In Flutterbys I mention an important video about the Emergent Movement which is 2 hours in length. I try to post things that have more to do with our cultural aspects of life and things that I enjoy or have questions about in regards to this world on the Flutterbys blog. I hope many will take the time and effort to watch that admittedly LONG video, because it does have important information about things that are relevant to our times, and what is happening to the Church.
This Bible Treasures blog I created for thoughts and meditations on things more directly related to the scriptures themselves, mostly things that are uplifting...although at times I've posted things on Flutterbys that could just as well have been posted here...
I've been watching a series of videos (a few episodes I have already previously posted on Flutterbys, because they were about such things as paganism and Freemasonry). This series is called "Know Your Enemy". It is incredibly good (at least, every episode I've seen so far has been outstanding, although I haven't yet seen them all) that helped me to tie up alot of loose ends about things that I couldn't quite piece together.
The following video clip gives alot of insight into who Satan (or Lucifer) is, and how he operates. He gives some Bible verses and then shows us what they reveal about the first rebel, and how he was able to entice one third of the angels, and mankind, to join him in rebellion to God. I hope that I can help in the spread of these incredible sources of information that will assist us in being equipped for the battle that is yet before us.
This Bible Treasures blog I created for thoughts and meditations on things more directly related to the scriptures themselves, mostly things that are uplifting...although at times I've posted things on Flutterbys that could just as well have been posted here...
I've been watching a series of videos (a few episodes I have already previously posted on Flutterbys, because they were about such things as paganism and Freemasonry). This series is called "Know Your Enemy". It is incredibly good (at least, every episode I've seen so far has been outstanding, although I haven't yet seen them all) that helped me to tie up alot of loose ends about things that I couldn't quite piece together.
The following video clip gives alot of insight into who Satan (or Lucifer) is, and how he operates. He gives some Bible verses and then shows us what they reveal about the first rebel, and how he was able to entice one third of the angels, and mankind, to join him in rebellion to God. I hope that I can help in the spread of these incredible sources of information that will assist us in being equipped for the battle that is yet before us.
I've been thinking a lot about this Lucifer thing. Do you think that he really rebelled, God allowed/made him rebel or that he was created as a "good angel" to begin with at all.
ReplyDelete"Lucifer" is not found anywhere but in the Latin Vulgate (so I've read) and the translation is pretty iffy.
Everything about everything is pretty tricky, imo, because God made us all, and He knew how He made us...with a capacity to do what He knew would eventually come to pass, knowing our natures intimately because He formed it... Only He is perfect, not anything that He made, so whether satan chose to rebel or simply did what he was created to do, it still turned out the same. We know that he (satan) was beautiful, and arrogant, and self-promoting, and something that's brought out in this clip (that I'd heard before also, and when I first heard it, found very surprising, but it rings true) is the idea that satan didn't want to be above God (he's smart enough to know that could never happen) but he wanted to be equal to God.
DeleteThat "equal to God" is what gets me, because that is also the lie that he(satan) tells Eve, that she will become equal to God, and it is the same lie today that now the Emergent Church is pushing, softly, stealthily...and that anything that tries to do something that elevates one's self is in rebellion to God, which for me then makes sense when Jesus said that those who are greatest will be least and visa-versa.
I'm reading something (aside from that huge thing you shared which I haven't finished yet) that mentions that rebellion is the same as the sin of witchcraft. I hadn't seen that before (he gives the scripture where it's mentioned) although it makes sense. Still pondering all this...
http://mudpreacher.org/2009/01/19/authority-honor-and-rewards-in-the-age-of-snark/
Great question Ma. I'm not sure about this, but I think that Calvin would say that God created Satan as unfallen, as God creates nothing in a fallen state, but that Satan fell through his own fault, and God allowed him to fall just as He allowed man to fall. At any rate, I think that Jude 6 implies that the fallen angels were originally unfallen. I can't think of any passage in Scripture that explains exactly why Satan fell or any of the bad angels fell. If you know of one, please share it. Jude 6 speaks of the fallen angels departing from their proper place, but it doesn't say why they did so. It may be that Scripture doesn't have much to say on the subject of why some angels fell. I don't know enough about the subject.
DeleteHi Leslie,
DeleteHave you read and studied Ezekiel chapter 28 and Isaiah chapter 14? If you study them carefully you see that Isaiah begins by talking about "the King of Babylon" and then as it progresses leads into who he is actually talking about: Lucifer, and Ezekiel does something similar but in his case he does it through "the prince of Tyre"... however by verse 13 he's saying "thou has been in Eden the garden of God" so we see that Ezekiel isn't talking about an earthly ruler, but he's talking about the ruler behind the ruler, the force that is manipulating the man. Then verse 15 says:
Eze 28:15 Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.
hmmm....so the devil was perfect...but is anything that is created perfect? I thought God alone is perfect? I did have a blog entry where I shared what I think about that word perfect... one of the synonyms given by the Strong's concordance is the word complete, which I think is closer to what is meant here... and the word "till" (or until) reveals that there was a change that took place, he was right with God, and then he became something rebellious against God.
