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Concerning Satan's final fall from Heaven -- that is, when he is actually cast out of Heaven for good -- for so many years I seesawed up and down regarding exactly when I believed this event actually occurred; that is, assuming, of course, that it has already occurred. If so, and if it is a done act, did it occur before the events that transpired in the Garden of Eden? That obviously seems to be one possibility. After all, we do find the following verses in the Book of Genesis which seem to suggest this belief:

"Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil . . . And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."


Regarding the previous scene from the Garden of Eden, there have been a number of interpretations over the centuries as to what it actually means, and some of them are rather wild. Did Satan -- a.k.a. the Devil -- simply possess an actual serpent and speak through its mouth? Or did the Devil have a humanoid form, but then was cursed to crawl on his belly like a snake after enticing Adam and Eve to sin against God? Some rather inventive people have even suggested that a very long time ago, there was a serpentine, reptilian, humanoid race of beings dwelling upon the Earth. Whatever the case may be -- and to be quite honest, I really don't know with any degree of certainty -- this is the first record we have of the Devil interacting with humankind. As all Christians know, that particular incident bore some very bad fruit in the form of sin and death, as we see by these sample verses:

"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:"


"Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me."


"As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one . . . For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;"


But if we accept that it was prior to or during the events that transpired in the Garden of Eden that Satan was cast out of Heaven, we encounter a problem. How can we account for the fact that Satan still retains some degree of access to the Courts of Heaven in the Book of Job? For the record, as I explain in the article entitled "Job and the Land of Uz: A Biblical Mystery?", the Patriarch Job lived more than two millennia after the time of Adam and Eve. So here we are many centuries after Eden, and we are clearly told in two places in the Book of Job that Satan is still allowed to appear before the Lord amongst all of the other sons of God. Consider the following two verses:

"Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them."


"Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD."


In light of the previous two verses, it would seem that the belief that Satan was cast out of Heaven prior to, or as a result of his rebellious, deceptive behavior in the Garden of Eden, has no merit. While Satan is busy going to and fro in the Earth -- Job 2:2 -- stirring up trouble against God wherever he can, apparently, he still hasn't been given the "Royal Boot" from the Halls of Heaven as late as the time of Job. In fact, as I mention in the articles "Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth" and "What is Wrong With Modern America?", hundreds of years after Job's time -- or approximately three thousand years after the events in Eden -- we discover that vile liar and deceiver enticing King David to sin against the Lord. What actually happened is that David ignored the wise counsel of his own general, who was named Joab, and took a nation-wide census of Israel, as we see by the following verse:

"And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel."


This was a proud, smug, sinful act, because King David was supposed to trust God for his military victories, and give God due credit for the same. Thus, taking the census was a clear sign that David was beginning to trust in the arm of the flesh instead. If there is one thing that the Lord was constantly endeavoring to teach the ancient Israelites, it was to trust solely in Him as their only King, Lord, Divine Protector and Provider. We are told a number of times in the Old Testament that the Lord is a jealous God. Consider the following verses:

"Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;"


"For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:"


"For the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God."


"Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,"


"(For the LORD thy God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of the LORD thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth."


If you are familiar with the story, then you will know that while it was Satan's fault that King David did what he did, nevertheless, God had to teach the king a very firm lesson. Thus, swift judgment fell upon the Israelites, as we see by the following verses:

"And God was displeased with this thing; therefore he smote Israel. And David said unto God, I have sinned greatly, because I have done this thing: but now, I beseech thee, do away the iniquity of thy servant; for I have done very foolishly . . . So the LORD sent pestilence upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men. And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was destroying, the LORD beheld, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough, stay now thine hand. And the angel of the LORD stood by the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite."


It isn't until about three hundred years after the time of King David that we are given our next hint in the Scriptures that Satan has gone so far now in his rebellion against God, and stirred up so much trouble in the Heavenly Realm, that he is in even more serious trouble with the Lord. Of course, this is in addition to all of the havoc he is wreaking on the Earth with wars and other violence, death and disease, rebellion against God, and all of the other evils which are known to man.

Consider how much trouble Satan has caused up until this point in just the few examples I have shared with you. He seriously interfered with God's plans in the Garden of Eden so that sin and death were inherited by all men. As I point out in the aforementioned article "Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth", the reason why Satan was in the courts of Heaven that day is because, apparently, he became jealous of Job, and he demanded that God test the Patriarch's integrity. This ultimately resulted in Job losing everything, even though the Lord ultimately blessed and restored Job even more than his former state. Consider these verses which show the beginning and closure of the matter:

"There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil . . . And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face. And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD . . . And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold. So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. He had also seven sons and three daughters."


