Paper 76— The Second Garden — Page 852
doomed to suffer the fate of the mortals of their world, they should certainly become eligible for admission to the ranks of the sleeping survivors of Urantia. They fully believed this gospel of resurrection and rehabilitation which the Melchizedeks so touchingly proclaimed to them. Their transgression had been an error of judgment and not the sin of conscious and deliberate rebellion.
Adam and Eve did not, as citizens of Jerusem, have Thought Adjusters, nor were they Adjuster indwelt when they functioned on Urantia in the first garden. But shortly after their reduction to mortal status they became conscious of a new presence within them and awakened to the realization that human status coupled with sincere repentance had made it possible for Adjusters to indwell them. It was this knowledge of being Adjuster indwelt that greatly heartened Adam and Eve throughout the remainder of their lives; they knew that they had failed as Material Sons of Satania, but they also knew that the Paradise career was still open to them as ascending sons of the universe.
Adam knew about the dispensational resurrection which occurred simultaneously with his arrival on the planet, and he believed that he and his companion would probably be repersonalized in connection with the advent of the next order of sonship. He did not know that Michael, the sovereign of this universe was so soon to appear on Urantia; he expected that the next Son to arrive would be of the Avonal order. Even so, it was always a comfort to Adam and Eve, as well as something difficult for them to understand, to ponder the only personal message they ever received from Michael. This message, among other expressions of friendship and comfort, said: “I have given consideration to the circumstances of your default, I have remembered the desire of your hearts ever to be loyal to my Father's will, and you will be called from the embrace of mortal slumber when I come to Urantia if the subordinate Sons of my realm do not send for you before that time.”
And this was a great mystery to Adam and Eve. They could comprehend the veiled promise of a possible special resurrection in this message, and such a possibility greatly cheered them, but they could not grasp the meaning of the intimation that they might rest until the time of a resurrection associated with Michael's personal appearance on Urantia. And so the Edenic pair always proclaimed that a Son of God would sometime come, and they communicated to their loved ones the belief, at least the longing hope, that the world of their blunders and sorrows might possibly be the realm whereon the ruler of this universe would elect to function as the Paradise bestowal Son. It seemed too good to be true, but Adam did entertain the thought that strife-torn Urantia might, after all, turn out to be the most fortunate world in the system of Satania, the envied planet of all Nebadon.
Adam lived for 530 years; he died of what might be termed old age. His physical mechanism simply wore out; the process of disintegration gradually gained on the process of repair, and the inevitable end came. Eve had died nineteen years previously of a weakened heart. They were both buried in the center of the temple of divine service which had been built in accordance with their plans soon after the wall of the colony had been completed. And this was the origin of the practice of burying noted and pious men and women under the floors of the places of worship.
The supermaterial government of Urantia, under the direction of the Melchizedeks, continued, but direct physical contact with the evolutionary races had
