James Wayne Cleveland
11 min readOct 20, 2022

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A and the Ages of Man

(An excerpt from the forthcoming book, Ascending Armageddon, a collection of bold moral essays and recent celestial transmissions.)

In the beginning, prehistoric beings first adopted the sound of A and made it the foundation of our language. Alpha. It became the first letter of an alphabet, which evolved into sentences, stories, and university degrees in literature.

Similarly, prehistoric man invented tools and weapons of battle. As hunger, death, sorrow and suffering were all part of this being’s dangerous daily life, a struggle for physical survival, it is so natural that civilization was created in an aura of fear. It is well-known as our prime motivator.

This ancient world was an age of Acrimony, hatreds evolved as calls for vengeance and victory. We fought wild carnivorous animals and the extremes of nature. We are carnivorous. We observed something called Mother Nature to sometimes get angry and spew storms, floods and earthquakes — acts of God. It seemed evident that the Mighty Sun was all-powerful, shedding its joy on humankind, or something else entirely.

This is Anime, Animal mind, because we are evolving mammals after all. Animals can be fearful, bellicose and territorial. We remain so. However we are imbued with Spirit. There is a Higher Self within, an Indwelling Spirit, a Conscience, a motivation to Love, a fragment of the great First Source of energy and life.

Though dogma people can still argue against our hundreds of generations of evolution from mammal into today’s human, they can offer no alternative for human reality that we can plainly see. We are animal origin for a fact, and our task here is to overcome and evolve animal mind into spirit mind. We can live at a higher level, with inner inspiration and guidance. We can be forever guided to Love. And a spark, of our Creator lives inside, readily available for consultation, always our inner pilot to peace.

Alas, as civilizations develop in Acrimony, they become divisive, territorial in their institutions. We have embedded our acrimonious Antagonisms into our present world of global Alienation. Subsequent generations have developed their cudgels and spears into ever-larger weapons, even intercontinental electronically controlled nuclear missiles. We have waged constant wars over territories and resources. This has been the world we have always known — conflicts over control and power with a largely animal mentality.

The so-called civilized world today devotes vast sums of money and great concentration on military machines to defend against ourselves when far better uses of resources are evident. Fear motivates and dictates. Children across the world die of disease and malnutrition and our money goes into death-dealing military might.

They range today from hypersonic missile face-offs to hand-me-down war industry weaponry used to protect unprincipled third world despots. There is a chain of fearful military establishments to fit all levels of society, all budgets, and with morality be damned. The arms industry sucks the very life out of humanity by depriving us of life-giving human resources and encumbering us with massive inventories of weaponry to kill ourselves. We can tolerate hundreds of thousands of homeless Americans on the streets, and can’t give up a single nuclear submarine to help them.

Naturally, Autocracy is birthed from our competitive control natures, from society’s abiding fears of other races and creeds, from the satisfying thrills of victory, for vengeance from some violence perpetrated upon them and that we turned into noble revenge. This is us. We want to be heroes. We can brag about killing others in legitimized combat. We have even romanticized war and elevated warrior idols.

Today, we can call our power and wealth centered rulers as Autocrats; they evolved from earlier generation Aristocracy. In history, they have hoarded wealth, created poverty and ultimately been overthrown.

We have come from power hungry divine-rule royalty and clergy in Europe to a succession of strongmen power mongers like Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin that has led us to the present day — Vladimir Putin, hopefully the last of his acrimonious, alienated, autocratic kind. At this writing, autocratic rulers threaten human rights and decency in a number of countries. Democratic ideals seem to be fighting an uphill battle.

All of this spawns an aura of Angst — an uneasiness that permeates our lives today. No person or institution is immune to it. Rooted in acrimony and alienation and autocracies that rise and fall, we wonder if there is an evil root that spawns it all.

We can consider that humankind’s constant concern and worry is centered around wealth, money. We believe it buys everything. We invented it in order to create civilizations.

Most people don’t have nearly enough for what they think they want and need in life, and so it becomes the spoke for all things that spin, sometimes under control and sometimes not. What will you do for what you want, and what won’t you do?

It produces near constant Angst in millions of lives. It elevates wealth into the status of a de facto god with unlimited power. It is a quest that controls our material lives. We may as well worship it because we really do. We must somehow become more spiritually aware and make money a tool and not a demigod.

Parenting is the inherent human activity. Families are created and struggle their whole lives for more resources, a better quality of life. How might financial security lead to a secure, loving, and progressive family? How many ways does a lack of money cause friction and pain? Are American capitalists responsible for our continuing angst over money? But are they not also responsible for our standard of living, our pleasant quality of life that relies on mortgages and credit?

