The Lucifer Rebellion

53:5.1Upon the out­break of the Sa­ta­nia re­bel­lion, Mi­chael took coun­sel of his Par­a­dise brother, Im­manuel. Fol­low­ing this mo­men­tous con­fer­ence, Mi­chael an­nounced that he would pur­sue the same pol­icy which had char­ac­ter­ized his deal­ings with sim­i­lar up­heavals in the past, an at­ti­tude of non­in­ter­fer­ence.

53:5.2At the time of this re­bel­lion and the two which pre­ceded it there was no ab­so­lute and per­sonal sov­er­eign au­thor­ity in the uni­verse of Neb­a­don. Mi­chael ruled by di­vine right, as vicegerent of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, but not yet in his own per­sonal right. He had not com­pleted his be­stowal ca­reer; he had not yet been vested with “all power in heaven and on earth.”

53:5.3From the out­break of re­bel­lion to the day of his en­throne­ment as sov­er­eign ruler of Neb­a­don, Mi­chael never in­ter­fered with the rebel forces of Lu­cifer; they were al­lowed to run a free course for al­most two hun­dred thou­sand years of Uran­tia time. Christ Mi­chael now has am­ple power and au­thor­ity to deal promptly, even sum­mar­ily, with such out­breaks of dis­loy­alty, but we doubt that this sov­er­eign au­thor­ity would lead him to act dif­fer­ently if an­other such up­heaval should oc­cur.

53:5.4Since Mi­chael elected to re­main aloof from the ac­tual war­fare of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion, Ga­briel called his per­sonal staff to­gether on Eden­tia and, in coun­sel with the Most Highs, elected to as­sume com­mand of the loyal hosts of Sa­ta­nia. Mi­chael re­mained on Sal­ving­ton while Ga­briel pro­ceeded to Je­ru­sem, and es­tab­lish­ing him­self on the sphere ded­i­cated to the Fa­ther—the same Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther whose per­son­al­ity Lu­cifer and Sa­tan had ques­tioned—in the pres­ence of the for­gath­ered hosts of loyal per­son­al­i­ties, he dis­played the ban­ner of Mi­chael, the ma­te­rial em­blem of the Trin­ity gov­ern­ment of all cre­ation, the three azure blue con­cen­tric cir­cles on a white back­ground.

53:5.5The Lu­cifer em­blem was a ban­ner of white with one red cir­cle, in the cen­ter of which a black solid cir­cle ap­peared.

53:5.6“There was war in heaven; Mi­chael’s com­man­der and his an­gels fought against the dragon (Lu­cifer, Sa­tan, and the apos­tate princes); and the dragon and his re­bel­lious an­gels fought but pre­vailed not.” This “war in heaven” was not a phys­i­cal bat­tle as such a con­flict might be con­ceived on Uran­tia. In the early days of the strug­gle Lu­cifer held forth con­tin­u­ously in the plan­e­tary am­phithe­ater. Ga­briel con­ducted an un­ceas­ing ex­po­sure of the rebel soph­ist­ries from his head­quar­ters taken up near at hand. The var­i­ous per­son­al­i­ties pres­ent on the sphere who were in doubt as to their at­ti­tude would jour­ney back and forth be­tween these dis­cus­sions un­til they ar­rived at a fi­nal de­ci­sion.

53:5.7But this war in heaven was very ter­ri­ble and very real. While dis­play­ing none of the bar­bar­i­ties so char­ac­ter­is­tic of phys­i­cal war­fare on the im­ma­ture worlds, this con­flict was far more deadly; ma­te­rial life is in jeop­ardy in ma­te­rial com­bat, but the war in heaven was fought in terms of life eter­nal.