Paper 54 Overview: Problems of the Lucifer Rebellion

The Lucifer rebellion presents several philosophical problems concerning the nature of evil, sin, and error in a universe created by a loving God. This paper addresses the perplexing questions about why evil is permitted to exist and why the universal authorities allowed the rebellion to continue for so long before intervening. It examines the concepts of true and false liberty and explains how divine mercy requires giving rebellious beings time to reconsider their choices.

The paper further explores the time lag between wrongdoing and judgment, revealing how this delay serves multiple purposes in the divine plan. While the rebellion caused suffering for many innocent beings, the long-term spiritual benefits ultimately outweigh the temporary hardships. This perspective helps mortals understand how a universe based on love can allow evil to exist while ensuring justice ultimately prevails.

Evolutionary humans find it challenging to comprehend the meaning and significance of evil, error, sin, and iniquity in a universe created by loving Gods. The contrast between perfection and imperfection creates the potential for evil, while the conflict between truth and falsehood produces error. The divine gift of free will enables beings to choose between righteousness and sin, with persistent choices in either direction leading to the kingdom of God or to the domains of iniquity.

The Gods neither create evil nor permit sin and rebellion directly. Instead, potential evil exists naturally in a universe that contains different levels of perfection, meaning, and value. Sin becomes possible when imperfect beings are given the ability to choose between good and evil. The deliberate choice of evil constitutes sin, the willful rejection of truth becomes error, and the persistent pursuit of both develops into iniquity.

One of the most difficult problems stemming from the Lucifer rebellion was helping immature evolutionary mortals distinguish between true and false liberty. True liberty represents the quest of ages and comes as a reward for evolutionary progress, while false liberty is a deceptive error that leads to harmful consequences. Enduring liberty must be founded on justice, intelligence, maturity, brotherhood, and fairness to survive.

True liberty maintains a positive relationship with reality and acknowledges cosmic fairness and universal brotherhood. It cannot exist apart from material justice, intellectual fairness, social tolerance, moral duty, and spiritual values. When liberty becomes separated from self-control and altruistic service, it transforms into self-deception and exploitation of others. No being has the right to deprive others of their natural liberties, even when claiming to exercise personal freedom, as even the Supreme Rulers respect the will and personality potential of all creatures.

The eternal pattern of creation involves sharing and participation, established when God projected eternal Havona with the Son and in the Spirit. This design means that every creature who seeks to do the Father's will is destined to become a partner with the Creators in the magnificent adventure of achieving experiential perfection. God endowed creatures with creative free will precisely to enable this partnership through the indwelling of his spirit.

Lucifer's fundamental error was attempting to bypass the necessary evolutionary process in an experiential universe. His crime constituted an attempted disenfranchisement of every personality in Satania, denying them their right to participate in the long evolutionary struggle toward light and life. Under the guise of liberty, Lucifer effectively threatened to steal the personal freedom of every being in the system—their divine privilege to help create their own destinies and contribute to the development of the local system of inhabited worlds.

Evolutionary mortals often question why all-wise Creators permit evil and sin to exist, failing to understand that both are inevitable consequences of genuine free will. The ability to choose between good and evil is not merely a philosophical concept but a fundamental reality of the universe. The Supreme Rulers will not allow any being or group to deprive others of this divinely bestowed liberty, even to satisfy misguided notions of personal freedom.

When a being consciously identifies with evil, they set themselves on a path toward nonexistence. However, there must always be a period between this choice and the execution of judgment, allowing for a fair evaluation of the individual's status that would satisfy all related universe personalities and even the sinner themselves. If the guilty one recognizes the justice of their condemnation but refuses to acknowledge it, the Ancients of Days will delay annihilation until all moral values and spiritual realities are completely extinguished in both the evildoer and any potential sympathizers.

Another difficult problem in the Norlatiadek constellation concerns the reasons for allowing Lucifer, Satan, and the fallen princes to continue their destructive activities before being apprehended and judged. Parents who have raised children can better understand why Michael, as a Creator-father, might delay condemning and destroying his own Sons. The story of the prodigal son illustrates how a loving father patiently waits for an erring child to repent.

The capacity to choose evil establishes the reality of free will and justifies any delay in executing justice when such mercy might lead to repentance and rehabilitation. Lucifer lost the precious endowments he already possessed, and others he would have received, because of his impatience and desire for immediate gratification in defiance of others' rights. While there are many reasons why the Supreme Rulers delayed judgment, including Michael's personal extension of mercy, this time lag between wrongdoing and consequences is an essential feature of the mercy ministry in the seven superuniverses.

The Mighty Messenger outlines several specific reasons why Lucifer and his confederates were not immediately apprehended and judged. Mercy requires giving wrongdoers sufficient time to form deliberate attitudes about their actions, while supreme justice is always tempered by a Father's love that seeks to save rather than destroy. No affectionate father rushes to punish an erring family member, as patience requires the passage of time to function effectively.

Additional reasons include: Michael had not yet completed his bestowal career to attain full sovereignty; the Ancients of Days deferred to Michael's decisions; Immanuel counseled Michael to allow the rebellion to follow its natural course toward self-destruction; the rebellion provided opportunity for all beings to make deliberate choices regarding their loyalties; and permitting the full expression of sin would lead to its quicker elimination. From the perspective of higher beings, the time scales involved—while seeming enormous to humans—are relatively brief in universal terms.

The way the universe rulers dealt with the rebels demonstrates the triumph of divine love over rigid justice. While the mercy extended to the rebels caused innocent beings to face trials and tribulations, these distraught personalities can depend on the all-wise Judges to adjudicate their destinies with both mercy and justice. Both the Creator Son and his Paradise Father are guided by love in all their dealings with intelligent beings.

Like a loving father showing mercy to a misbehaving child might cause temporary hardships for the well-behaved siblings, the extension of mercy to rebellious beings affected innocent members of the cosmic family. Despite these tribulations, no individual's eternal prospects can be jeopardized by the misconduct of others. The rebellion ultimately produced unexpected benefits, as those who resisted its temptations advanced spiritually, and the Melchizedeks now teach that the good resulting from the rebellion exceeds the evil by more than a thousand times. The seemingly endless delay in judgment actually allowed time for increasing beneficial outcomes to emerge from this unfortunate episode.