Page:The Urantia Book, 1st Edition.djvu/304

238 Augmenting vicegerent sovereignty—the advancing authority of a Creator Son during the period of his seven creature bestowals. 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 nineteen hundred years of your planetary time. 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. Trinitarian sovereignty—exercised subsequent to the settling of the entire local universe in light and life. Unrevealed sovereignty—the unknown relationships of a future universe age.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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