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Once, in a time long before the Genesis creation on earth, Lucifer was a perfect, free-willed angel, who ruled in an ‘”Eden” somewhere on earth, according to Ezek. 28 and other portions of Scripture. He was such a mighty ruler that he decided to test his power against God. Satan’s kingdom in this mystical “Eden” was not enough any more. He became dissatisfied with what he had. As billions of his followers throughout the ages, Satan wanted to own, experience and control more than what God had intended. He desired to become a god, and take the place of God. “You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you…” Ezekiel wrote in 28:15-17. “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty, you have corrupted your wisdom by reason of your brightness…” Some have produced a terrible fallacy from this, alleging that God is the Author of evil. But God did not create Satan to be evil and to do evil. According to the full context of Scripture, God created everything - Lucifer especially - totally perfect, (Gen. 1:31 and in Ezek. 28:15-17.) However, God created the angels to be free-willed beings with highly intelligent thought-processes. The Biblical assumption that Satan wilfully decided not to remain holy and subjected to God does not imply that God was responsible for Satan’s fall, just as God was definitely not responsible for mankind’s fall in the Garden of Eden. Ezekiel wrote in chapter 28 that this “beautiful cherub” was “created perfectly”, but “he [himself] corrupted his wisdom” through his own iniquity. This proves that God created Satan as an ingenious, imaginative being, and quite capable of corrupting the great wisdom that God had entrusted to him. James also wrote in 1:13-17: “Let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God is incapable of being tempted by what is evil and He Himself tempts no one, but everyone is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust… Every good and perfect gift is from above…” Satan’s sin is actually a state, position or place he chose for himself. The sin that Satan intentionally thought up and executed against God does not, as such, consist of particular sins like stealing or lying, although sin was born from the seed of the devil’s discontent, pride and rebellion. The Greek word hamartia, used to describe sin, means ‘from sin’ or ‘from the being of sin’, and hamartanö means ‘to miss the mark and not to share in the prize’: Jn. 8:44; Rom. 3:23. The word ‘sin’ actually means a state-, position- or place of sin; from which particular sins like idolatry, disobedience, etc. flow. Satan placed himself in this position of hatred and disobedience towards God and became a wicked might with an indescribable power of endurance. A self-willed force filled with dimensions so dark and deep that they are mainly inconceivable to humans: Rev. 13. To this day Satan remains an overflowing volume of evil that never regrets his nature of destruction, as he is in a place- or position of sin which will never again turn to anything that is good: Jn. 8:44; 10:10; Rev. 20:10. Satan’s mighty perimeters are only stayed by God’s almighty hand: 2 Ths. 2:6,8. That dreadful day when the beautiful, mighty cherub conceived and executed his act of rebellion against the almighty God, he became the personification of sin. Satan is sin and sin is Satan: 2 Ths. 2:3-13; 2 Cor 11:14, 13-15. He knows all that is good, because he was once the holy angel and he knows all that is bad, because he deliberately became the embodiment of evil. The problem is that he hardly ever manifests himself as totally evil. Though he never does any good without the intention of using it for bad, he usually acts the part of the holy angel. Satan is a spiritual being. When he became the embodiment of evil in prehistoric Eden, sin only existed on the spiritual level inside of him. Subsequently, he wanted to extend his might and domain. He wanted God and all the other angels to submit to his evil authority. He wanted to rule the universe. “For you said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation… I will be like the Most High.” - Isa. 14:13-14. To execute this rebellion, Satan convinced a third of the angels to commit mutiny against God. John described this conflict in Rev. 12:7-9: “There was war in heaven: Michael, [the commander of God’s angelic armies: Dan. 10:13; Jude 9], and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. The great dragon, that old serpent called the devil and Satan, which deceives the whole world, was cast out into the earth… His tail drew a third of the angels from heaven, and cast them to the earth…” If we ignore the fact that the Bible was not written entirely chronologically, one could understand why some denominations believe that Rev. 12 describes an angelic war that will only culminate at the end of time. But Rev. 12 actually describes Satan’s initial fall from heaven, as Rev. 20:10 explicitly states that with the last battle Satan “will be cast into the lake of fire”, not onto the earth. Satan and his demons will never be cast out of heaven again; they were chucked out of God’s holy city in an age before time. Their next and final destination will be the lake of fire. It seems that the battle of Rev. 12 was fought in a time before Genesis, for in Genesis we already know the old serpent of Rev. 12:9 as the devil and Satan. One thing we can never doubt: the archangel Michael and his armies had no difficulty in casting Satan and his demons out of heaven: Lu. 10:18. God was unshakable. Unmoveable. Unstoppable. Even so, His holy kingdom of light, peace and righteousness was divided between good and evil. In that prehistoric day wickedness was born. Darkness and obscurity were brought into being. Violence, separation, expulsion and punishment took form. Since that dreadful day, God’s creation is subjected to the destruction of the evil one, as he cannot accomplish anything against the Most High God Himself. The devil lives throughout all the millennia to torture, bully and humiliate the defenceless, and to maim and slaughter the mute and the weak: Jn. 10:10.
