Introduction
The Bible’s story of Lucifer is known to most Christians, but what might its deeper lessons be if we widen the context to include a universe that is teeming with life? In the book of Isaiah we read that Lucifer “weakened”, or “laid low” the nations. In other words, there was a connection between Lucifer and the nations of our world. Is it so hard to imagine that Lucifer, the “Son of the Morning” reigned over many worlds, and his rebellion had a profound effect?
It’s a big universe out there – so if it’s inhabited, there must be a universe-wide government in which our Father-God’s will reigns supreme. If Lucifer held a high position of responsibility over a subset of the universe; each world with a planetary leader, all looking to Lucifer for wisdom and guidance, how would the rebellion affect these planetary leaders? If your bright and brilliant leader announces a new plan of administration that denies the Father’s established patterns, yet appeals to your consciousness of unity as a divine value; what do you do? Let’s examine the core weaknesses of Lucifer’s ideas, and challenge his ideas of liberty and equality.
To facilitate comprehension of word definitions as they might be thought of in the larger context, a short glossary has been provided at the end.
Lucifer
A very long time ago, the Creator of our universe made all the different types of creatures and personalities. It was a creation of plants, animals, humans, angels, and many others – high and low. The highest ones were very high in the heavens, and the lowest ones were very low on the worlds, but they all fit into the heavenly pattern-plan.
One of the most important parts of the pattern-plan is participation. Our Father-God gifts his children with as many of his jobs as he can so we can all join him in the work of his creation. There are a lot of different jobs, and all the many kinds of beings on the many different levels each have something special to do.
Lucifer was one of the higher types of beings on the higher levels of existence – much higher than the angels. He was one of the smartest, strongest leaders of his kind, and was trusted to rule over a system of many worlds from his home in the high places of heaven. Many looked up to him with awe and wonder. It seemed like nothing could ever go wrong with this being of such great brightness and beauty.
But talent, beauty, and having important jobs comes with a terrible danger – the danger of self-love.
Lucifer started thinking about how great he was. He became frustrated with following the laws of the universe because he loved his thoughts more than the laws and his relationships with others. Worst of all, his relationship with our Father-God was fading to the back of his mind.
It felt good to think to himself:
“I am brighter than all!”
“Everyone should listen to me, because I am so bright!”
“I’m obviously much more important than anyone else!”
Ever so slowly, the delicious self-love poisoned his mind.
Lucifer kept taking care of his worlds as they whirled through space, but he was distracted by his thoughts of self-importance. Although they made him feel good about himself, the thoughts of his strength and greatness were actually slowing him down and making him weaker. He forgot that we can only do important work if we do not become self-important; we can do several things as easily as one if we leave ourselves out.
As his pride of self grew stronger it tricked him into thinking he could do no wrong – because he was so bright! He believed his own lies about his self-importance over and over again – a bad habit. Finally, Lucifer lost his battle against himself and began to purposely do what he knew was wrong – it would be too embarrassing to turn back now!
Lucifer had an assistant who was also a very smart personality – Satan. Satan was charged with the welfare of some of Lucifer’s worlds.
Lucifer told Satan his thoughts about rebellion, and worked hard to convince him to join.
“Satan, we don’t need to live under the universe laws of reality. All we need to do is declare that they don’t apply to us. Come and join me and live with complete freedom!”
“The universe Father does not really exist. He is just a made-up story! You have power in yourself to live forever. It happens automatically!”
“Your self is the most important thing. There is no need to follow the will of a God who is not real! Join the cause of unlimited LIBERTY!”
Satan resisted at first, but eventually Lucifer convinced him to support the rebellion.
One day, there was a big universe meeting at the headquarters world on the sea of glass. Satan made the announcement of rebellion.
“We reject the government of the Creator!”
“Lucifer is the God of liberty – a friend of men and angels!”
“Today we will create a new government of liberty and freedom!”
Lucifer’s rebellion manifesto said that all levels of beings should take charge of themselves, and reject the higher beings who adhered to Father-God’s law. He told all the worlds under his care that they must leave the Creator’s federation and look only to him as their greatest leader. It was a message of selfishness that disconnected everyone who believed it from the universe as a whole. He taught that each world should only think about what’s good for their own world, and forget about what’s good for the universe.
There was war in heaven, but not the kind of war you might be thinking of. This was a war of ideas, not guns, bombs, or swords – but it was still very terrible and very real. With wars on our world you can lose this, your first life. But, with war in heaven you can lose all your future life and disappear forever!
The great Commander of the loyal angels, Gabriel, led the fight against the message of Lucifer in a nearby amphitheater. The undecided went back and forth to compare Lucifer’s teaching with Gabriel’s.
The battle was long, but everyone had to be given a chance to decide. The universe Father does not force us to do what’s right – we are free to choose because one of the gifts of the creator was free will – each person could choose what to think, to be aware of the choices being made in the mind. The Father allowed each person to make up his/her own mind about what Lucifer said. Lucifer was not stopped and he and Satan were allowed to try to convince everyone they met about their plan. It appealed to a lot of mortals and angels because so many seemed to like having the power of free will to choose to do what they wanted to do, regardless of the laws of the Universe.
People would talk to each other: “What do you think about his war in Heaven? I like the idea of freedom – being able to do whatever I want to do. I get tired of always having to think about others and what they want.”
Angels would argue with each other: “How can Lucifer, such a beautiful and brilliant being, be wrong? Surely someone so powerful must be right!”
