creation. Such Sons can be troubled or harassed only by the creatures of their own making or by higher beings of their own choosing. It might be inferred that “higher beings,” those of origin on levels above a local universe, would be unlikely to trouble a Creator Son, and this is true. But they could if they chose to. Virtue is volitional with personality; righteousness is not automatic in freewill creatures.

^21:3.15 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.

^21:3.16 ¶ The technique of obtaining supreme sovereignty over a local universe involves the following seven experiential steps:

^21:3.17 1. Experientially to penetrate seven creature levels of being through the technique of incarnated bestowal in the very likeness of the creatures on the level concerned.

^21:3.18 2. To make an experiential consecration to each phase of the sevenfold will of Paradise Deity as it is personified in the Seven Master Spirits.

^21:3.19 3. To traverse each of the seven experiences on the creature levels simultaneously with the execution of one of the seven consecrations to the will of Paradise Deity.

^21:3.20 4. On each creature level, experientially to portray the acme of creature life to Paradise Deity and to all universe intelligences.

^21:3.21 5. On each creature level, experientially to reveal one phase of the sevenfold will of Deity to the bestowal level and to all the universe.

^21:3.22 6. Experientially to unify the sevenfold creature experience with the sevenfold experience of consecration to the revelation of the nature and will of Deity.

^21:3.23 7. To achieve new and higher relationship with the Supreme Being. The repercussion of the totality of this Creator-creature experience augments the superuniverse reality of God the Supreme and the time-space sovereignty of the Almighty Supreme and factualizes the supreme local universe sovereignty of a Paradise Michael.

^21:3.24 ¶ 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. The finite understanding and creature appreciation of the Father’s primacy is concerned in the adventure of a Creator Son when he condescends to take upon himself the form and experiences of his creatures. 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.

4. THE MICHAEL BESTOWALS

^21:4.1 There are seven groups of bestowal Creator Sons, and they are so classified in accordance with the number of times they have bestowed themselves upon the creatures of their realms. They range from the initial experience up through five additional spheres of progressive bestowal until they attain the seventh and final episode of creature-Creator experience.

^21:4.2 Avonal bestowals are always in the likeness of mortal flesh, but the seven bestowals of a Creator Son involve his appearing on seven creature levels of being and pertain to the revelation of the seven primary expressions of the will and nature of Deity. Without exception, all Creator Sons pass through this seven times giving of themselves to their created children before they assume settled and supreme jurisdiction over the universes of their own creation.

^21:4.3 Though these seven bestowals vary in the different sectors and universes, they always embrace the mortal-bestowal adventure. 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 evolutionary will creatures.

^21:4.4 After each of his bestowals a Creator Son proceeds to the “right hand of the Father,” there to gain the Father’s acceptance of the bestowal and to receive instruction preparatory to the next episode of universe service. Following the seventh and final bestowal a Creator Son receives from the Universal Father supreme authority and jurisdiction over his universe.

^21:4.5 ¶ 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.” With certain stated exceptions these sevenfold bestowal Sons are unqualifiedly supreme in the universes of their abode. Concerning his local universe, “all power in heaven and on earth” was relegated to this triumphant and enthroned Master Son.