Problems of the Lucifer Rebellion

54:6.1What­ever the dif­fi­cul­ties evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals may en­counter in their ef­forts to un­der­stand the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion, it should be clear to all re­flec­tive thinkers that the tech­nique of deal­ing with the rebels is a vin­di­ca­tion of di­vine love. The lov­ing mercy ex­tended to the rebels does seem to have in­volved many in­no­cent be­ings in tri­als and tribu­la­tions, but all these dis­traught per­son­al­i­ties may se­curely de­pend upon the all-wise Judges to ad­ju­di­cate their des­tinies in mercy as well as jus­tice.

54:6.2In all their deal­ings with in­tel­li­gent be­ings, both the Cre­ator Son and his Par­a­dise Fa­ther are love dom­i­nated. It is im­pos­si­ble to com­pre­hend many phases of the at­ti­tude of the uni­verse rulers to­ward rebels and re­bel­lion—sin and sin­ners—un­less it be re­mem­bered that God as a Fa­ther takes prece­dence over all other phases of De­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion in all the deal­ings of di­vin­ity with hu­man­ity. It should also be re­called that the Par­a­dise Cre­ator Sons are all mercy mo­ti­vated.

54:6.3If an af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther of a large fam­ily chooses to show mercy to one of his chil­dren guilty of griev­ous wrong­do­ing, it may well be that the ex­ten­sion of mercy to this mis­be­hav­ing child will work a tem­po­rary hard­ship upon all the other and well-be­haved chil­dren. Such even­tu­al­i­ties are in­ev­i­ta­ble; such a risk is in­sep­a­ra­ble from the re­al­ity sit­u­a­tion of hav­ing a lov­ing par­ent and of be­ing a mem­ber of a fam­ily group. Each mem­ber of a fam­ily prof­its by the righ­teous con­duct of ev­ery other mem­ber; like­wise must each mem­ber suf­fer the im­me­di­ate time-con­se­quences of the mis­con­duct of ev­ery other mem­ber. Fam­i­lies, groups, na­tions, races, worlds, sys­tems, con­stel­la­tions, and uni­verses are re­la­tion­ships of as­so­ci­a­tion which pos­sess in­di­vid­u­al­ity; and there­fore does ev­ery mem­ber of any such group, large or small, reap the ben­e­fits and suf­fer the con­se­quences of the right­do­ing and the wrong­do­ing of all other mem­bers of the group con­cerned.

54:6.4But one thing should be made clear: If you are made to suf­fer the evil con­se­quences of the sin of some mem­ber of your fam­ily, some fel­low cit­i­zen or fel­low mor­tal, even re­bel­lion in the sys­tem or else­where—no mat­ter what you may have to en­dure be­cause of the wrong­do­ing of your as­so­ciates, fel­lows, or su­pe­ri­ors—you may rest se­cure in the eter­nal as­sur­ance that such tribu­la­tions are tran­sient af­flic­tions. None of these fra­ter­nal con­se­quences of mis­be­hav­ior in the group can ever jeop­ar­dize your eter­nal prospects or in the least de­gree de­prive you of your di­vine right of Par­a­dise as­cen­sion and God at­tain­ment.

54:6.5And there is com­pen­sa­tion for these tri­als, de­lays, and dis­ap­point­ments which in­vari­ably ac­com­pany the sin of re­bel­lion. Of the many valu­able reper­cus­sions of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion which might be named, I will only call at­ten­tion to the en­hanced ca­reers of those mor­tal as­cend­ers, the Je­ru­sem cit­i­zens, who, by with­stand­ing the soph­ist­ries of sin, placed them­selves in line for be­com­ing fu­ture Mighty Mes­sen­gers, fel­lows of my own or­der. Ev­ery be­ing who stood the test of that evil episode thereby im­me­di­ately ad­vanced his ad­min­is­tra­tive sta­tus and en­hanced his spir­i­tual worth.