HELL WAS MADEIt was necessary for God to restrict the liberty of these rebels who can move at immeasurable speed and do mighty deeds of evil. It is not clear whether the devil had a way of escape from his dreadful decision to “corrupt his own wisdom”, but we know that Satan and his followers, now called demons, are already judged. Some are already being punished, others are still free to spread their poison and to inject their evil everywhere on earth: 2 Pet. 2:4. They are the sworn adversaries of all creation, especially of humankind, and they are constantly at war with us: 1 Pet. 5:8; Eph. 6:11-18. God did not make the pit of fire for His humans, but for the devil and his demons: Mt. 25:41. But should humankind choose to embrace the lies and ways of the evil one, they will certainly accompany him to his final destination of eternal torment. God did not strip the devil of his might and power. God only demoted him from his holy position to his current state of inescapable darkness and dread, where his only prospect for the future is eternal punishment in the lake of fire: Rev. 19:20. The Bible does not explain why God did not incarcerate the devil and all his demons: 2 Ths. 2:8; Rev. 13:13-14; 2 Pt. 2:4. Maybe Satan dared God to prove that, if He had other creatures that were able to choose Him willingly, they would all love the devil’s darkness more than God’s light. This is mere speculation. A Scriptural fact is that God gave all of His spiritual- and mortal creatures a free will with their intellect. God does not wish to violate that will: Deut. 30:19; Jn. 1:11-13; 1 Cor. 14:32-33. In the end He will punish all sin and He has a million ways to persuade us to rather do good, but generally speaking, God will not actively prevent our wrong decisions and actions: 2 Pet. 3:9-10; Jn. 16:13; Jn. 1:12-13; Heb. 1:14; Rom. 6:23. If God diminishes the ability of His beings to make their own choices, He changes them into robots. If He strips them of their free will, He enslaves them. God never intended to be honoured by the dead, or to be served by unwilling slaves: Mt. 22:32; Rom. 8:14-15; Heb. 2:14-15. The fact that He endowed His creatures with a free will and intellect, greatly clarifies the suffering and brokenness of our divided earth: Rom. 2:14-16; Jam. 1:13-17. God allows us humans to do whatever we choose, be it good or evil, although He will not allow us to sin boundlessly, as our wrong decisions always affect others as well: Mt. 23:32-33; 2 Pet. 2:2-9. God even allows us to choose our own eternal destiny by exercising our free will: Deut. 30:19; Jn. 11:25-26. This emphasises our awesome responsibility to seek God’s will for every aspect of our lives – although, on this side of life, the other free-willed people with whom we share this divided earth are capable of causing us many problems and sorrows: 2 Ths. 3:2-3; 1 Pet. 4:12-13; 2 Tim. 3:12; Heb. 11:24-27. The devil chose his state of sin. Humankind also chooses either to live in sin or to serve God in the liberty of Christ: Deut. 30:19; Jn. 1:11-3; Rev. 22:17. The Holy Spirit “is not a spirit of slavery to put us once more in bondage to fear”. He leads us into all righteousness if we allow Him to do so; He “guides us into all truth” if we so choose, but He never forces us to love and follow Him: Jn. 16:13; Rom. 8:14-15; 1 Cor. 14:32-33. Pushing humans into submission and driving them along the path of life are the main characteristics of the unmerciful angel of sin. The just and righteous God must, however, always act justly and righteously. As a result, He will ultimately punish all non-repented sin, and He made hell for this purpose: Rev. 20:11-15. Hell is not merely a state of mind outside the presence of God, as some denominations allege. Hell is a spiritual prison filled with physical pain and sorrow. A supernatural “lake of fire” that can never be extinguished: Rev. 20:3,15. A “bottomless pit”, a place of “darkness in the fire”: Mt. 25:30. A place where they plead for mercy, “chew their tongues and gnash their teeth” in pain: Lu. 16:24. A deep dungeon without any way of escape, where no one can ever turn to God again. God made it clear in Heb. 9:27 that the concepts of reincarnation and purgatory are great deceptions: “It is appointed for all men ONCE to die, and AFTER THAT the certain judgment.” Those who wish to deny the reality of hell by abstracting it to a ‘state of mind’ or euphemising it to a mere annihilation that does not spell out everlasting agony, are born of the deceiver himself: 2 Cor. 11:12-15. Those who jeopardize for whatever reason their everlasting life in the presence of God and gamble in any way with eternity, deceive themselves into believing that hell is not a reality: Lu. 16:19-31. But it is. Hell is an everlasting certainty. Currently, God still allows Satan to mislead, tempt, torture and maim His creatures and His creation, but there will come a day of reckoning for him: Rev. 13. In that day Michael and his mighty angelic armies will bind Satan and all his followers, human and demon, to cast them all into the never-ending fire: Rev. 20:10. Discover the truth about God’s Holy Angels Fairies, Orbs, Angels and Other Phenomena Read the other discussions on the Home Page |
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