There's alot there to ponder, and maybe much of it won't make sense until we meet Jesus face to face. :)
True Leslie, about Jude 6, and that kind of put some holes in the theory that Satan was created "bad" and gives me pause on that. Sigh. I just don't know.
DeleteI do know that God is Sovereign and if He didn't want Satan to fall, he certainly wouldn't have.
Somewhere Satan is called a "murderer from the beginning" the beginning of what though?
And it is funny that we see Satan as being once an angel of light and then falling, but Paul says he transforms himself into an angel of light.
Somewhere along the way Satan put emphasis on self instead of on God, making himself equal with God....there was a shift of his priorities making himself his priority rather than serving God....and there's what you bring up too, Ma, that he "transforms himself"...so the fact is that HE ISN'T any longer, yet he can make it look like he is....and he's very good at it (evil and deception, so good at it that he makes himself look good)
DeleteI'm just talking through this from the things that we already know from the scriptures that are given...but these are the things that make me have such a sharp reaction against any kind of works-based religion that thinks or supposes that God can be impressed by what we do. Why do we do what we do? Do we do it to bring attention to ourselves and our own personal "goodness" and "religiousness"? Or is the good that we do truly something that is God working His good works through us? And then He alone gets the credit, so then if that is true, why would anyone want to draw attention to themselves over it to lift themselves in other people's eyes? When we do that (and I agree that I am guilty of doing this) we are being like Lucifer, and not like Jesus.
Oh, and "beginning of what"?
DeleteScience states that time has substance, so I believe it is also a created thing...but then, the angels also are created, so there was a "when" to their creation...and was it at the same moment that time was created? Good questions...I don't know the answer, but I know The One who does know. :)
Re Susan's question about Isaiah and Ezekiel - I haven't studied those particular passages very closely. About Ezekiel 28:15, I take it that the passage doesn't mean that Satan was originally created perfect in the sense of being incapable of sin, something that is true only of God and those whom we preserves from sin. Instead, I take it to mean that Satan was perfect in the sense that he was without sin when he was created - i.e., that he was created with no history of sin, that he may have been initially obedient for a time, and perhaps also that he was not prone to sin in the way that he was after he fell. Calvin held something like this about Adam and Eve. Although they might have fallen pretty quickly after being created (I think Luther said they fell within the same day they were created), they were obedient at least for a very short time; and, though they were not completely preserved from sin, they were not prone to sin as they were after the fall, which corrupted all their faculties.
DeleteCalvin and other Protestant thinkers, and probably some non-Protestants too, were concerned that if God made Adam and Eve as prone to sin after the fall as they were before the fall, then God would be somehow responsible for their sins. So, they taught that the fall made Adam and Eve and all their descendants much more prone to sin. Of course, this didn't mean - and in fact it could not mean - that Adam and Eve were originally incapable of sin. But it did mean for Calvin and others that they were far less prone to sin, as their faculties were in much better shape. I think that there is a lot of philosophical support for this reading. But, much more importantly, and as Calvin and others realize, this does seem to be exactly what Scripture itself teaches. The Bible clearly teaches that man was severely corrupted after the fall and more prone to sin. This means that Adam and Eve were originally less corrupted, but the Bible also makes it clear that Adam and Eve were not perfect and utterly immune to sin.
This is my reading anyways. You all have given me much reading to do!
Hi Leslie,
DeleteReading through what you state above makes much sense to me. I do agree that Adam and Eve did change after "the fall" and were much more prone to sinning, which was the reason they were from that point guarded from the tree of life. Wouldn't it be terrible to live eternally but to keep degenerating more and more (physically, morally, spiritually), as we see happening in each successive generation, and that with no end in sight? So it was God's mercy (again) which we perceive as punishment.
Likewise Paul in the book of Romans reveals how rejecting God leads to getting more and more perverse things that stem from being in rebellion to God...which we all were, but Jesus provides His mercy and grace and His Spirit, to bring us out of this treacherous place to the place He is preparing for us. We do not have to be consigned to eternity of getting worse and worse, because Jesus is the doorway out of that terrible curse.
About Satan being a murderer from the beginning - I think it is natural to take that to refer to the fall, but I guess we really don't know. It might refer to battles between good and evil angels, or it might mean that Satan fell right after creation. And it could mean something else. It is interesting how little Scripture tells us about Satan, demons, and angels. The Bible provides some information about these things, but it is extremely limited. I think that there may be a lesson in that for us - God tells us what we need to know, but not much more.
