Paper 77 Overview: The Midway Creatures

Paper 77 details the origin, nature, and function of the midway creatures: beings who operate at an intermediate level between material mortals and spiritual angels on inhabited worlds throughout Nebadon. On Urantia, two distinct orders of midwayers emerged through unique evolutionary circumstances: the primary midwayers, originating in the Dalamatia era through a supermaterial liaison involving the corporeal staff of the Planetary Prince, and the secondary midwayers, descended from the union of Adamson (Adam's first-born son) and Ratta (a descendant of the Prince's staff). These two groups experienced division during the planetary rebellion but were later reunited following Christ Michael’s bestowal.

Midwayers function as permanent planetary citizens deeply invested in Urantia’s evolutionary progress, serving as vital intermediaries between the material and spiritual realms. Following the post-bestowal adjudication, the loyal midwayers of both orders were unified into a single corps of 10,992 beings who now act as planetary sentinels, messengers, contact personalities, and progress helpers. Their extended lifespans and rebellion-tested loyalty provide essential continuity through shifting planetary administrations and safeguard historical and cultural knowledge otherwise lost to mortal transience. As long-term contributors to the spirit economy, they play a vital role in supporting the Paradise plan for mortal ascension and the eventual realization of light and life on Urantia.

Most of the inhabited worlds of Nebadon harbor one or more groups of unique beings existing on a life-functioning level about midway between those of the mortals of the realms and of the angelic orders; hence, they are called midway creatures. They appear to be an accident of time, but they occur so widely and are so valuable as helpers that we have all long since accepted them as one of the essential orders of our combined planetary ministry.

On Urantia, there function two distinct orders of midwayers: the primary or senior corps, who came into being back in the days of Dalamatia, and the secondary or younger group, whose origin dates from the times of Adam.

The genesis of the primary midwayers occurred through a unique interassociation of material and spiritual elements specific to Urantia, though similar creatures exist elsewhere through different mechanisms. This phenomenon resulted from the unusual circumstances surrounding the corporeal members of Prince Caligastia's staff, who existed in a liminal state between spiritual and material existence, having transitioned from being ascendant morontia citizens of Jerusem to functioning as material sex creatures on Urantia. A supermaterial (nonsexual) liaison between male and female members of this corporeal staff unexpectedly produced the first primary midway creature, revealing a potential that immediately demonstrated tremendous utility for the administrative work of the Planetary Prince's headquarters.

Following this discovery, each couple of the corporeal staff was permitted to produce one midway being, creating the first group of fifty such entities. Observing their effectiveness, the Planetary Prince subsequently authorized unrestricted reproduction of midwayers, ultimately resulting in precisely 50,000 primary midwayers, each staff couple producing exactly 1,000 offspring before this generative capacity mysteriously terminated. These midwayers functioned as the intelligence corps of the Prince's administration, ranging widely across the planet to study and observe the emerging races while rendering invaluable service to the Prince's staff. This arrangement persisted until the planetary rebellion, when slightly more than four-fifths of the primary midwayers tragically aligned with Caligastia, while the loyal minority entered the service of the Melchizedek receivers under Van's titular leadership.

The narrative of the primary midwayers necessitates an examination of the descendants of the rebellious corporeal staff members, as this lineage connects to the subsequent emergence of the secondary midwayers. The physical members of the Prince's staff were originally constituted as sex creatures to participate in a sophisticated genetic plan involving the Andon tribes and, eventually, the Adamic stock, with the intention of producing a superior order of planetary teacher-rulers. This plan was largely abandoned when the rebellion occurred, but the staff members later procreated with early humans, creating significant genetic consequences for planetary development.

When the sixty rebel members of the Prince's staff, followers of Nod, engaged in sexual reproduction, their children exhibited remarkably superior qualities in physical, intellectual, and spiritual capacities compared to both Andonite and Sangik peoples. This unexpected genetic enhancement resulted from modifications to the Andonic germ plasm caused by the powerful life-maintenance circuits of Satania present in the staff members' bodies, which reorganized the chromosomal patterns according to Nebadon's standardized specifications. The resulting Nodite race possessed exceptional qualities, including greatly extended lifespans that gradually diminished over millennia as they increasingly intermixed with evolutionary populations. This phenomenon explains certain ancient records describing extraordinarily long-lived rulers, as well as the confusion between lunar and solar time measurements that further exaggerated these accounts in historical records.

Approximately fifty thousand years after Nod's death, demographic pressures had intensified among his descendants, who had multiplied beyond the sustainable capacity of the lands surrounding their city of Dilmun and had increasingly intermarried with neighboring Andonite and Sangik tribes. In response to this situation, Bablot, a descendant of Nod, proposed the construction of an ambitious temple of racial glorification at the center of their territory—a monumental structure unprecedented in scale that would serve as a memorial to Nodite greatness. Opinion divided on the optimal location, with some advocating construction in Dilmun itself, while others, mindful of their ancestral capital's destruction, recommended a site safer from potential flooding.

