Paper 20 Overview: The Paradise Sons of God

The Paradise Sons of God are grouped into three main categories: Descending Sons who come from divinity; Ascending Sons who evolve upward like humans; and Trinitized Sons who have a mixed origin. The Descending Sons include the Creator Sons (Michaels), Magisterial Sons (Avonals), and Trinity Teacher Sons (Daynals), who all serve to help the spiritual progress of beings throughout the universes.

These Paradise Sons perform many important duties across the universe, including creation, service, bestowal missions, teaching, and revealing truth. While Creator Sons (like Michael who became Jesus) eventually become rulers of their own universes, the Magisterial Sons judge planets and sometimes live among their people, and the Trinity Teacher Sons educate beings throughout all realms.

In the superuniverse of Orvonton, the Sons of God are sorted into three general groups. These groups are the Descending Sons of God, the Ascending Sons of God, and the Trinitized Sons of God. The Descending Sons are directly created by God, while Ascending Sons like humans must earn their status through growth and experience. The Trinitized Sons include all beings connected to the Paradise Trinity but who are not directly created by the Trinity.

The Descending Sons have high and divine origins and help lower beings progress on their journey toward Paradise. Seven orders of Descending Sons will be described in these papers. The three Paradise Sons of God come from the central Isle of Light and Life: the Creator Sons (Michaels), the Magisterial Sons (Avonals), and the Trinity Teacher Sons (Daynals).

The other four orders are the Local Universe Sons of God: Melchizedek Sons, Vorondadek Sons, Lanonandek Sons, and the Life Carriers. The Paradise Sons serve throughout the universe as divine administrators and ministers, performing many services including creation, bestowal missions, judgment, teaching, and revealing truth. Each Creator Son has a special spiritual connection with all Descending Sons in his domain.

The Magisterial Sons, also called Avonals, are created when the Eternal Son creates a new concept of being and the Infinite Spirit conceives a way to serve it. They work closely with the Creator Sons as planetary ministers and judges. There are about one billion Magisterial Sons in the grand universe, led by their own council but serving under local Creator Sons when assigned to a universe.

Each Avonal Son has a unique personality which makes their work distinctive on the planets they visit. They perform three types of missions: judicial actions at the end of planetary ages, magisterial missions to prepare for bestowal Sons, and bestowal missions where they are born as a member of a mortal race. After seven bestowal experiences, these Sons typically join the high council of a Creator Son.

The Avonals are known as Magisterial Sons because they act as high judges of the realms. They preside over the awakening of sleeping survivors, judge the realm, end one dispensation, and start another. When they judge the destiny of an age, they decide the fate of evolutionary races, but only superuniverse authorities can carry out sentences that end personal identities.

When a Paradise Avonal arrives on an evolutionary world to end a dispensation and start a new era, it may be either a magisterial or bestowal mission. Magisterial missions and bestowal missions involve incarnation, while technical visits do not. During technical visits, the Avonal arrives as a spiritual being invisible to material creatures of the realm.

Before a bestowal Son appears on an inhabited world, a Paradise Avonal usually visits on a magisterial mission. On the first magisterial visit, the Avonal appears as a full-grown male among the mortal races, visible and able to physically interact with the people of that time. A planet may receive many magisterial visits both before and after a bestowal Son appears.

Urantia has never hosted an Avonal Son on a magisterial mission. If Urantia had followed the normal plan for inhabited worlds, it would have received a magisterial mission sometime between Adam and the bestowal of Christ Michael. The regular order of Paradise Sons visiting your planet was changed by the appearance of your Creator Son on his final bestowal 1,900 years ago.

When the Eternal Son sends a personal copy of himself on a bestowal mission to live as a mortal, it is literally true that the divine "Word is made flesh." The purpose of such bestowals is not to change the Father's attitude but to prepare these Sons to be safe and understanding rulers of the peoples and planets. The supreme goal for Paradise Creator Sons is to complete seven bestowals.

Some order of Paradise Son must be bestowed on each mortal-inhabited world to make it possible for Thought Adjusters to live within the minds of all normal humans. Usually only one bestowal Son serves on each planet. Urantia is special in the history of Nebadon because it is the mortal home of Jesus of Nazareth, where Creator Son Michael completed his final bestowal and gained supreme authority over his universe.

The way a Paradise Son prepares for mortal incarnation as a bestowal Son is a universal mystery. We cannot know how Michael of Nebadon was born on Urantia as Jesus, but we can rejoice that such divine achievements are possible. On mortal-bestowal missions, Paradise Sons are always born of women and grow up as male children, just as Jesus did on Urantia.

These Sons live ordinary lives with one exception: they do not have children on the worlds they visit. When a bestowal Son masters the experience of mortal life and achieves perfect harmony with his indwelling Adjuster, he begins his mission of spiritual enlightenment. If bestowal Sons die, they reappear on the third day, but they don't always face the cruel death that Jesus experienced on Urantia.

The Trinity Teacher Sons are brought into being by the Paradise Trinity and are known in Havona as Daynals. In Orvonton they are called Trinity Teacher Sons, and on Salvington they are sometimes called Paradise Spiritual Sons. Their numbers are constantly increasing, with over 21 billion currently serving in the central and superuniverses.

These Sons are not part of local or superuniverse administration. They focus on moral enlightenment and spiritual development rather than universe governance. They are the universal educators, dedicated to the spiritual awakening and moral guidance of all realms. The Trinity Teacher Sons reflect different qualities of the three Paradise Deities depending on where they serve.

The Paradise Spiritual Sons are unique Trinity-origin beings who work closely with dual-origin universes. They begin their work in local systems and advance through constellation service to higher duties in the local creation. Upon certification, they may become spiritual ambassadors representing the local universes where they serve.

In Nebadon, many department heads in the Melchizedek schools belong to this order. The Teacher Sons lead all examinations and tests for qualifying various phases of universe service, from planetary courses up to the high College of Wisdom on Salvington. They recognize achievement for all who complete these adventures in wisdom and truth, whether ascending mortals or aspiring cherubim.

When events on an evolutionary world show the time is right to begin a spiritual age, the Trinity Teacher Sons volunteer for this service. Urantia has never experienced a spiritual age or millennium of cosmic enlightenment, but Teacher Sons are already planning their future visit to your world. They will come after Urantia's inhabitants are freed from animal limitations and material constraints.

Trinity Teacher Sons focus on starting spiritual ages, not ending planetary dispensations. They reveal spiritual counterparts to material knowledge and temporal wisdom. Usually, Teacher Sons remain on their visitation planets for one thousand years of planetary time, led by one Teacher Son with seventy assistants. They don't become visible to mortal beings but work through Brilliant Evening Stars who associate with them.

All Paradise Sons of God are divine in origin and nature. Each Son's work for each world is just as if he were the first and only Son of God. The Paradise Sons present the active natures of the three Deities to the realms of time and space, serving as divine ministers helping time creatures reach their eternal spiritual goals.

In local universes, these orders of sonship work together to reveal the Paradise Deities to space creatures. Creator Sons show the character of the Universal Father, Avonals reveal the nature of the Eternal Son, and Trinity Teacher Sons display the teacher personality of the Infinite Spirit. Working together in perfect harmony, these Paradise Sons lead the expansion of God's divinity from Paradise into the furthest reaches of space.