Is Capitalism a force of good or evil? It can be either or both or generally opaque based on how our minds perceive it and how it evolves. Communism sounds great too, on paper, but it has always morphed back into Autocracy. Our own Democracy could do the same, as our current conflicts over Trumpist Autocracy fester.

If you have power, why give it up, asks the Powerful, and why not strengthen it and target any opposition? To despots like Trump, Putin and others, a Democracy seems idiotic, given the unqualified state of the citizenry. Across the world, these arrogant Autocracies and our battles for Democracy loom all in front of us.

Humankind has evolved to 2022 over these hundreds of generations, and I believe we are fortunate to be here for a time of Apocalypse. The various legends around this A word refer to a great opening, a grand unveiling of knowledge that humankind will find to be astonishing, astounding and no doubt highly motivational. A veil was lifted and new heavenly revelations appeared. The Internet did much of this.

In our current day, an apocalyptic geyser of information has indeed exploded over our world. We have reached an age of electronic communications that has advanced our societies at a record pace and hustled us forward into global conflicts that can only be described as Armageddon. This is an ultimate battle between good and evil that will determine the fate of ourselves and our planet.

Make no mistake. It is no less than choices of life or death. Global warming is emerging as a powerful force of destruction that we must face head-on, with boldness and unprecedented unity.

Armageddon is a battle over our Values and Intentions. We are the soldiers. We are immersed in it, like it or not.

Are our values noble, altruistic? Do we care about our fellows? Will we lie, cheat and steal for our own advantage? This has always been the test. In these critical, challenging times, what will we do? What will we actually do — just complain and bemoan and throw blame? Will we elevate our consciousness to reflect more spiritual values and more empathy for our siblings and more determination to stand up for them? Every person, every life, is a story — in soul growth or neglect. Service or stagnation? Action or Apathy?

As Armageddon rages from Congress to Ukraine to virtually every part of the world, an even greater challenge rises as our planet heats up dangerously and erratic climate destroys many resources and many lives. Humankind absolutely must work together as never before to meet this challenge.

I believe it is important to know that chains of events happen as they can and not by decree or the calendar. Putin must be destroyed and a new, more amenable Russian federation must emerge before the world can be unified in any kind of meaningful cooperative efforts.

First order of business for civilization: We must crush Autocracy while we are individually and collectively rising from Acrimony and Alienation. This alienated man must go and the Russian people must be redeemed from the global disgrace that he has perpetuated.

We can hope for and work toward a successive wave of strongmen collapsing in the world under the people’s freedom demands shouted in the streets, and our country’s increased example of democracy that works, and is benevolent and freedom-loving. Iran is now in the throes of massive discord over their oppression of women, a conflict which is likely to spread throughout the countries that still feature male dominance and subservience of women.

Apocalypse has revealed new truths about deep corruption and error, and we realize now that Autocracies, as well as Theocracies, must be destroyed in our world for any kind of progress to occur. Today, Russia vetoes all progressive efforts of the United Nations Security Council and virtually disempowers that idealistic global union. Putin and other power mongering despots must be removed from the world stage. Citizens must be empowered.

As we now battle on many fronts over the values we will live by, there is a higher dimension to consider. Our world is a speck of a planet in a universe that includes billions of planets and trillions of beings. From the beginning, our true reality is in a new series of A visualizations.

Our history of mammalian ancestry to our current evolutionary refinement is, of course, only our planetary perspectives, from our own infantile minds. The larger picture is one of Ascension. The time and space worlds are gardens in which human beings grow their souls, their worthiness through the pursuit of truth, beauty and goodness. We do this with a flesh and blood body, and a mind and spirit inner incarnation, and we are somewhere in the vast array of time and space worlds — millions of planets and trillions of resident personalities.

Such an opportunity for Ascension, but we must overcome our Animal origins and the mental state of Angst that emerges from Acrimony, Avarice, Anger, and Adversity. We need to engage Altruism and simply love one another. All of humanity needs to engage the universal Golden Rule, and move even beyond the mere tolerance it suggests.

For this purpose, we have an inner guiding light, a pilot from our Universal Creator, a conscience, a soul, a higher self, a thought adjuster toward truth, an inspiring indwelling Spirit, a fragment of God.

By whatever name, please listen. It will be your best advice. Going to humans for advice on spiritual matters is problematic, no matter their claim of special connections. Connect to our Father, right here within. Take some quiet time and release to faith and caring. Ask the Universal Father to come visit from within. Ask questions, express your concerns. And listen.

