The Seven Bestowals of Christ Michael: Jesus Was the Last One

The Seven Bestowals of Christ Michael: Jesus Was the Last One

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The Final Descent

For tens of thousands of years the entire local universe of Nebadon had been waiting. Gabriel had taught its inhabitants that the Creator Son who organized their cosmos, who had already six times disappeared from his headquarters world of Salvington and walked among his own creatures in lower forms, would one day make his seventh and final descent. They knew it would be the most dangerous yet. They knew it would be the climax of a journey nearly a billion years in the making. What they did not know, until the announcement came, was that Michael had selected a small, blue, rebellion scarred world on the far edge of his territory as the theater of that culminating adventure.

That world was ours. The Urantia Book records the moment plainly: "The public announcement that Michael had selected Urantia as the theater for his final bestowal was made shortly after we learned about the default of Adam and Eve. And thus, for more than thirty-five thousand years, your world occupied a very conspicuous place in the councils of the entire universe" (119:7.2).

Christianity remembers one bestowal. The Urantia Book reveals seven. And the seventh, the one we know as Jesus of Nazareth, only makes cosmic sense once you know about the six that came before.

Why a Creator Son Bestows

The principle is stated in the opening pages of Paper 119, a paper authored by Gavalia, Chief of the Evening Stars of Nebadon, on commission from Gabriel himself.

When the Eternal Son commissions a Creator Son to organize a new local universe, the Son takes a solemn oath. He may build the universe, populate it, govern it, and love it, but he may not assume full sovereignty over it until he has lived inside it as one of his own creatures, seven times, in seven different orders of created life. The Ancients of Days of the superuniverse will not certify him as Sovereign on any other terms.

"When the Eternal Son bestows a Creator Son upon a projected local universe, that Creator Son assumes full responsibility for the completion, control, and composure of that new universe, including the solemn oath to the eternal Trinity not to assume full sovereignty of the new creation until his seven creature bestowals shall have been successfully completed and certified by the Ancients of Days of the superuniverse of jurisdiction" (119:0.3).

The reason is given just as plainly. A Creator Son is innately just. He is innately merciful. But until he has actually lived as the kinds of beings he rules, his justice and mercy are theoretical. The triune rulers of the superuniverses "will never certify a Creator Son as Universe Sovereign until he has really acquired the viewpoint of his own creatures by actual experience in the environment of their existence and as these very creatures themselves. In this way such Sons become intelligent and understanding rulers; they come to know the various groups over which they rule and exercise universe authority. By living experience they possess themselves of practical mercy, fair judgment, and the patience born of experiential creature existence" (119:0.6).

This is the cosmic logic of bestowal. Sovereignty must be earned, not inherited. And it is earned by descending.

Michael of Nebadon, the Creator Son who fashioned our local universe, began organizing Nebadon four hundred billion years ago. The Urantia Book records the cadence of his bestowals: "he began the organization of your local universe about four hundred billion years ago. Michael made ready for his first bestowal adventure about the time Urantia was taking on its present form, one billion years ago. His bestowals have occurred about one hundred and fifty million years apart, the last taking place on Urantia nineteen hundred years ago" (119:0.7).

What follows is the story of those seven descents, in order. They form the deepest backstory in the Urantia Book, and they are nearly unknown outside it.

The First Bestowal: Among the Melchizedeks

About one billion years ago, Salvington gathered for a strange announcement. Michael, without warning, transferred administrative authority to his Paradise brother Immanuel and said only, "I leave you but for a short season. Many of you, I know, would go with me, but whither I go you cannot come. That which I am about to do, you cannot do. I go to do the will of the Paradise Deities, and when I have finished my mission and have acquired this experience, I will return to my place among you" (119:1.2). And then he vanished from the dispatching field.

Three days later, on the Melchizedek headquarters sphere, a stranger arrived. He was credentialed by the Ancients of Days of Uversa, certified by Immanuel, and presented as a new Melchizedek Son of the emergency corps. The Melchizedeks had no idea who he was. They simply received him into their order and assigned him to twenty-four missions of universe emergency.

He worked among them for one hundred years.