DeleteYour comments have all been very interesting. I am enjoying this thread, and learning a lot from it.
That "equal to God" is what gets me, because that is also the lie that he(satan) tells Eve, that she will become equal to God, and it is the same lie today that now the Emergent Church is pushing, softly, stealthily...and that anything that tries to do something that elevates one's self is in rebellion to God, which for me then makes sense when Jesus said that those who are greatest will be least and visa-versa.
ReplyDeleteThis is a huge topic and something I am currently studying, but I am behind, behind, behind! today and won't be able to catch up on anything. There's so much I need to catch up on. I believe the lie is much trickier than we first believed and that Satan has deceived the whole world.
Yes, Ma, when I was first saved, things were very "black or white" and everything seemed very cut and dried...but anymore I've noticed that things aren't always that cut and dried, and that we don't have it all figured out. I think when we think that way we can be in danger of not depending on the Lord for His guidance, because then we kinda don't need Him to tell us "go this way, or don't go that way" because we already know without His help...sheesh (I know I'm guilty of that more often than I'd like to think I am...the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak)...
DeleteAnd I hear ya about the "so much I need to catch up on", me too! If I live to be a hundred I still won't have it all done, but maybe by then I won't care as much, lol.
It is amazing to me how much like Adam and Eve we all are - even Christians! It is so easy for us to forget about God, to give up on His care, to turn away from others, and to retreat into ourselves, struggling to obtain our own peace and holiness and comfort through our own efforts without thought of God or anyone else. What is especially scary is that we can do all this while still being nice, pleasant, moral people. Sometimes I think that this is our greatest weakness - that while we are all hurting, it can be so easy for us to believe that we getting by alright through our own efforts, which seals us off from God and deludes us about our real condition. I think that Adam and Eve had no idea what their real condition was, or that they had somehow forgotten it, and that they had forgotten that they desperately needed God and that He was faithful, when they ate of the fruit. And this is precisely what we all continue to do today.
ReplyDeleteI think the problem in the Garden of Eden was that the devil wanted to lure Adam and Eve away from trusting God, and was successful in that endeavor. He did it by appealing to their desire, which they already had a desire before the fall, but God knew that their desire needed to be Himself, and the devil wanted it to be for their own higher knowledge, to be able to do it themselves by becoming like God themselves.
DeleteThe devil still uses that same lie with much success, in that respect you are right, we are still very much like Adam and Eve wanting to achieve greatness apart from God, and having a desire that is easily persuaded by the devil to go against what God knows is best for us. :(
I guess that there were many problems with Adam and Eve - the desire to be like God, and in particular to be deathless and powerful; the lack of trust in God; the belief that they can and should try to accomplish their own flourishing. I do see a lot of us in them. We are really strange creatures! I sometimes wonder what the angels must think of us.
DeleteThe funny thing is the Bible tells us they were very much like God, because they were created in His image...so satan, through his deception made them lust after something they already had, and in the process caused them to fall further away from it...they were deathless, and then they brought death to themselves through listening to that liar who said they wouldn't die when God told them honestly that they would, if they disobeyed Him. Then they tried to cover up...but leaves were not enough to cover their stain...blood paid the price, and all creation suffered to pay for the crime, and they saw this almost immediately and covered themselves with animal skins...and then to see your first born son kill your second born son! Grief upon grief and tragedy after tragedy for listening to a liar. What sorrow! What shame! :'o(
DeleteWe still are prone to want to follow our fleshy desires over and above wanting to truly desire God...when my flesh feels discomfort I want to pull away from that which causes the discomfort. If my vanity and pride are pinched by the truth, my natural tendency is to want to shield my pride and vanity from being "tarnished by the truth", but Jesus revealed that the truth sets us free (free from having to continually hold up a flimsy veneer of pretty that covers a whole lot of ugly, and having Jesus forgive us and be our shield in place of that flimsy and false veneer)...so if I try to protect my vanity, who am I listening to?
That is a powerful point Susan. I often get a bit frustrated when I hear pastors preach about Jesus' moral commands. I often hear them say things like "none of us like rules" without immediately adding that the rules are for our own good, and that by disobeying them we don't actually get what we really want, but in fact lose it. I think that this message needs to be proclaimed much more widely - God's moral commands aren't arbitrary, but rather He commands them for our good.
DeleteYes, that is part of the tragedy of Adam and Eve - by taking matters into their own hands and eating the fruit, they lost for themselves what they truly wanted, and this was something they really already had.
What a great thread! You should flag this discussion on your blog.