We continue with the subject of,

The Millennium and the End of Sin

Having in our previous posts discussed where Adventist believe believers will be during the millennium and what they believe they will be doing as well as where they believe the rest of humanity are during this time (dead and in their graves) we would now like to move on to our next issue.

Where do Adventist believe Satan will be during this time?

Our friends say:

While believers are in heaven, Satan is alone and bound to the broken earth for those 1,000 years (Revelation 20:2, 5). Satan gets a cosmic time-out from God, allowing him one last chance to repent and acknowledge God power and goodness.

In Revelation 20 we also learn that the wicked who had died throughout history and those who were killed at the Second Coming of Christ are resurrected at the end of the 1,000 years. At that time, Satan tries to mobilize them to war against God.

However, over the past millennium the saints have already seen that God’s judgement is right, so the attempt at war will be fruitless. God will then cleanse the earth with fire from heaven (Revelation 20:7-10).

Before we address these statements, we should first like to go back to another one of their comments which we had not previously addressed as it did not specifically pertain to the first two issues we were looking at, but to this one. 

Adventist state:

“Before the earth was created, sin had its origins in the angel Lucifer’s heart. He became jealous of God’s sovereignty and he questioned God’s judgement. He even started a war in heaven (Revelation 12) when he indulged the thought that he could be better than God. Lucifer, now called Satan, started the Great Controversy—a spiritual war of good versus evil.”

“Before the earth was created, sin had its origins in the angel Lucifer’s heart.”

This is true to an extent, in that the seed of pride and ambition may have begun here, no doubt due to his high position as one of the first angelic beings created, one of the “morning stars” (Job 38:7; Rev. 22:16), a “covering angel” (Ezek. 28:14, 16, a caretaker or protector), but Satan had not yet actually sinned. This would not take place until AFTER the earth was created, after the arrival of man.

Ambition is good, but only when it is based on humility, not on selfish ambition for greatness or prominence, but on a loving ambition to serve the Lord. Nevertheless, it was by permitting pride and ambition to gain control of his heart that Satan became an opponent of God and of righteousness.

Nothing in the Scriptures indicates that Satan assumed any evil disposition or opposition to the Almighty prior to his seduction of our first parents. This was the time of Satan’s temptation and fall into sin.

So, what then was the first sin that led to the fall of Satan?

Satan’s sin happened when he aspired to be LIKE the Most High, (NOT to be better than the Most High as is suggested by our Adventist friends, but to be like or similar to him). “Lucifer aspired to be like the Most High. He wanted a dominion like the Most High. We may suppose that this entering of pride into the heart of Satan was a gradual thing. No doubt our heavenly Father did everything possible to bring Lucifer back into the right way. However, the time came when Lucifer demonstrated that the pride and sin could not be separated from himself.

Our heavenly Father allowed Satan to manifest outwardly what was in his heart in the garden of Eden. The newly created man and woman (Adam and Eve) had the power of procreation — a power not possessed by spirit beings. Satan reasoned that if he could gain control of Adam and Eve, he could have a dominion like the Most High God. There in the garden of Eden, it was made manifest outwardly that the sin could not be separated from Lucifer the sinner.”

“Satan’s actual sin and subsequent fall from heaven took place when he sinned a sin—when he tempted Eve and lied to her.

“…You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God…You were anointed as a guardian cherub for so I ordained you… You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness (sin) was found in you.” (Ezek 28:12-15 NIV)

The principle is that sinning a sin is different from just having an evil thought go through the mind. Satan sinned when he told Eve she would not die. These thoughts were in his mind before he committed the act, but the act was the sin.”

“Satan desired to be worshiped, and so he devised a scheme to drive a wedge between God and Adam. This is the point at which Satan fell from his exalted position in glory. By abusing his God-ordained privilege and responsibility, he lost his position of authority in the garden (as a “covering angel”) and from that time forward, he fell from the heavenly courts— and was confined to earth’s atmosphere.

All of the misery and death upon humanity goes back to this point at which our first parents believed and acted upon Satan’s first lie: “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden … lest ye die? And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die…” (Gen 3:1-4)

At this point Satan became a murderer, for his deception caused Adam and his entire race to be condemned to death.”

We will continue with what our Adventist friends had to say in our next post.