When he finally departed, the record they wrote of his service ended with a tribute that would echo through Nebadon: "this visitor lived as a Melchizedek, in the likeness of a Melchizedek he worked as a Melchizedek, and he faithfully performed all of his assignments as an emergency Son of our order. By universal consent he has become chief of Melchizedeks, having earned our love and adoration by his matchless wisdom, supreme love, and superb devotion to duty. He loved us, understood us, and served with us, and forever we are his loyal and devoted fellow Melchizedeks, for this stranger on our world has now eternally become a universe minister of Melchizedek nature" (119:1.5).

The Melchizedeks did not know they had hosted their own creator. They wrote his eulogy without realizing it. And by living among them as one of them, Michael earned the right to rule them not from above but from within.

The Second Bestowal: A System Sovereign Among Lanonandeks

A hundred and fifty million years later, trouble erupted. A System Sovereign in constellation 37, system 11, had soured into rebellion. His name was Lutentia. He had reigned in defiance of the Constellation Fathers for over a century, and the Most Highs finally moved to depose him.

In that same hour, Michael announced his second departure.

Three days after he vanished from Salvington, a new and unknown Lanonandek Son appeared in the reserve corps of Nebadon, credentialed once again by Uversa and Immanuel, and was assigned as acting System Sovereign over the very rebellion that Lutentia had just lost. Michael had stepped directly into the seat of the deposed traitor.

For more than seventeen years he ruled. "No System Sovereign was ever more ardently loved or more widespreadly honored and respected. In justice and mercy this new ruler set the turbulent system in order while he painstakingly ministered to all his subjects, even offering his rebellious predecessor the privilege of sharing the system throne of authority if he would only apologize to Immanuel for his indiscretions" (119:2.5).

Lutentia refused. He knew, by then, that the new ruler was Michael himself. But millions of his deluded followers accepted the forgiveness of the strange new sovereign, who became known in that age as the Savior Sovereign of the system of Palonia. When his successor finally arrived, even the unrepentant Lutentia was forced to send word: "Just and righteous are you in all your ways. While I continue in rejection of the Paradise rule, I am compelled to confess that you are a just and merciful administrator" (119:2.6).

After two bestowals, Michael had walked a billion years of cosmic time in two different bodies. He had only just begun.

The Third Bestowal: A Material Son on a Quarantined World

Another hundred and fifty million years passed. A planet in system 87, constellation 61, had defaulted. Its Planetary Prince had joined a rebellion. The Life Carriers had petitioned for a Material Son to help reclaim it.

Michael, instead of dispatching one, became one.

"And, as might have been expected, on the third day thereafter there appeared, unannounced, on the headquarters world of system 87 in constellation 61, a strange Material Son, accompanied by a lone seconaphim, accredited by the Uversa Ancients of Days, and certified by Immanuel of Salvington. Immediately the acting System Sovereign appointed this new and mysterious Material Son acting Planetary Prince of world 217" (119:3.3).

He served alone, on a quarantined world, for an entire generation of planetary time. There was no direct communication with the outside universe. He worked in the dark, on a rebel sphere, against the same kind of darkness Caligastia would later loose on Urantia. And he won. He brought the defaulting Planetary Prince and his entire staff to repentance. He restored the planet to loyal service. Then he disappeared at noon one day, and three days later Michael was back on Salvington.

The pattern was now clear, and the Urantia Book underlines it: "Never, since this marvelous bestowal as the Planetary Prince of a world in isolation and rebellion, have any of the Material Sons or Daughters in Nebadon been tempted to complain of their assignments or to find fault with the difficulties of their planetary missions. For all time the Material Sons know that in the Creator Son of the universe they have an understanding sovereign and a sympathetic friend, one who has in 'all points been tried and tested,' even as they must also be tried and tested" (119:3.7).

He had now ruled the Melchizedeks, the Lanonandeks, and the Material Sons by living among them. Three orders down. Four to go. And the descent was about to steepen.

The Fourth Bestowal: A Seraphim Among Angels

After the third Uversa proclamation of his advancing sovereignty, Michael placed Nebadon once more in Immanuel's hands and disappeared from Salvington. This time the broadcasts brought back something stranger still: an unregistered seraphim had arrived, qualifying as of the Nebadon order, certified by the Ancients of Days, and had been "assigned to the corps of the teaching counselors" (119:4.2).