We have already seen how Satan induced King David to take a census, which again resulted in the death of thousands of Israelites. There is also the fact that he induced David to commit an act of adultery with beautiful Bathsheba, and then murder as well in order to try to conceal his foul sin.

While I did not mention it earlier, we should also take into account the Angelic Incursion which is briefly mentioned in Genesis chapter six, and even more so in the Book of Enoch. I discuss this event in great detail in the lengthy series "Nephilim: The Giants of Genesis". This rebellious act by renegade Angels resulted in the birth of the Nephilim, or giants, so that God was eventually forced to destroy all land-based life on Earth, and start over with Noah and his immediate family. Following are some of the key verses from that story:

"And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD."


While I am grading Mr. Satan, let me also add that inspiring evil Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to murder all of the Hebrew newborn males has to be one of his most vile acts. Here are the verses where this sad story is described for us in the Book of Exodus:

"Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel. And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour: And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour. And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah: And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live. But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive. And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive? And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them. Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty. And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses. And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive."


As if murdering all of the Hebrew male babies was not enough, that wicked serpent repeated the same act when Jesus was born, and Bethlehem suffered the wrath of a pompous, power-hungry King Herod, as we see by the following verses:

"Thus saith the LORD; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not."


"And being warned of God in a dream that they [the wise men] should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way. And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt: And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son. Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, Saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child’s life. And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel."


So just from these few examples I have shared with you, we can see that Satan has been a very busy boy, and a continuous troublemaker from the very start. He is one really bad apple, and his list of evil deeds is much longer than what I have time or space to share with you here. In fact, his lying, deceiving, murderous nature is perfectly described by Jesus in a verse I have shared with my readers many times before that we find in the Gospel of John, as we see here:

". . . He [the Devil] was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."


True indeed. He lied to Adam and Eve so that Heaven on Earth was destroyed, and he basically murdered humanity on top of it all, when sin and death were passed on to us all. Satan no doubt influenced Cain to yield to his pride, so that he rose up and killed his righteous brother Abel. You may recall that Jesus even brought up this very same point when He rebuked those children of the Devil -- the scribes and the Pharisees -- in the following verses:

"Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation."


"Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. Truly ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers: for they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres. Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute: That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation."


Likewise, we have already briefly discussed how he worked through Pharaoh so that a generation of Hebrew children were lost, and how that snake also got into King Herod's head as well during the First Century. The list of his vile deeds goes on and on, and there is no doubt that he is in fact a murderer exactly as Jesus very firmly pointed out in the previous verse.

As I mention in a few other articles, ironically, despite all of the evil Satan has committed directly, or induced others to commit for him down through the ages, today, there are so many misguided devil worshippers who still insist that he is their friend and the true prince, while Jesus is supposedly the usurper. What strong delusion! We see blatant satanism everywhere today, such as in the music industry, for example. Some of those artists openly defy and challenge God and stick their noses at Him, even on national television, at concerts, and at large sporting events. Truly, they are all insane, and have no idea what awaits them, if they continue with their rebellious behavior, and don't repent.

But as I was saying, it isn't until some three hundred years after the time of King David that we see how backslidden and rebellious Satan has become, how lifted up in pride he is, and how much serious trouble he is in with the Lord. As some of you will already know, in the Book of Isaiah, we find a set of some rather unusual verses. Consider the following:

"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit."


If you open your Bible to this same chapter, and beginning at verse four, read the next ten verses which precede the ones I have shared with you here, you will see that at first glance, the Prophet appears to be describing the fall of the king of Babylon. However, then his words take a certain twist, and it appears that he is also talking about the downfall of Lucifer or Satan as well. In fact, I think it is accurate to say that the previous verses are describing the downfall of both the king and Satan. After all, we know that human beings can be influenced and controlled by spiritual forces. Furthermore, people who possess political influence and power are clearly high on the list of these deceptive spiritual entities. They are attracted right to them like magnets, because they can inflict the most damage through them.

Concerning the king of Babylon, even though we know that it was God's Will -- because it was a severe judgment against Jerusalem and the Jews -- let us not forget that it was the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar who utterly destroyed the city of Jerusalem, and the first Temple, around 587 BC. So once again we see that Satan is a murderer, and sometimes he even serves as God's prosecuting attorney and executioner.

