Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 54
PROBLEMS OF THE LUCIFER REBELLION
1. Sin is potential in all realms where imperfect beings are endowed with the ability to choose between good and evil. The deliberate choice of evil constitutes sin; the willful rejection of truth is error; the persistent pursuit of sin and error is iniquity.
2. Of all the perplexing problems growing out of the Lucifer rebellion, none has occasioned more difficulty than the failure of immature evolutionary mortals to distinguish between true and false liberty. True liberty is the quest of the ages and the reward of evolutionary progress... True liberty is progressively related to reality and is ever regardful of social equity, cosmic fairness, universe fraternity, and divine obligation..
3. Unbridled self‑will and unregulated self‑expression equal unmitigated selfishness, the acme of ungodliness. Liberty without the associated and ever‑increasing conquest of self is a figment of egoistic mortal imagination ... License masquerading in the garments of liberty is the forerunner of abject bondage.
4. True liberty is the associate of genuine self‑respect; false liberty is the consort of self‑admiration. True liberty is the fruit of self‑control; false liberty, the assumption of self‑assertion... There is no error greater than that species of self‑deception which leads intelligent beings to crave the exercise of power over other beings for the purpose of depriving these persons of their natural liberties ... Only true and genuine liberty is compatible with the reign of love and the ministry of mercy.
5. Lucifer's folly was the attempt to do the nondoable, to short‑circuit time in an experiential universe. Lucifer's crime was the attempted creative disenfranchisement of every personality in Satania... In short, what God had given men and angels Lucifer would have taken away from them, that is, the divine privilege of participating in the creation of their own destinies and of the destiny of this local ‑system of inhabited worlds.
6. This liberty to choose for oneself is an endowment of the Supreme Rulers, and they will not permit any being or group of beings to deprive a single personality in the wide universe of this divinely bestowed liberty.
7. Of the many reasons known to me as to why Lucifer and his confederates were not sooner interned or adjudicated, I am permitted to recite the following:
1. Mercy requires that every wrongdoer have sufficient time in which to formulate a deliberate and fully chosen attitude regarding his evil thoughts and sinful acts.
2. Supreme justice is dominated by a Father's love; therefore will justice never destroy that which mercy can save...
3. It is evident that Immanuel counseled Michael to remain aloof from the rebels and allow rebellion to pursue a natural course of self‑obliteration...
8. The Faithful of Days on Edentia advised the Constellation Fathers to allow the rebels free course to the end that all sympathy for these evildoers should be the sooner uprooted in the hearts of every present and future citizen of Norlatiadek...
9. On Jerusem the personal representative of the Supreme Executive of Orvonton counseled Gabriel.. .that... To keep open the Paradise doors of ascension to the beings of Norlatiadek, it was necessary to provide for the full development of rebellion and to insure the complete determination of attitude on the part of all beings in any way concerned therewith.
10. The Divine Minister of Salvington issued as her third independent proclamation a mandate directing that nothing be done to half cure, cowardly suppress, or otherwise hide the hideous visage of rebels and rebellion...
11. An emergency council of ex‑mortals consisting of Mighty Messengers, glorified mortals who had had. personal experience with like situations... advised Gabriel that at least three times the number of beings would be led astray if arbitrary or summary methods of suppression were attempted
12. The relative lapse of time from the viewpoint of Uversa, where the litigation is pending, could be indicated by saying that the crime of Lucifer was being brought to trial within two and a half seconds of its commission. From the Paradise viewpoint the adjudication is simultaneous with the enactment.
13. In all their dealings with intelligent beings, both the Creator Son and. his Paradise Father are love dominated.
14. 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.
15. At first the Lucifer upheaval appeared to be an unmitigated calamity to the system and to the universe. Gradually benefits began to accrue ... The Meichizedeks now teach that the good resulting from the Satania rebellion is more than a thousand times the sum of all the evil. But 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.
16. As 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.
Discussion Questions
1. Should we allow more time for evil to work its own destruction?
2. Why would more damage be done if the rebellion were not given time for full expression?
3. Why is the human concept to time an inadequate measure of divine mercy and justice?
4. Why is the good resulting from the Lucifer rebellion much greater than its evil?
5. How can the philosophy of this Mighty Messenger be applied to our treatment of criminals?
6. Are the reasons given for the wisdom of delay in adjudicating the Lucifer rebellion satisfying?
7. Why was Lucifer's action an attempt to take away the privilege of participating in our own destiny?
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The Urantia Book Fellowship