Bablot's vision extended beyond the tower itself to establishing a new city that would become the nucleus of future Nodite civilization, initially named after himself as Bablot, later evolving linguistically to Bablod and eventually Babel. As construction progressed over four and a half years, profound philosophical disagreements emerged regarding the tower's purpose: the largest faction (approximately half) desired it as a monument to Nodite racial superiority; the second largest group envisioned it as a commemoration of Dilmun culture and future commercial center; while the smallest contingent advocated dedicating it to worship of the Universal Father and atonement for their ancestors' rebellion. When the religious minority was summarily dismissed and the remaining groups failed to resolve their differences through debate, they resorted to violence, with the religious faction fleeing southward while the others fought until nearly annihilated, effectively dispersing the Nodites and undermining their potential to establish a significant pre-Adamic civilization.

The internecine conflict over the tower of Babel precipitated the widespread dispersion of the Nodite populations, substantially reducing their numbers and critically impairing their capacity to establish the foundation for an advanced pre-Adamic civilization. This cultural regression persisted for over one hundred and twenty thousand years until the Adamic influence reinvigorated their development. Despite this setback, four significant Nodite centers emerged in the aftermath of the Bablot conflict, each following distinct developmental trajectories and contributing uniquely to subsequent cultural evolution on Urantia.

These centers included: the western or Syrian Nodites—remnants of the racial memorialist faction who migrated northward and merged with Andonites to become substantial contributors to the later Assyrian populations; the eastern or Elamite Nodites—comprised of culture and commerce advocates who moved eastward into Elam and integrated with mixed Sangik tribes while maintaining a relatively superior civilization; the central or pre-Sumerian Nodites—a small but significant group at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers who preserved exceptional racial integrity and later combined with Adamites to found the historically significant Sumerian civilization; and the northern Nodites and Amadonites (known as Vanites)—who predated the Bablot conflict and settled around Lake Van, developing distinct traditions around this location and Mount Ararat. The sudden historical emergence of the sophisticated Sumerian civilization with its advanced cultural, technological, and administrative systems is explicable only through understanding this ancient Nodite-Adamic heritage that developed largely outside the observable archaeological record.

Having established the Nodite lineage essential to understanding the secondary midwayers, the narrative shifts to Adamson, the firstborn son of Adam and Eve, who plays a pivotal role in this development. Adamson, who had chosen to remain on Urantia with his parents following the default, had reached 120 years of age when he resolved to seek out the northern highlands described in Van and Amadon's stories. Having fathered thirty-two pure-line children in the first garden and feeling the profound absence of his mate and children who had departed for Edentia, Adamson felt increasingly disconnected from the evolving second garden society despite his contributions to its defensive and constructive activities.

Leading twenty-seven companions northward, Adamson eventually located the people of his childhood fantasies and encountered Ratta, an exceptional twenty-year-old woman who claimed descent from the Prince's staff through an unbroken lineage. Recognizing in Adamson the fulfillment of ancestral predictions and learning about the Garden of Eden, Ratta quickly resolved to marry this son of Adam, a union that occurred within three months of their meeting. Their partnership produced sixty-seven children and initiated a significant lineage of world leadership, but more remarkably, every fourth child born to them exhibited unique qualities, often including invisibility. Adamson, familiar with the primary midwayers from his Edenic upbringing, recognized the phenomenon and strategically paired these special offspring, male with female, thereby establishing the secondary order of midwayers. This pattern continued, generating nearly two thousand secondary midwayers before ceasing, and these beings provided invaluable assistance to Adamson and Ratta throughout their extended lives as they built an independent center for truth and righteousness.

The secondary midwayers, while originating through the offspring of Adamson and Ratta, represent a fundamentally different ontological category than their primary counterparts. Unlike the primary midwayers who emerged from a supermaterial liaison between the Prince's staff members, the secondary order resulted from the union of pure Adamic stock (through Adamson) with a humanized descendant of the same ancestral lineage that produced the senior corps (through Ratta). This unique genetic confluence created sixteen peculiar progenitors among Adamson's children, eight couples equally divided by gender, each capable of producing a secondary midwayer every seventy days through a combined technique of sexual and nonsexual liaison, a phenomenon unprecedented before or since on Urantia.