54:6.6At first the Lu­cifer up­heaval ap­peared to be an un­mit­i­gated calamity to the sys­tem and to the uni­verse. Grad­u­ally ben­e­fits be­gan to ac­crue. With the pass­ing of twenty-five thou­sand years of sys­tem time (twenty thou­sand years of Uran­tia time), the Mel­chiz­e­deks be­gan to teach that the good re­sult­ing from Lu­cifer’s folly had come to equal the evil in­curred. The sum of evil had by that time be­come al­most sta­tion­ary, con­tin­u­ing to in­crease only on cer­tain iso­lated worlds, while the ben­e­fi­cial reper­cus­sions con­tin­ued to mul­ti­ply and ex­tend out through the uni­verse and super­uni­verse, even to Ha­vona. The Mel­chiz­e­deks now teach that the good re­sult­ing from the Sa­ta­nia re­bel­lion is more than a thou­sand times the sum of all the evil.

54:6.7But such an ex­traor­di­nary and benef­i­cent har­vest of wrong­do­ing could only be brought about by the wise, di­vine, and mer­ci­ful at­ti­tude of all of Lu­cifer’s su­pe­ri­ors, ex­tend­ing from the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers on Eden­tia to the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther on Par­a­dise. The pass­ing of time has en­hanced the con­se­quen­tial good to be de­rived from the Lu­cifer folly; and since the evil to be pe­nal­ized was quite fully de­vel­oped within a com­par­a­tively short time, it is ap­par­ent that the all-wise and farsee­ing uni­verse rulers would be cer­tain to ex­tend the time in which to reap in­creas­ingly ben­e­fi­cial re­sults. Re­gard­less of the many ad­di­tional rea­sons for de­lay­ing the ap­pre­hen­sion and ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the Sa­ta­nia rebels, this one gain would have been enough to ex­plain why these sin­ners were not sooner in­terned, and why they have not been ad­ju­di­cated and de­stroyed.

54:6.8Short­sighted and time-bound mor­tal minds should be slow to crit­i­cize the time de­lays of the farsee­ing and all-wise ad­min­is­tra­tors of uni­verse af­fairs.

54:6.9One er­ror of hu­man think­ing re­spect­ing these prob­lems con­sists in the idea that all evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals on an evolv­ing planet would choose to en­ter upon the Par­a­dise ca­reer if sin had not cursed their world. The abil­ity to de­cline sur­vival does not date from the times of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. Mor­tal man has al­ways pos­sessed the en­dow­ment of free­will choice re­gard­ing the Par­a­dise ca­reer.

54:6.10As you as­cend in the sur­vival ex­pe­ri­ence, you will broaden your uni­verse con­cepts and ex­tend your hori­zon of mean­ings and val­ues; and thus will you be able the bet­ter to un­der­stand why such be­ings as Lu­cifer and Sa­tan are per­mit­ted to con­tinue in re­bel­lion. You will also bet­ter com­pre­hend how ul­ti­mate (if not im­me­di­ate) good can be de­rived from time-lim­ited evil. Af­ter you at­tain Par­a­dise, you will re­ally be en­light­ened and com­forted when you lis­ten to the super­aphic philoso­phers dis­cuss and ex­plain these pro­found prob­lems of uni­verse ad­just­ment. But even then, I doubt that you will be fully sat­is­fied in your own minds. At least I was not even when I had thus at­tained the acme of uni­verse phi­los­o­phy. I did not achieve a full com­pre­hen­sion of these com­plex­i­ties un­til af­ter I had been as­signed to ad­min­is­tra­tive du­ties in the super­uni­verse, where by ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence I have ac­quired con­cep­tual ca­pac­ity ad­e­quate for the com­pre­hen­sion of such many-sided prob­lems in cos­mic eq­uity and spir­i­tual phi­los­o­phy. As you as­cend Par­adis­e­ward, you will in­creas­ingly learn that many prob­lem­atic fea­tures of uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion can only be com­pre­hended sub­se­quent to the ac­quire­ment of in­creased ex­pe­ri­en­tial ca­pac­ity and to the achieve­ment of en­hanced spir­i­tual in­sight. Cos­mic wis­dom is es­sen­tial to the un­der­stand­ing of cos­mic sit­u­a­tions.

54:6.11[Pre­sented by a Mighty Mes­sen­ger of ex­pe­ri­en­tial sur­vival in the first sys­tem re­bel­lion in the uni­verses of time now at­tached to the super­uni­verse gov­ern­ment of Or­von­ton and act­ing in this mat­ter by re­quest of Ga­briel of Sal­ving­ton.]