We continue with the subject of,

The Millennium and the End of Sin

The following excerpt comes from The Herald of Christ’s Kingdom – May 1930 and an article entitled, “When Satan Fell from Heaven” (Edited)

“I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.” — Luke 10:18.

“Those who have carefully studied the subject of Satan’s history and his relationship to creation on this earth have no difficulty in understanding the Bible explanation that the Adversary in his original creation was amongst the righteous, the perfect and holy, and that his deflection occurred as the result of the exercise of his own will in pursuing a course contrary to the will of God. Nothing in the Sacred Record teaches that God created Satan an evil, wicked opponent to Himself and His righteous government. Such a thought would be entirely inconsistent with the Divine character; for if God had constituted Satan an evil being in his original creation, then the responsibility for the reign of sin and death would rest largely with God Himself. Whereas the Scriptures most definitely affirm that Jehovah is an infinitely holy God. He can do no evil. More than this, His Word proclaims that all “His work is perfect.”

Another has remarked: “To be created perfect, and to remain perfect, are two entirely different propositions. God has not been pleased to create any of His intelligent creatures’ mere machines, incapable of change of motive and conduct. On the contrary, He has been pleased to create all the morally intelligent of His creatures after His own likeness or image, with perfect liberty to’ follow the right, the true, the pure, the good, according to His own example and precept; but with power also to alter or reverse their course in these respects, and to become rebels against His law of righteousness.”

Satan’s Expulsion from Heaven Long Ago

Whatever the process by which Satan left his holy state of harmony and fellowship with God, he has remained in opposition to God all along down the stream of time since; and as the Scriptures teach, he has been joined in his deflection and disobedience by others of the angelic host. (2 Pet. 2:4; Jude 6; Luke 8:30, 33.) This sympathy and assistance have no doubt given encouragement to the great Adversary and helped him to establish and fortify himself at the head of a great system and empire of evil, which at the set time in God’s Plan is doomed to overthrow and destruction.

Some endeavor to maintain that, Satan was not cast forth from heaven or the presence of God at the time of his rebellion, but that he has remained in heaven during all the ages since he became opponent of Jehovah, and that his casting does not take place till near the fall of his in the end of this dispensation.

Such as hold this view base their conclusions upon the vision of the apostle John recorded in the Twelfth Chapter of Revelation; of Michael, Christ, and the Satan. It is contended that St. John seeing this vision some sixty years after our Lord’s First Advent, proves that Satan was still in heaven and in contact with the heavenly court. It is urged that this war between Michael and the dragon is a prophetic picture of the events and developments that are associated with the overt Satan’s empire just prior to the establish the Kingdom of God; in other words, that the war in heaven is symbolic of the last great conflict between Christ and Satan at the end of this dispensation.

We do not believe that this view is found to be the Scriptural one when all the testimony of God’s Word is brought to bear upon the subject.

The Scriptures truly refer to the end of this dispensation when Satan is to be cast out, when he is to be bound and his empire overthrown, but none of these statements can refer to his being cast out of heaven or out of God’s presence. Satan’s empire is not in heaven. It is referred to as being connected merely with this earth; therefore, the fall, the casting out, the overthrow that Satan is to experience in the close of this dispensation has no reference to nor connection with the time when Satan originally became a rebel and was evicted and cast out from the heavenly court.

The words of Jesus should be sufficient on this point: “I saw Satan as lightning fall from heaven.” Surely our Lord in this language is explaining respecting His own knowledge, in His pre-human condition, of Satan, that there and then He was a witness of Satan’s fall from high glory and privilege and position to his present attitude of chief adversary of God. In other words, He beheld Satan as a bright one, cast forth from the heavenly realm. It matters not to us that we did not ourselves see Satan fall from his glorious condition; our Master did, and He has borne testimony not only respecting Satan’s personality, but also respecting his fall from brightness and honor.

There are other facts bearing upon this matter that would not admit of the idea of Satan as an adversary dwelling in heaven.

Facts which we have covered in our previous posts, and so will not repeat here.

The War between Michael and the Dragon

As for the Apocalyptic vision of the war between Christ and Satan, it is not a picture of the end of this Age, nor of the final overthrow of Satan’s kingdom. It is not a prophecy of the last great struggle between truth and error, light and darkness, by any means. Nothing is said about Satan being overthrown at the time of this symbolic war, nothing about Satan being restrained or bound at that time, nor is there anything recorded about Christ’s Kingdom superseding that of Satan at the time of the war.

To the contrary, the context shows (in Verses 12-17) that the Adversary after this war with Michael continues very active in the earth. The true interpretation of this vision of the war between Christ and Satan is found only as we examine and view it in connection with associated visions; for it is one of the links in the great chain of symbolic pictures, and if we attempt to lift the link out of its place in the chain and to fit it in somewhere else, we will be doing violence to this great symbolic prophecy as a whole.”

We will take another look at this from another article in our next post.