For more than forty standard universe years, Michael served as a seraphic teaching counselor. He was attached to twenty-six different master teachers across twenty-two different worlds. He functioned as what the Urantia Book calls "a private secretary," and his last assignment was as helper to a Trinity Teacher Son on world 462 in system 84 of constellation 3 (119:4.3).

That Trinity Teacher Son never knew, throughout seven full years of service, who his angelic associate really was. Nebadon had grown wise to the pattern by now. "Full well we all knew that our beloved Sovereign was abroad in the universe, disguised as a seraphim, but never could we be certain of his identity. Never was he positively identified until the time of his attachment to the bestowal mission of this Trinity Teacher Son. But always throughout this era were the supreme seraphim regarded with special solicitude, lest any of us should find that we had unawares been host to the Sovereign of the universe on a mission of creature bestowal" (119:4.4).

By the end of the fourth bestowal, the angels of Nebadon also had what every other order before them now possessed: a sovereign who had been one of them. "And so it has become forever true, concerning angels, that their Creator and Ruler has been 'in all points tried and tested in the likeness of seraphic personality.'" (119:4.4).

The Fifth Bestowal: Eventod, the Spirit Mortal

A little over three hundred million years ago, the descent took a turn that astonished even Salvington. Michael's destination this time was not a local Nebadon world. It was Uversa itself, the headquarters of the entire superuniverse of Orvonton.

And he arrived not as a high son. He arrived as a mortal.

"There arrived today an unannounced and unnumbered ascendant pilgrim of mortal origin from the universe of Nebadon, certified by Immanuel of Salvington and accompanied by Gabriel of Nebadon. This unidentified being presents the status of a true spirit and has been received into our fellowship" (119:5.1).

On Uversa they came to know him by name. He was called Eventod, and he lived among the ascending mortals of Orvonton for eleven years of standard time, taking on the duties and assignments of a spirit mortal in common with his fellows from the various local universes. "In 'all points he was tested and tried, even as his fellows,' and on all occasions he proved worthy of the confidence and trust of his superiors, while he unfailingly commanded the respect and loyal admiration of his fellow spirits" (119:5.2).

This was the first time Nebadon saw its Creator Son in a form lower than the angelic. The Urantia Book records the shock of it: "This first appearance of Michael incarnated in the role of one stage of mortal evolution was an event which thrilled and enthralled all Nebadon. We had heard of such things but now we beheld them" (119:5.3).

It was after the fifth bestowal that the Melchizedek colleges began to teach openly what had previously only been speculation: that Michael might one day incarnate not just as a spirit mortal in the higher reaches of cosmic life, but as a flesh and blood mortal on an evolutionary world. And still, nobody understood how. "Even Gabriel confesses that he does not comprehend the method whereby this Paradise Son and universe Creator could, at will, assume the personality and live the life of one of his own subordinate creatures" (119:5.5).

The Sixth Bestowal: Endantum, the Morontia Mortal

By the time of the sixth bestowal, Michael himself made the next stage public. He gathered the inhabitants of Salvington and revealed the rest of the plan. He would next descend to the morontia phase. And the seventh, the last, would be on a flesh world.

He went to constellation five and lived there as a morontia mortal of ascending status, on the headquarters of the Most High Fathers. The Urantia Book is unusually constrained here, hinting at intensity it will not detail: "I regret that I am forbidden to reveal the details of this unnumbered morontia mortal's career, for it was one of the most extraordinary and amazing epochs in Michael's bestowal experience, not even excepting his dramatic and tragic sojourn on Urantia. But among the many restrictions imposed upon me in accepting this commission is one which forbids my undertaking to unfold the details of this wonderful career of Michael as the morontia mortal of Endantum" (119:6.3).

Endantum. The name stands in Nebadon's memory as the place where Christ Michael walked the morontia road that every surviving mortal must one day walk: the long ascent through the seven mansion worlds, through the constellations, through the local universe headquarters, in a body that is neither the gross matter of Urantia nor the fully spirit form of the universe ages beyond. He learned that road from inside.

