L uzifer
The Bible reports that God actually created a strong, intelligent and wonderful angelic being (the head of all angels) named Lucifer ('the shining one'), and that this was very good. But Lucifer had a will with which he could decide freely. A passage in Isaiah 14 records the choice that lay before him.
"How did you fall from heaven, you beautiful morning star! How were you knocked to the ground, who struck down all nations! But you thought in your heart:" I want to rise to heaven and exalt my throne over the stars of God, I want sit down on the mountain of the congregation in the far north, and I will ascend to the highest clouds and be like the very highest ”(Isaiah 14: 12-14)
So like Adam had Lucifer is also a choice. He could either accept that God was God, or he could choose to be his own God himself. The repeated 'I want' shows that he made up his mind to resist God and that he declared himself to be the 'Most High'. One passage in the Book of Ezekiel contains a parallel passage from the fall of Lucifer.
“In Eden you were, in the garden of God… You were a shining, shielding cherub, and I had set you on the holy mountain; you were a god and walked among the fiery stones. You were blameless in what you did from the day you were created until iniquity was found in you. Then I expelled you from the mountain of God and erased you, you shielding cherub, from the midst of the fiery stones. Because your heart rose up, that you were so beautiful, and that you have corrupted your wisdom in all your splendor, therefore I have thrown you to the ground. ”(Esekiel 28: 13-17)
Lucifer's beauty, wisdom, and power - all the good things God had created in him - led him to pride. His arrogance led to his rebellion and his fall, but he did not lose (and thus retained) his strength and qualities. He leads a cosmic revolt against his Creator to see who God will be. His strategy was to get humanity to join in - by trying to make them succumb to the same choices he had made - to love themselves, to become independent of God, and to oppose him. The essence of examining the Adam's will the same as that of Lucifer; he was only dressed in a different robe. Both chose to be their own god to themselves. This was (and is) the highest delusion of God.
Why did Lucifer rise up against God?
But why did Lucifer want to defy the rule of the omniscient and omnipotent Creator and usurp it? An important part of being smart is knowing if you can defeat a potential opponent. Lucifer may (and still has) strength, but his limited strength as a creature would have been insufficient for a successful rebellion against his Creator. Then why risk everything to try to achieve an impossible victory? I would have thought that a cunning angel should have recognized his limitations in a mess battle against both omniscience and omnipotence, and should have stopped his rebellion. So why didn't he do this? This question baffled me for years. What helped me was the realization that only on the basis of faith could Lucifer have come to the conclusion that God was his Almighty Creator - just like us. I declare. The Bible relates the emergence of angels to the first week of creation. We saw this in Isaiah 14 above, but it is so consistently throughout the Bible. For example, a creation passage tells us in the book of Job:
And the Lord answered Job from the storm and said, Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me if you are so smart! ... when the morning stars praised me together and all sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38: 1-7)
Let us imagine Lucifer being created sometime during creation week and receiving his consciousness somewhere in the cosmos (for the first time). All he knows is that he exists now and is I-aware and that there is another being who claims to have created him and the cosmos. But how does Lucifer know that this claim is true? Perhaps this alleged Creator jumped into existence in the cosmos just before Lucifer. And because this 'creator' stepped onto the stage earlier, so to speak, he is (maybe) more powerful and more knowledgeable than he (Lucifer) is - but then again maybe not. Could it be that both he and his alleged creator jumped into existence? All Lucifer could do was accept the word of God to him that he had created him and that God himself was eternal and infinite. In his arrogance, he made up his mind to believe the fantasy he had conjured up in his own mind.
One might think that it would be fanciful that Lucifer could believe that he and God (as well as the other angels) had sprung into existence at the same time. But this is the same basic idea behind the newest and highest (thinking) in modern cosmology. There was a cosmic movement of nothing - and then, from that movement, the universe came into being. This is the essence of modern, atheistic, cosmological speculation. Basically everyone, from Lucifer to Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawkings and you and me, has to decide by faith whether the universe is closed or whether it was created and sustained by a Creator.
In other words, seeing is not believing. Lucifer could have seen God and had conversations with him. Even so, he should still have accepted it in faith that God created him. Many people tell me that if God appeared only to them, they would believe. But through the Bible, many people have seen and heard God - that was never the problem. Rather, the crux of the matter was whether they would accept his word about themselves (God) and about them and trust it. From Adam and Eve to Cain and Abel, Noah, and the Egyptians at the first Passover , to the Israelites who crossed the Red Sea and to those who saw the miracles of Jesus - none of them “seeing” led to trust. The fall of Lucifer coincides with this.
What is the devil doing today?
So God did not create an "evil devil", but he created a powerful and intelligent angelic being who, through his arrogance, caused an uprising against God and was thus corrupted (without losing its original shine). You and I, and all of humanity, have become part of the battlefield of this conflict between God and his 'adversary' (devil). On the part of the devil, it is not his strategy to walk around in eerie black cloaks like the 'Black Riders' in the "Lord of the Rings" film and to put evil curses on us. Rather, with his retained splendor, he seeks us from the redemption that God from the beginning of time by Abraham and Cunt announced and then carried out through the death and resurrection of Jesus. As the Bible says:
"For he himself, Satan, disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is nothing great if his servants disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. (2 Corinthians 11: 14-15)
Because Satan and his servants can disguise themselves as 'light', we can be more easily deceived. This is why a personal understanding of the gospel is so vital.