In the previous verses we read from the Book of Isaiah, the word "fallen" is translated from the Hebrew word "naphal". As I explain in the series "Nephilim: The Giants of Genesis", it is from this same Hebrew word that the English "nephilim" is derived. According to the Brown, Driver, Briggs, Gesenius Hebrew Aramaic English Lexicon, this Hebrew word is found a total of four hundred and thirty-four times in the Books of the Old Testament. Its top five translations are as follows:

fail = 318 times
fall down = 25 times
cast = 18 times
cast down = 9 times
fall away = 5 times

The lexicon lists a number of other translations for this Hebrew word, but they are used even less than the ones I have shared with you here. So we can safely say that the word "nephilim" means "the fallen ones" or "the cast down ones". In other words, the Nephilim were the human/Angel hybrid children of the fallen or cast down renegade Angels of Genesis chapter six and the Book of Enoch, as we saw earlier.

So the big question is this: How do we correctly apply the phrase "How art thou fallen from heaven" to Lucifer, or the Devil, a.k.a. Satan? Is the verse saying that the Devil has failed God due to his rebellion? Or is it saying that he has fallen from Grace? Or is it saying that he has fallen from Heaven of his own accord, just as the rebellious Angels did in Genesis chapter six, of which he was a part? Or is this verse saying that Satan was forcefully cast out of Heaven? In other words, was it at this point in Biblical history when Satan was cast out of Heaven permanently?

Personally, I have strong reason to believe that the verses are not saying that Satan was permanently cast out of Heaven at that time in history. I will now explain to you why I am convinced that this is so. First of all, we need to bear in mind that this was a prophecy regarding a future event. If you are not yet aware of it, the Book of Isaiah was written around 700-750 BC. Some scholars even believe that parts of it were written by a few other authors as late as the fifth century BC. At the time that Isaiah lived, the Assyrians were still in power. Isaiah's prophecies revolved in large part around the coming Assyrian invasions of Judah and the city of Jerusalem in the south, and Samaria -- the capital of northern Israel -- and the restoration which would follow after the Babylonian invasions. To add to that, the previous verses cannot be saying that the Babylonian king has already fallen -- meaning Nebuchadnezzar II -- because he had not even been born yet.

As I explain in articles such as "The Seven Heads" series, the Assyrians who dwelt in the north of Mesopotamia, and the Babylonians who dwelt in the south of the same, were closely related, and shared some of the same cultural and religious traditions. Not only that, but it is interesting to note that Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar's father, Nabopolassar, was a Chaldean who rose through the ranks of the Assyrian army to become a general, and ultimately, the first king of Babylonia. Nabopolassar established his capital in Babylon. But if we consider the time frame of Isaiah's lifetime, then it would seem that Nabopolassar hadn't been born yet either. This further adds weight to the idea that the Isaiah 14 set of verses are indeed a futuristic prophecy, just like so many others which we find written in the Book of Isaiah.

So being as the Prophet Isaiah seems to be giving a prophecy which contains a double-meaning, then if the human side of it has not quite been fulfilled yet, then I think that it is safe to assume that the spiritual side of the same prophecy -- in other words, Lucifer's fall -- has not occurred yet either. In fact, I am quite certain that this is so, because of additional information which I will be sharing with you momentarily. At this point, the most I am willing to suggest is that this prophecy was a clear warning to Satan that he was really starting to get on God's nerves with his prideful rebellion, and that his days were already numbered.

I think that you will find this to be absolutely true after I share with you some of the profound things which Jesus and the Apostles had to say and write about seven hundred years later. It may amaze you to discover some of the things which have been right under our noses all along in the Gospels and the Epistles, as well as in the Book of Revelation, but we simply never saw them. They are things which I will continue to explore and discuss in upcoming new and updated articles and series as well.

As I also discuss in the articles "Satan: His Origin, Purpose and Future" and "Satan: King of Tyrus, King of Empires", it is not even two hundred years later that we discover another strong pronouncement against Satan in the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel. Similar to Daniel, Ezekiel likewise lived during the same time as the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem, and he was a prisoner in Babylon during the Seventy Years of Captivity. Just as Isaiah wrote a prophecy which seems to be directed at both the king of Babylon and Satan, Ezekiel does a similar thing when he prophesies against Satan and the King of Tyrus. Consider the following verses:

"Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee."


Once again, these verses represent a very strong prophetic warning to Satan that his days are clearly numbered. They are also a confirmation that Isaiah was not saying that Satan had already been cast out of Heaven. The reason why we know this is true, is because this prophecy says "I will" four times. It is speaking of a future judgment against Satan. So this spiritual king of worldly empires has not yet been cast down from Heaven in the previous verses, because his vile cup of iniquity is not quite full yet. He has yet to perform his most despicable deed.

Please go to part two for the continuation of this series.

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