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Satan Allowed to
Live
Many
people have asked the question: Why did God allow
the devil to live after casting him out of
Heaven? Why didn’t God exterminate the devil
and his angels right away and protect the
universe from Lucifer’s rebellion? These are
great questions and the answers are just as
important. Consider the following:
- Before Lucifer rebelled,
the universe, with all its created
beings, did not understand the nature or
impact of sin. If God had immediately
annihilated Lucifer and one-third of his
angels, He would not been able to justify
His actions. If God had destroyed Lucifer
as soon as he sinned, surviving angels
would have concluded, “Whoa! God
does not tolerate angels having views
that are contrary to His.” If God
had immediately annihilated His
opposition before the knowledge of good
and evil had a chance to mature,
reasoning and highly intelligent angels
would not have loved and trusted God.
Angels (and mankind) should love God
because He is fair, reasonable, generous,
and forgiving, not because sudden death
is a consequence for disagreement. If God
had killed Lucifer and his followers
before the outcome of their rebellion
matured, the remaining angels would have
concluded that God was a bully. They
would have said, “He may claim to be
a God of love, but His actions just
proved that it is His way or death.”
- God has infinite wisdom
and perfect foreknowledge. His ways are
perfect. He foreknew that sin needed a
few thousand years to mature so that the
entire universe could understand its
deadly and horrible consequences. Bu
allowing the devil and his angels to
live, God gave the universe two
contracting governments to study –
one in Heaven (free of rebellion, full of
joy, happiness, and peace) and one on
Earth (full of sin, decadence, depravity,
selfishness, and death). By permitting
two governments to simultaneously exist,
intelligent beings can see the difference
for themselves. God does not have to
defend Himself.
- God gives the power of
choice to each created being. This means
that His subjects do not have to
obey Him, love Him, or respond to His
goodness and generosity. Lucifer and his
angels have proven that free will
actually exists. They chose to
rebel against God and His law. God gave
Adam and Eve the power of choice and they
also chose to disobey. For 6,000
years, sin has flourished on Earth.
History has proven over and over again
(with the rise and fall of numerous
civilizations) that human beings always
suffer in direct proportion to our
departure from the laws of God. Sin may
offer some temporary pleasure and
excitement, but it always extracts a
price that is far greater than its
benefits. Sin takes us farther than we
want to go and sin costs more than
we want to pay. No matter how well Satan
disguises sin, “the wages of sin
is death.” (Romans 6:23) God
foreknew that lawlessness would end in
death and His kingdom is established on
laws that prevent sorrow and death.
Created beings that rebel against God’s
laws are not really arguing with God’s
authority because created beings do not
have omnipotence. The argument with God
is over wisdom. Who knows best what the
endless corridors of eternity require
– the Creator of the created?
- The Father certainly
foreknew the consequences of allowing
Satan and his angels to live, so He
created a plan to save everyone who would
live on Earth. He loved the people of the
world so much that He gave us Jesus as
our atonement for sin. For no other
reason than love, Jesus was willing to
become man and die in our place so the
penalty for our sin could be paid! The
Godhead has suffered more and paid a
higher price for the existence of sin
than any human being will ever know!
Incidentally, and this is an important
point, God did not create a plan of
salvation for Lucifer and his angels
because they were confronted with the
truth many times yet remained willful and
defiant, and chose to reject God’s
counsel. Without question, Lucifer and
his angels committed the unpardonable
sin. (Matthew 12:31,32)
When
these four issues are synthesized, we can see why
God did not immediately destroy Lucifer and his
rebellious followers. The conflict between Christ
and Lucifer over mankind has been ongoing for
thousands of years. Today, Jesus and Lucifer are
striving to win the affections of people. Look
around. Good is being overcome with evil and this
contest will reach a climax during the Great
Tribulation.
A Demon with
Many Titles
The
devil is called by a variety of names in the
Bible. Daniel calls him a stern-faced king.
(Daniel 8:23) Ezekiel calls him the ruler of
Tyre. (Ezekiel 28:2) Isaiah calls him the king of
Babylon. (Isaiah 14:4) Paul calls him the man of
lawlessness. (2 Thessalonians 2:3) John calls him
an enormous red dragon (Revelation 12:3), the
beast that comes up from the Abyss (Revelation
11:7), a beast having two horns (Revelation
13:11), the false prophet (Revelation 16:13), and
the angel king of the Abyss (Revelation 9:11).
God
gave Lucifer various titles for several reasons.
Here are two: First, the devil is invisible and
different titles help us understand his vast
capabilities. Second, God gives the devil various
titles to undercut the devil’s deceptions!
For example, when the devil physically appears on
Earth, he will gloriously masquerade as Almighty
God. His deception will be so convincing that it
could deceive the “very elect” if that
were possible. (Mark 13:22) Notice how the title,
“the man of lawlessness,” describes the
behavior of Lucifer after he appears. Lucifer
will do as he pleases and no one can stop him.