When he returned to Salvington, all of Nebadon knew something had shifted. "When Michael returned from this morontia bestowal, it was apparent to all of us that our Creator had become a fellow creature, that the Universe Sovereign was also the friend and sympathetic helper of even the lowest form of created intelligence in his realms" (119:6.4).

The reception was enormous. Millions came from across the constellations to welcome him back. And his answer to all of them, when they tried to praise him, was disarmingly simple: "I have simply been about my Father's business. I am only doing the pleasure of the Paradise Sons who love and crave to understand their creatures" (119:6.5).

That phrase, of course, is one we know. He would say it again, in a temple courtyard on Urantia, to a worried mother and father who could not find their twelve year old boy.

The Seventh Bestowal: Joshua ben Joseph

The seventh was the one we remember. It was also the one that almost no other order had imagined possible.

Six times Michael had appeared as a fully developed individual. Six times he had stepped into existence on a dispatching field, credentialed and ready, an adult. The seventh was different in a way the universe had never seen.

"While we believed that this would be the method, we never knew, until the time of the event itself, that Michael would appear on earth as a helpless infant of the realm. Theretofore had he always appeared as a fully developed individual of the personality group of the bestowal selection, and it was a thrilling announcement which was broadcast from Salvington telling that the babe of Bethlehem had been born on Urantia" (119:7.3).

He came, this time, as a baby. He came to a quarantined world, a rebel system, a fallen Adamic mission, on the back side of the cosmos. He came at the maximum possible distance from the Sovereign's seat. And he came knowing what every previous bestowal had not required: that this one would be the test that put everything else at risk.

"We then not only realized that our Creator and friend was taking the most precarious step in all his career, apparently risking his position and authority on this bestowal as a helpless infant, but we also understood that his experience in this final and mortal bestowal would eternally enthrone him as the undisputed and supreme sovereign of the universe of Nebadon. For a third of a century of earth time all eyes in all parts of this local universe were focused on Urantia. All intelligences realized that the last bestowal was in progress, and as we had long known of the Lucifer rebellion in Satania and of the Caligastia disaffection on Urantia, we well understood the intensity of the struggle which would ensue when our ruler condescended to incarnate on Urantia in the humble form and likeness of mortal flesh" (119:7.4).

The Urantia Book then says something Christian theology has never quite been able to say in this form: "Joshua ben Joseph, the Jewish baby, was conceived and was born into the world just as all other babies before and since except that this particular baby was the incarnation of Michael of Nebadon, a divine Son of Paradise and the creator of all this local universe of things and beings. And this mystery of the incarnation of Deity within the human form of Jesus, otherwise of natural origin on the world, will forever remain unsolved" (119:7.5).

No virgin birth machinery. No supernatural cradle. Joseph and Mary were "average people of their day and generation, and this incarnated Son of God was thus born of woman and was reared in the ordinary manner of the children of that race and age" (119:7.7). The only supernatural event at the manger was the announcement made by seraphim, through the midway creatures, to a small group of Chaldean priests under the leadership of Ardnon. They visited the newborn child. They did not know they were visiting the climax of a billion year cosmic descent.

What the Seventh Made Final

The other six bestowals had each conferred a measure of sovereignty over the order Michael lived among. Only the seventh conferred sovereignty over the universe entire.

"After Michael's final and successful bestowal on Urantia he was not only accepted by the Ancients of Days as sovereign ruler of Nebadon, but he was also recognized by the Universal Father as the established director of the local universe of his own creation. Upon his return to Salvington this Michael, the Son of Man and the Son of God, was proclaimed the settled ruler of Nebadon. From Uversa came the eighth proclamation of Michael's sovereignty, while from Paradise came the joint pronouncement of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son constituting this union of God and man sole head of the universe" (119:8.1).

The Urantia Book is precise about how long it took. "It required almost one billion years of Urantia time to complete the bestowal career of Michael and to effect the final establishment of his supreme authority in the universe of his own creation. Michael was born a creator, educated an administrator, trained an executive, but he was required to earn his sovereignty by experience" (119:8.2).