Many fail to do that, and are not open to the very subtle and silent advice that invariably comes to them. They even disdain it as a product of their unreliable mind and imagination, encased in a human body that is unworthy of celestial contact. Such a shame. Our lives are the very reason for creation of the time and space worlds.

With Ascension for humans as the universal plan, our ‘be-ye-perfect’ mission, then what we can expect if Armageddon ever ends? Is the goal freedom from oppression, and achievement of a decent quality of life for everyone on the globe? Is it a unified effort to confront and control climate and environmental challenges, disarmament and reduction of nuclear weapons that could trigger the destruction of the entire planet?

In the heavenly realms, there is the A of legal Adjudication in a universal court. The Urantia Book reveals a spiritual hierarchy under God, explaining that the planet has been embroiled in a “Lucifer Rebellion” against God’s divine plan for ages. It was led by a charismatic personality with high status named Lucifer and his arrogant, deviant philosophies against the Father’s ascension plan, which he ridiculed.

The Urantia text says that our planet and its ruling prince, Caligastia, fell under Lucifer’s charismatic persuasion, and this has been the root of our problems, ultimately a dysfunctional evolution. The book discusses this default that struck over 30 planets in all, as well as subsequent failures to set our world exactly aright.

As a mission of biological advancement many years later, our assigned Planetary Son and Daughter, Adam and Eve, also defaulted to Luciferian temptation and impatience, and their Garden of Eden civilization failed.

To earnest students of the Urantia Book, this comprised two celestial defaults and preceded the incarnation of a sage named Machiventa Melchizedek. He mentored Abraham on the wisdom of One God, of Goodness, and his teachings have endured, though his role as the Sage of Salem is neglected in official scripture. The authors virtually wrote him out while elevating Abraham as a hero.

Readers see the incarnation of Jesus as a fourth epochal revelation, a savior by example to mankind through his mission of supreme empathy with the humans of God’s — and his own — creation. He lived as the Son of Man while being one of many local universe Creator Sons of God, and he earned his standing as ruler of our local universe with seven incarnations in the form of his created beings.

His life is the basis for a fifth epochal revelation, the Urantia papers themselves, a history of our planet, its relation to the universe and our individual relationship as well. It was published by the Urantia Foundation in 1955, utilizing several decades of channeled information.

From this cosmic arena of revelation, we can say that planetary Adjudication will come when spirit triumphs over the challenges from all of time, now accumulated together as cancerous tumors right in front of our eyes. In a word — we see world corruption everywhere. We are now seeing it ever more clearly all the time, and we are fighting it on all fronts in the Armageddon of the present day.

With Adjudication comes a cleansing of all our institutions. We are finally facing basic issues that can no longer be avoided, swept under the rug of politics or avoided in favor of a selfish focus.

The cleansing of our institutions, indeed the redemption of the planet, will be co-creative. Humans will be allowed and encouraged into an Attitude of Activism. We will work with wise celestial personalities through the mind circuits, and get the guidance we need to stay on track as this marvelous Adventure unfolds.

We will help in a renewed push for accelerated Ascension. Pulling together, we can grow the world in wondrous ways.

Ascension will lead to Altruism. Loving one another. Peace and friends worldwide. Sharing in our ethnic pleasures, fully appreciating the values that unite all of humanity in empathy and caring.

How many generations will be required from here? No doubt a high number. But we need only be concerned with our finite time of material experience here, and what we can contribute, the legacy by which our tenure will be appraised.

In the end, we will no doubt see all of our life as an Adventure, a highly influential material experience that moves us from being infants in the universe into an Aura of satisfying knowledge that brings peace of mind and Assurances, and starts us off on a significantly informed forever Adventure in spirit.

We should have faith that we can each help set a good direction for the world, even within our limited environment, that we deserve our guilt free existence as a child of God and enjoy the great blessings of Evolution. God created Evolution so that we can Evolve and Experience and Excel.

In the modern world, there should be little room for Anger, Animosity, Acrimony, Arrogance, Adversity, and Alienation. We can evolve into Altruism, God’s eternal mandate to his children — Love One Another.

As we think back to the creation of the A sound and the beginning of language, we acknowledge that the A sound is not one simple sound. Pronunciations are abundant and encompass a global cacophony that we are still working to manage. Life is anything but simple too.

Amen.

Following are some exploratory essays that seek to closely identify our problems and our potentials.

Jim Cleveland books (21) are featured in the Amazon bookstore and Author House.

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James Wayne Cleveland

Jim Cleveland retired from a career in public relations to become a writer and publisher. He has 16 books and 12 CDs anchored in new spirituality values.