Many angels were lost because they could not imagine that a being as bright as Lucifer could be wrong, and many world leaders from Lucifer’s system agreed to break their world away from the Father’s universe federation and follow the Lucifer rebellion. The leader of our young world chose to join the rebellion, spreading confusion far and wide among our early people of long ago.
But there were also many who stayed loyal to the Creator, and bravely battled against the evil tide of
the Lucifer rebellion.
The war in heaven raged on for a long time, until the universe authorities decided it was time to replace Lucifer as ruler of his system of worlds. He lost many of his powers of authority, but he was still free to try and spread his message of selfishness in any way he could. Lucifer and his followers roamed the worlds for many thousands of years, but nobody else would join them.
Jesus’ triumphant life as a human on our world won the final battle against Lucifer. He bound him in sure chains of darkness. The one-time “son of the morning” is now captive on the prison worlds. No one in all the universe has cared to visit him since, and his rebellion has come to a shameful end.
Everyone awaits the great day of his judgment. He will become as though he had not been – extinguished in an instant flash of annihilation.
Lessons from the Lucifer Rebellion
As human beings, it can be hard for us to understand how evil works. For evil to work, it must hide inside things that seem good. If they seem good we might not think too hard about them. If evil starts by showing its ugly face, everyone just gets scared away. The trick is to make us think we’re doing something good, until it’s too late to stop without getting embarrassed about admitting we were wrong.
Did you ever tell a lie to protect someone, or steal to give to someone? Perhaps you had to tell more lies or keep stealing to avoid being caught. It’s a trap we can easily get stuck in if we don’t think carefully about what we choose to do.
There’s also the trap of prideful self-love. Self-love starts with admiring oneself, and thinking that you’re better than everyone else. And when you think you’re better than everyone else, you start thinking your ideas are the best too. You don’t want to listen to other people or work as a team because you think “everyone else is stupid” and “everyone should do things MY way”. You fall in love with your ideas and you don’t want to listen to anyone else’s ideas. It’s like a disease except that it’s in your thoughts, not your body, and it makes you feel good instead of sick.
Lucifer’s real teachings were about self-love. But when you think about someone who is prideful, and in love with themselves, that doesn’t sound good to your ears because you know it’s wrong. It feels good to have self-love, but it doesn’t sound good when you say it. Lucifer had to cover the ugly sound of self-love with something that sounds good. So, he used a special word that has a very good sound – liberty.
The word “liberty” makes people think of things that can be good, like freedom. His teaching was like a piece of candy that has delicious self-love poison on the inside, with a pretty wrapper that says “Liberty”. But Lucifer’s idea of liberty was a false, fake, and phony liberty.
True liberty is what we earn after we learn self-respect and self-control. As we free ourselves from our
“self” boss that wants to be selfish, we can be free to enjoy the true liberty of doing good for others,
even all the universe. We can join the creative universe pattern-plan of sharing. False liberty is the idea
that everyone should be free to do what they feel like doing. This false liberty can also be called license.
If you have a license to do something it means you are allowed to do it, or have a right to do it. If you
have a license to drive a car it means you have the right to drive a car. If (you think) you have the “right”
to do what makes you feel good, it’s like thinking you have a very special license.
What happens when everyone thinks they should do what they want? When different people want
different things, and they both think they should have it, they fight with each other and try to control
one another. Lucifer also used another special word that sounds good – equality. The word “equality”
makes people think of good things like fairness and respect. We think about the things that are the
same about everyone. But under the Lucifer ideas of equality the thing that’s the same is that everyone
thinks they have a special license to do what they want. It’s a fake kind of freedom that makes other people slaves to your wants.
The equality teaching destroys the hierarchy of the universe pattern-plan of sharing, by forcing everyone’s attention on sameness and equality. In this idea, everything gets squashed down flat. Nothing is better than anything else, and nobody can rise higher than anyone else because we’re all stuck in a pancake-flat value universe. You can’t earn a higher level if all levels are equal.
If you complete the long journey to perfection, you can be truly equal with others who have also earned perfection. But until then, we must be patient with how slowly our Father-God’s plans sometimes move. Different levels are part of the big plan. The only way we can think about equality on the level we live on right now, is to understand that we are all equally loved children of the universe father – equally loved, but not born equal or the same.
Lucifer had great power in the high places of heaven, but he was weak in the battle against himself. If you can learn to be good at self-control, you can be stronger within than Lucifer was. You might think you don’t matter because you’re so small in a big, big universe. But the Father loves you just as much as if you were his only child. Lucifer might seem so much bigger than you, but always remember that you have something very important that he didn’t – the still, small voice of our Father-God that says “this is the way”.
Glossary
Participation – Joining in and sharing the activity. For example, the Father wants his creatures to
participate as much as possible in the activity of building his creation.
Pride – Thoughts of self-glorification. Self-admiring feelings of greatness.
Liberty – Freedom to choose the way to think and act. True liberty is freedom from the desire to think
and act selfishly.
License – In this story, license is the idea that you have permission to do anything you desire. This is an
example of false liberty. It’s a level of freedom that ends with no freedom because you become a slave
to your desires.
Hierarchy – A system that has different levels, with authority that flows from the top. Lucifer wanted to
destroy the hierarchy of the universe government, and tell everyone to be their own authority.
Federation – When smaller groups join a larger group, and accept the central authority of the larger
group. This is different from a confederation which has a weak central authority.
Authorities – Those in charge, with the power to enforce laws. Our freedom is limited by the
authorities.
Equality – When one thing has the exact same value as another thing, but is not necessarily the same.
For example, we have equality under the Father’s love, but we are not the same.
Annihilation – Total destruction. Lucifer waits for the day when he will be totally destroyed, and will no
longer exist.