Each bestowal had revealed a different facet of divinity, the seven combined forming a Nebadon revelation of the Supreme Being himself. "On his Melchizedek bestowal he manifested the united will of the Father, Son, and Spirit, on his Lanonandek bestowal the will of the Father and the Son; on the Adamic bestowal he revealed the will of the Father and the Spirit, on the seraphic bestowal the will of the Son and the Spirit; on the Uversa mortal bestowal he portrayed the will of the Conjoint Actor, on the morontia mortal bestowal the will of the Eternal Son; and on the Urantia material bestowal he lived the will of the Universal Father, even as a mortal of flesh and blood" (119:8.4).

Read that list slowly. Each bestowal was a different colored panel of light revealing a different face of God. The seventh, on Urantia, in the body of a Galilean carpenter's son, revealed the Universal Father himself. The Father's will, lived out in human form. That is what Jesus showed. That is why the man from Nazareth could say, without overreach, that he who had seen him had seen the Father.

What This Means for Urantia

Most religious traditions on our planet imagine that the world is a place God watches from far away, occasionally intervening, occasionally forgiving, fundamentally uninvolved. The seven bestowals of Christ Michael say something altogether different.

Urantia, this single small inhabited world among ten million in Nebadon, was selected as the climactic bestowal stage for the entire local universe. The struggles of one Galilean lifetime conferred sovereignty over a region of space that contains, today, hundreds of inhabited planets at every stage of evolutionary development, alongside the myriad architectural worlds of the morontia and spirit careers.

The Urantia Book says it without flinching: "Urantia is the sentimental shrine of all Nebadon, the chief of ten million inhabited worlds, the mortal home of Christ Michael, sovereign of all Nebadon, a Melchizedek minister to the realms, a system savior, an Adamic redeemer, a seraphic fellow, an associate of ascending spirits, a morontia progressor, a Son of Man in the likeness of mortal flesh, and the Planetary Prince of Urantia. And your record tells the truth when it says that this same Jesus has promised sometime to return to the world of his terminal bestowal, the World of the Cross" (119:8.8).

Read every title in that paragraph carefully. They are not poetic flourishes. They are the seven bestowals plus the planetary office Jesus assumed at the close of his life: a Melchizedek minister, a system savior, an Adamic redeemer, a seraphic fellow, an associate of ascending spirits, a morontia progressor, a Son of Man, and the Planetary Prince of Urantia.

Each title was paid for. Each title was earned. None of them came with the throne by inheritance.

And the planet on which the seventh and culminating descent unfolded, the planet on which the entire billion year project was completed, the planet whose dust still bears the footprints of the Universe Sovereign in mortal flesh, is the same one we walk now. The same one whose news cycles we doomscroll. The same one whose churches mostly do not know what happened here.

The Christian world remembers Bethlehem and Calvary and is right to remember them. But it remembers them as if they were the whole story, as if they were the moment God first descended into matter, as if no other dimension of cosmic preparation lay behind them. The Urantia Book does not contradict the Christian memory. It enlarges it. The babe in the manger was not the beginning of God's involvement with creation. He was the last of seven descents in a single Creator Son's billion year apprenticeship in the love of his own creatures.

The other six bestowals are ours to learn now. They are part of the heritage of every reader of the fifth epochal revelation. They are the deep backstory of the man from Galilee. And they answer, in cosmic detail, the question that no purely Christian reading of Jesus has ever fully answered: why did the Creator have to come at all?

He came because that was the only way to rule his children justly. He came because mercy that has not been lived is mercy that does not yet know its own work. He came seven times, in seven bodies, across a billion years, ending on a hill outside Jerusalem.

He came, finally, here, because we were the ones who needed it most. And in coming here, he finished what he had started a billion years before, when a young Creator Son took an oath in front of the Eternal Son of Paradise that he would not sit upon the throne of his universe until he had walked, as one of his own creatures, every single road that led to it.

The seventh bestowal was Jesus. And Jesus, our Jesus, is Michael of Nebadon, settled and supreme Sovereign of ten million inhabited worlds, who has promised to come back to the world of his terminal bestowal one day, the world he called the World of the Cross.

That world is this one.