During this age of light and life the world increasingly prospers under the fatherly rule of the Planetary Sovereign. By this time the worlds are progressing under the momentum of one language, one religion, and, on normal spheres, one race. But this age is not perfect. These worlds still have well-appointed hospitals, homes for the care of the sick. There still remain the problems of caring for accidental injuries and the inescapable infirmities attendant upon the decrepitude of old age and the disorders of senility. Disease has not been entirely vanquished, neither have the earth animals been subdued in perfection; but such worlds are like Paradise in comparison with the early times of primitive man during the pre-Planetary Prince age. You would instinctively describe such a realm—could you be suddenly transported to a planet in this stage of development—as heaven on earth.
Human government in the conduct of material affairs continues to function throughout this age of relative progress and perfection. The public activities of a world in the first stage of light and life which I recently visited were financed by the tithing technique. Every adult worker—and all able-bodied citizens worked at something—paid ten per cent of his income or increase to the public treasury, and it was disbursed as follows:
1. Three per cent was expended in the promotion of truth—science, education, and philosophy.
2. Three per cent was devoted to beauty—play, social leisure, and art.
3. Three per cent was dedicated to goodness—social service, altruism, and religion.
4. One per cent was assigned to the insurance reserves against the risk of incapacity for labor resultant from accident, disease, old age, or unpreventable disasters.
The natural resources of this planet were administered as social possessions, community property.
On this world the highest honor conferred upon a citizen was the order of “supreme service,” being the only degree of recognition ever to be granted in the morontia temple. This recognition was bestowed upon those who had long distinguished themselves in some phase of supermaterial discovery or planetary social service.
The majority of social and administrative posts were held jointly by men and women. Most of the teaching was also done jointly; likewise all judicial trusts were discharged by similar associated couples.
On these superb worlds the childbearing period is not greatly prolonged. It is not best for too many years to intervene between the ages of a family of children. When close together in age, children are able to contribute much more to their mutual training. And on these worlds they are magnificently trained by the competitive systems of keen striving in the advanced domains and divisions of diverse achievement in the mastery of truth, beauty, and goodness. Never fear but that even such glorified spheres present plenty of evil, real and potential, which is stimulative of the choosing between truth and error, good and evil, sin and righteousness.
Nevertheless, there is a certain, inevitable penalty attaching to mortal existence on such advanced evolutionary planets. When a settled world progresses beyond the third stage of light and life, all ascenders are destined, before attaining the minor sector, to receive some sort of transient assignment on a planet passing through the earlier stages of evolution.
Each of these successive ages represents advancing achievements in all phases of planetary attainment. In the initial age of light the revelation of truth was enlarged to embrace the workings of the universe of universes, while the Deity study of the second age is the attempt to master the protean concept of the nature, mission, ministry, associations, origin, and destiny of the Creator Sons, the first level of God the Sevenfold.
A planet the size of Urantia, when fairly well settled, would have about one hundred subadministrative centers. These subordinate centers would be presided over by one of the following groups of qualified administrators:
1. Young Material Sons and Daughters brought from the system headquarters to act as assistants to the ruling Adam and Eve.
2. The progeny of the semimortal staff of the Planetary Prince who were procreated on certain worlds for this and other similar responsibilities.
3. The direct planetary progeny of Adam and Eve.
4. Materialized and humanized midway creatures.
5. Mortals of Adjuster-fusion status who, upon their own petition, are temporarily exempted from translation by the order of the Personalized Adjuster of universe chieftainship in order that they may continue on the planet in certain important administrative posts.
6. Specially trained mortals of the planetary schools of administration who have also received the order of supreme service of the morontia temple.
7. Certain elective commissions of three properly qualified citizens who are sometimes chosen by the citizenry by direction of the Planetary Sovereign in accordance with their special ability to accomplish some definite task which is needful in that particular planetary sector.
The great handicap confronting Urantia in the matter of attaining the high planetary destiny of light and life is embraced in the problems of disease, degeneracy, war, multicolored races, and multilingualism.
No evolutionary world can hope to progress beyond the first stage of settledness in light until it has achieved one language, one religion, and one philosophy. Being of one race greatly facilitates such achievement, but the many peoples of Urantia do not preclude the attainment of higher stages.