on the earth In the eyes of all who see you. “All who know you among the peoples Are appalled at you; You have become terrified And you will cease to be forever”. Satan was brought down by pride the enemy of humanity as well.
All of the nations of the earth were Satanically possessed and/or influenced by Satan. These were polytheistic nations, with many gods, worshipping things of the earth and the physical heavens. Many of the nations were astrologers and worshipped the heavenly bodies. This was by design. God constantly differentiated Israel from all other nations. Israel was His favored nation. He told Israel in Deuteronomy the following: “And beware not to lift up your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, and be drawn away and worship them and serve them, those which the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven” (Deut 4:15-19). What He was saying was that He had allotted to the other nations to be soothsayers, stargazers and astrologers but that Israel was not to adopt these practices. He said the heavens were reserved for the godless: Those which the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven”. Israel was to worship the one true God as soothsayers and astrologers could easily be led astray since Satan ruled all occult practices.
Thus is an overview of Satan from God’s perspective written centuries before Christ. It is obvious from the words that Satan had an influence far before the time of Christ’s appearance on the earth. As we read on we will discover the extent of his influence on the earth from the beginning to the present day. He was the originator of sin from the time of the Garden. He is responsible for the subjecting of creation to futility. He originated greed, pride, deception, violence, murder, the destroying the concept of family and all else that was good about mankind. He caused man to have a sin nature that was not present in the Garden. He created war and the devastation of the nations. People say “How could God cause such evil in the world?” The truth is that God did not create evil but man himself created evil by listening to the deceiver rather than God. It is said that “the wicked destroy themselves”. In combination with Satan mankind today is on the brink of total annihilation which is not God’s fault. Today we must enforce Christ’s victory over the devil one and put him away forever.
To elaborate on this subject, and to clarify, Christ’s resurrection defeated Satan as certainly as if he were thrown into the pit at that moment. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ was the defeat of the devil, among other things. However His victory must now be manifest, here on earth. In other words by faith we know he is a Satan is a defeated foe but we don’t yet see it with our physical eyes. God could at any time have wiped the devil from both earth and heaven. But He chose to do it another way. He wants to use His people to accomplish this for Him – His Sons, His Saints. He wants to humiliate Satan by defeating him through the agency of the weakest part of his creation - mankind. He has spoken the Word of Satan’s defeat but is up to the faithful to finish the job. Satan himself rages on the earth to prevent this but everything he does is not effective because God has already spoken the Word of his defeat and sent his Son to “crush the head of the serpent”. We, His believers, must appropriate what is a potential in the Spirit realm and make it a reality on the earth. And we must do it in a hurry. Matthew 24:21-22 says: “For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will. “Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect [chosen ones] those days will be cut short” (Mt 24:21-22). We are in a life or death struggle with the evil one but we know we are the winners because God, who is stronger that Satan, has predetermined it. But this does not make the battle any less lethal as we set about to put Satan into the pit of hell.
We will examine all aspects of Satan’s moving in the following pages so that we can fully know our battle and the adversary who opposes us. We must know our enemy. As Paul said: ” For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). It is a spiritual war in which we are engaged.
The Early History of Satan
The meaning of the Hebrew word Satan, when used as a proper name, is “the adversary” (Job 1:6–12; 2:1–7). In the New Testament it is used as interchangeable with Diabolos, or the devil, and is so used more than thirty times. He is also called “the dragon,” “the old serpent” (Rev. 12:9; 20:2); “the prince of this world” (John 12:31; 14:30); “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:2); “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4); “the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience” (Eph. 2:2). He has been called by his angelic name Lucifer (lo̅o̅ʹsi-fuhr), the English translation in the KJV (Isa. 14:12) of the Hebrew word meaning ‘light bringer’ or ‘shining one,’. Sometimes he is called “the morning (or day) star, that is, the Sun or some say Venus; the brightest object in the morning sky. The English word ‘Lucifer’ comes from the Latin for ‘light bearer’ and these probably denote his appearance in Heaven as the brightest creature of the angelic realm.
The origin of Satan is a difficult subject, as is the subject of the fall of Satan to earth. Satan was created as an angelic being, apparently with a free will as described in Ezekiel 28:12-19 and Isaiah 14. Satan was perfect, absolutely beautiful, and full of wisdom as described in Ezekiel 28:12-19; Isaiah 14:12-19. He held the supreme position of the cherub closest to God’s throne (Ez 28:14). So we find the most magnificent being of God’s creation in the highest position a created being can fill. That was Lucifer’s original state. His function was to convey God’s orders to angels and to radiate God’s glory (which is what all the gems of v. 13 depict). Some say he was also in charge of the heavenly music. But when he fell to earth he perverted the music like everything else he touched.
On earth the Old testament term “Satan” or “accuser” can relate to three separate groups:
1. human accusers (I Sam. 29:4; II Sam. 19:22; I Kgs. 11:14, 20, 29; Ps. 109:6)
2. angelic accusers (Num. 22:22–23; Job 1–2; Zech. 3:1)
3. demonic accusers (I Chr. 21:2; I Kgs. 22:21; Zech. 13:2).
The OT does not reveal Satan as an arch enemy to good, but a servant of YHWH who tests the Sons of Light; who offers mankind an alternative to righteousness and accuses mankind of unrighteousness. There is a progressive revelation in the NT as to the personification of evil as Satan seems to work more in the open. A good example of this difference is the “war in heaven” (see below). The fall of Satan became a logical necessity, but the specifics are not given. Even what is given is veiled in apocalyptic genre (cf. Rev. 12:4, 7, 12–13). Although Satan is defeated by Jesus and exiled to earth, he still functions as a servant of YHWH (cf. Matt. 4:1; Luke 22:31–32; I Cor. 5:5; I Tim. 1:20).
At some point Satan was removed from heaven (the spiritual realm of God) and “thrown” to earth. Revelation 12:7-9 describes: “And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him”. Most commentators agree that this occurred at the time of Christ’s resurrection. But that doesn’t mean that Satan was not on the earth at a much earlier time in Biblical history. However, until the coming of Christ, Satan had access to God in heaven as well as to the earth. At the time of Christ, however, he was completely denied any access to the spiritual realm and was thrown down to earth where he then became exclusively “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4).
That he had access to God before being banished to earth is apparent from Rev 12:10): “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the