Each of these eight couples ultimately produced 248 midwayers, establishing the original secondary corps of 1,984 beings. These electrically energized offspring transcended the mortality of their progenitors, continuing to exist beyond the limitations of physical flesh. Following Adam's default, the primary midwayers returned to serving the Melchizedek receivers, while the secondary group remained attached to Adamson's center until his death, at which point thirty-three of their leaders attempted unsuccessfully to coordinate with the primary corps and subsequently joined the planetary receivers. The remaining secondary midwayers became a disorganized and unattached influence on Urantia until Machiventa Melchizedek brought them under partial control, though they continued causing periodic disruption until Christ Michael's appearance on the planet, when they made definitive decisions regarding their future allegiances, with the loyal majority aligning under the leadership of the primary midwayers.

The Lucifer rebellion created profound divisions within both orders of midwayers, with a significant majority of the primary corps succumbing to Caligastia's seduction. Official records indicate that of the original 50,000 primary midwayers, 40,119 joined Caligastia's secession, leaving less than one-fifth loyal to the universe administration. Similarly, within the secondary corps, 873 of the 1,984 midwayers failed to maintain allegiance to Michael's sovereignty and were consequently interned following the planetary adjudication coinciding with Pentecost, awaiting final disposition in the system rebellion proceedings.

Before the bestowal of Christ Michael and particularly prior to Pentecost, these rebellious midwayers possessed remarkable capabilities to influence human affairs, especially through the rebel secondary midwayers led by Beelzebub who could under certain circumstances manifest themselves to mortal perception. Their ability to influence susceptible human minds explains numerous historical accounts of demoniacal possession, particularly before the universal dissemination of Thought Adjusters and the outpouring of the Spirit of Truth, which fundamentally altered the spiritual ecology of the planet. It is crucial to understand that since Pentecost, no disloyal spirit of any variety can dominate even the most vulnerable human mind, rendering subsequent claims of demonic possession misinterpretations of psychiatric or neurological conditions. Currently, all rebel midwayers remain detained by order of the Most Highs of Edentia, permanently neutralized in their capacity to interfere with Urantia's evolutionary development.

Following Michael's final adjudication of the planet, the loyal midwayers from both orders were amalgamated into a unified corps of 10,992 beings designated as the United Midwayers of Urantia. This consolidated organization operates under an alternating governance structure led by senior representatives from each order and functions with remarkable cohesion despite the distinct origins of its constituent groups. The primary members are generally identified numerically (e.g., 1-2-3 the first), while the Adamic midwayers receive alphabetical designations to distinguish them from their senior counterparts, though both orders transcend material requirements for nutrition and energy intake while exhibiting certain anthropomorphic traits in their appreciation of human work, rest, play, humor, and worship.

The United Midwayers are organized into four principal service categories aligned with their innate capabilities and the planetary seraphic administration: midway messengers who facilitate rapid and reliable personal communication; planetary sentinels who observe and protect the invisible spiritual domains; contact personalities who mediate interactions between spiritual entities and material beings (including communications like The Urantia Book); and progress helpers who assist various seraphic orders in their evolutionary missions. The primary midwayers tend toward greater affinity with spiritual forces, while the secondary midwayers, particularly the 1,111 loyal secondary beings, possess exceptional capacity to interact with the material realm, even manipulating physical objects at will. This differential specialization enables the united corps to serve effectively across the entire spectrum of planetary needs, from the most ethereal spiritual requirements to tangible material interventions historically attributed to angelic action.

Unlike the transient celestial beings assigned temporarily to planetary service, midwayers represent the first category of permanent inhabitants found throughout the universe's evolutionary worlds, providing essential continuity across dispensational transitions. As actual citizens of Urantia rather than visiting administrators, they maintain a profound kinship interest in the planet's evolutionary destiny, constituting a determined association committed to progressive advancement as expressed in their organizational motto: "What the United Midwayers undertake, the United Midwayers do." Despite possessing the capacity to traverse energy circuits that would enable planetary departure, they have voluntarily pledged to remain until properly released by universe authorities, demonstrating extraordinary commitment to Urantia's developmental journey.

The midwayers, though created fully developed rather than experiencing gradual maturation, nonetheless continue to grow in wisdom and experience throughout their extended existence, developing a sophisticated evolutionary culture that preserves and transmits knowledge across the ephemeral generations of mortal life. This function is particularly crucial given the historical disruptions caused by the Caligastian betrayal and Adamic default, as midwayers compensate for these administrative discontinuities by maintaining cultural memory that would otherwise be fragmented or lost entirely. They serve as invaluable intermediaries between the material and spiritual economies of the realm, facilitating communication, preserving knowledge, and advancing progressive initiatives across transitional periods. As rebellion-tested loyalists, they will continue faithfully executing their responsibilities until Urantia achieves its destined status of light and life, representing an indispensable component in the cosmic plan for mortal ascension and planetary perfection.