The laws of mankind will mean nothing to him. The
devil will create and enforce many laws that will
have no purpose but angst and destruction. God
gave Bible writers all of Lucifer’s titles
and each one speaks volumes about Lucifer’s
character, power, and ways
Babylon,
the Leopard-like Beast
“And
I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten
horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his
horns, and on each had a blasphemous name. The
beast I saw resembled a leopard, but
had the feet of a bear and a mouth like that of a
lion. The [great red] dragon gave the
beast his power and his throne and great
authority. One of the heads of the beast seemed
to have a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had
been healed. The whole
world was astonished and followed the beast.”
(Revelation 13”1=3, italics and
insertion mine)
Ever
since the book of Revelation was written, there
has been a great deal of speculation about the
identity of the leopard-like beast. This beast
has numerous specifications and resolving each
one takes more than time and effort. Valid
results require a valid set of rules. If a person
just wants to accept any interpretation that
seems reasonable, there are to many
interpretations from which to choose. However,
there is one solution to the problem of
identifying this beast, and to get to the truth,
we need to address and correctly resolve each
specification.
To
make this presentation as simple as possible, I
have decided to identify the leopard-like beast
first so you can see how each specification
contributes to the conclusion as we proceed. The
leopard-like beast will be a religious
authority; a crisis government that religious
and political leaders of the world will create
shortly after the Great Tribulation begins. The
leaders will create this beast of a government to
mediate between God and man.
When
the censer in Revelation 8:5 is cast down and the
first four trumpets fall on the world in rapid
succession, it is a gross understatement to say
that the survivors will be overwhelmed and
terrified. The destruction of thousands of cities
and 1.75 billion people is unimaginable –
incomprehensible. As the survivors survey the
damage, almost everyone will concede that God is
angry with this world because mankind is far more
degenerate and decadent than we should be. We
live on a degenerate and decadent planet, but
most people do not know that God’s wrath has
been overdue since 1994 when the Jubilee Calendar
ended. We have been living on borrowed
time. God’s wrath is stirred when He sees
children abused, woman raped, people robbed,
elderly cheated out of their savings, addicts
agonizing for more drugs, endless violence, and
bloodshed.
The
chapter on the seven trumpets showed that God has
many objectives for His judgments. God wants
everyone to know about Jesus and His salvation.
God will judge the living and terminate the sin
problem. God will wipe the universe clean and
start over. His plans are written in the books of
Daniel and Revelation. Unfortunately, few people
really want to understand the ways of God. The
mysteries of apocalyptic prophecy are often
ignored because they take too much work and many
people think, “they do not pertain to
salvation.” Nevertheless, once the world
sees the awesome destruction caused by God’s
wrath (the first four trumpets), everyone on
Earth will be traumatized. What does it say about
man’s degeneracy when a God of love has to
destroy a third of the planet and twenty-five
percent of its inhabitants to get the undivided
attention of the survivors?
God’s
wrath will bring the religious and the political
leaders of the world together and for the first
time since the flood in Noah’s day, this
gathering will be a humble meeting. God’s
judgments will embarrass them because these
events will force the leaders of the world to
recognize the higher power and a reality of a
living God who holds everyone accountable for his
actions. Together, the leaders of the world will
work out a solution to appease God’s anger.
Their solution will be to create the leopard-like
beast. The leopard-like beast will be a religious
authority, designed to carry out a global
mandate: Appease God so that His wrath will
cease. While the idea of appeasing God’s
wrath may sound appropriate, the process will be
impossible from the start because our world is so
religiously diverse. Nevertheless, religious
leaders will conclude that God’s anger can
be stopped if decadence and corruption can be
eliminated. The leopard-like beast will have the
authority to determine for each nation the best
process for outlawing decadence and corruption,
and the political leaders of the world will
voluntarily submit to the demands of the beast.
At first, almost everyone will cooperate with the
leopard-like beast because no one wants to
experience more of God’s wrath, but this is
only the beginning of the story and a lot of
tribulation….
Several
years ago, I had the opportunity to visit an
automobile manufacturing plant in Dayton, Ohio.
It was an unforgettable experience. I was a kid
in a candy store. As I walked through the huge
building that covered thirty acres, I saw all
kinds of interesting parts and pieces that would
eventually come together to make up an
automobile. I was overwhelmed, but one thing that
most astonished me was the amount of coordination
and communication that goes into the construction
of each vehicle. Items of all kinds – tires,
engines, seats, horns, carpets, tail pipes, and
headlights – were moving around on tracks
and as each moving chassis reached another
assembly station, the necessary parts for that
vehicle arrived at that station. It was so
interesting how the correct items arrived just in
time to put that item on the chassis! I have
shared this experience with you because I want
you to consider a parallel. At the end of our
tour, our tour guide told us that enough parts
were in the building at any given time to build
approximately 100 vehicles, even though there was
only one completed vehicle in the building at any
given time. Similarly, all of the parts necessary
to create the leopard-like beast exist on Earth
today, but the beast itself has not been
assembled. The appointed time for assembly does
not arrive until the fourth trumpet.
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