Chapter 16: Third Epilogue: After the Ending of Endings

We end, as we began, with the Infinite

In one place in the Papers (1152,1)(105:0.1), they speak of all Reality as being symbolized by a great ellipse. It starts from an infinite and absolute Source and ever seeks a Destiny that is equally infinite and absolute. In the First Prologue to this study we sought to understand this Source. In the Last Epilogue we find ourselves again seeking after this same Source -only now we use another name, Destiny. In the beginning, and at the ending, we are searching for the Source-Destiny of Reality. This must be the Infinite, that Being who is best known to us as God.

As we have been attempting to follow the unfolding of God's purposes throughout the ages of the universes and across the light-years of space, we have reached certain conclusions. It appears he is engaged in the eternal project of revealing himself to, and of sharing his nature with, all of his Sons and his Son's sons - even as he bequeathed his absolute nature upon the First Son, and then shared the sovereignty of all creation with him, in their Spirit, and as the Trinity.

We have followed the divine expansion of God's creative forces and personalities from the shores of Paradise into the uttermost depths of outer space in the never-ending Cosmos Infinite. Yet, with all of this unimaginable expansion, God has neither increased nor decreased in value. The Infinite is unchanged! But the meaning of the Infinite, the meaning of God, has been modified, enriched, and enlarged, as concerns every single being who participated in the Supreme Adventure, the Ultimate Adventure, and the never-ending Absolute Adventure. (1261,2)(115:2.2)

When ascending mortals finally attain Paradise and find God, they have a finite experience in the comprehension of the Universal Father. As finaliters complete their service in the encircling superuniverses, they return to Paradise to find still more of the Father; they have grown in the capacity to comprehend. At the end of the Second Age, when we find the Supreme, we will have a comprehension-experience with the wholeness of Deity -Finite Deity. All of this should enable us to understand the Father as finite, God as he is knowable to finite creatures.

When we embark upon the Ultimate Adventure, we have embarked upon the quest for the Father as super-finite, the Father as absonite. We have seen what a very long time it will take to complete this quest; however, this goal does have a distant limit, and eternity endures, and sometime this limit will really be attained. We will know - actually know - the Ultimate. And in this absonite achievement we will find the capacity to know the Father beyond the finite, to know the Father as Ultimate.

The final adventure - the Absolute Adventure - is without end. But nothing shall ever daunt us; nothing shall ever stop us; we shall never reach a stalemate, a final barrier to progress. We will really find God as Absolute, but we will never complete this discovery; the exploration of the infinity of God must be endless. We will find him as absolute, but we can never know him as infinite

"God, your Father, and my Father, is that phase of the Infinite which we perceive in our personalities as an actual experiential reality. . . " (1153,4)(105:1.7)

But still, we know the Infinite is there, that he is real, and that he is before the First Source and after the Final Destiny. At the end of time, we will still find truth in the words of the teacher of old, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Heb. 11:1)