Satan: From The Archangel's Throne To The Lake Of Fire

I want to take you through the Word of God and see what it reveals concerning the personality and activities of the great adversary of our souls—the devil. Let me first read from the eighth chapter of John’s Gospel words uttered by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. At verse 44, addressing those who were opposing His ministry while yet priding themselves upon their Abrahamic descent, the Lord says, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning (the word might be translated manslayer),—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.”

His Existence

In the first place, our Lord declares his existence. “The devil is a liar, and the father of it.” He could not so speak about Satan if he did not have actual existence. It is now a very common thing to deny the personality of the devil and we are frequently told that the devil in Scripture is simply the personification of evil; that all the devil there [sic] is is the Satan of a man’s own sinful inclination or wicked thought. Only lately I picked up some Sunday school literature designed to mislead young people coming together to study the Bible on the Lord’s Day. The subject was the temptation of our Savior. The not when on to say that our Savior’s great struggle in the wilderness was not with some foe outside of himself, but with His own ambitions, His own selfish desires. He had to conquer these ambitions; he had to defeat these desires before He could enter upon His mission.

My Bible tells me that Jesus was led up into the wilderness to tempted of the devil. The denial of the personality of the devil involves the rankest blasphemy against the person of the Son of God. Tell me that the devil is simply the personification of one’s own evil thought, then you are telling me that our own evil thought, then you are telling me that our Lord Jesus Christ whom Scripture declares knew no sin, was in fearful conflict in the wilderness with His own wicked thoughts and His own selfish desires. Every lover of Christ, every Bible believer must repudiate such blasphemy with abhorrence. He knew no sin, He did no sin, in Him no sin was—these are the distinct statements of Scripture. He could say, “The distinct statements of Scripture. He could say, “The prince of this world cometh but hath nothing in me.” The tempter was without. There was nothing from within to answer the voice of the tempter from without.

A Blight On The Human Race

Then in the second place, the denial of the personality of the devil involves the blackest indictment ever brought against the human race. It is a singular thing that you will find the denial of the personality of the devil linked with the denial of the sinfulness of mankind. On the one hand, people are telling us that there is no devil, that the only devil there is is the evil in a man, his wicked thoughts and desires, and then the very same school will turn around and tell us that all men are by nature children of God and that there is no such thing as a fall, but that every so-called fall is simply a fall upward—just an upward step in the process of human evolution.

And yet the denial of the personality of the devil involves this, that all the evil, all the corruption, all the vileness of the centuries, all the bestialities of the ages, have come alone from man’s wicked heart without any tempter from the outside. Was there ever so black an indictment brought against the human race? Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us clearly and distinctly in words that cannot be misunderstood that the devil is. He affirms the existence and the personality of this great arch enemy of the human race.

An Apostate

But our Lord as clearly declares that he was not created a devil. People often ask, “Why did God create a devil.” Our Lord Jesus Christ says, “He abode not in the truth.” The devil is an apostate. He was not created as he now is: We shall turn back in a few moments to some of the Old Testament Scriptures and see what the testimony of the Book is in regard to his former state. We shall find that the devil is not what he once was.

God made man upright, but he sought out many inventions. The first invention was the fig leaf apron. Their robes of glory and innocence were lost when Adam and Eve sinned and they felt the need of some kind of an invention to cover their shame. Well, just as God made man upright and he has sought out a great many inventions, so God created him who is now the devil and Satan an innocent, glorious being, one of the brightest angels surrounding the throne of God. We shall look at a passage that tells us that.

A Deceiver

Notice another thing our Lord affirms of the devil. He is a deceiver; he is a corruptor of the truth; he is a liar and the truth is not in him. He works by a process of deception. He seeks to mislead people by presenting for their acceptance that which pretends to be that which is not. Someone says that Satan always plays with loaded dice; therefore he who attempts to play with him can depend on being deceived and beaten every time. The devil never meets people and says, “I am the enemy of your souls. Believe me, obey me and you will be sure to be lost at last.” Nothing of the kind! But we are told that Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light and his business is to mislead and decoy the souls of men by presenting to them something which appears to be the truth of God but is in reality a deception.

A Manslayer

Our Lord further declares that the devil is a manslayer from the beginning. The devil is a hater of God and because he cannot reach God directly inasmuch as God is a lover of men, Satan seeks to hurt God by ruining men. That is the only logical explanation of the devil’s enmity against the human race. Humanity has been loved by God. We read, “After that the kindness and love of God appeared.” God is a lover of His creatures. He would have men associated with Him in the sweetest, happiest relationship; and the devil sees in this the one opportunity to bring grief to the heart of God and so he turns against the man that God has created in order that he may wound the God who created him.

Satan Described

With these statements in mind which come from our blessed Lord Himself, let us turn to various Scriptures and see how they are confirmed. First, I would ask you to turn to the 14th chapter of the prophet Isaiah, verse 12. I think there can be no question that the passage I am about to read has reference to the great adversary whose history we are trying to trace.

“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.”

Here the inspiring Spirit of God enables Isaiah to bring before us most graphically the former state and the sin of Satan. He was originally known as Lucifer—Day Star—a name akin to that given to our blessed Lord Himself, for Jesus is called the Morning Star. Lucifer seems to have been exalted above all the other angels, and having such a place of exaltation pride rose up in his heart, and envy and covetousness.

“Pride Goeth Before Destruction”

The apostle Paul, in giving instruction concerning the selecting of the elders and bishops in the church of God, in writing to Timothy says, “Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.” That is, don’t put in a foremost place in the church of God a man just having come to Christ lest he should be exalted by the very privilege conferred upon him and being lifted up with pride, fall into the condemnation of the devil. We gather from that that Satan’s sin was the sin of pride. He said, “I will not be content with any lesser place than on the very throne of God. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.” He was determined to have the supreme place.

When we turn over to the 28th chapter of Ezekiel, we have some additional information concerning this man. In the first part of the chapter we have the prophet addressing himself to the earthly prince of Tyrus, but he turns away to speak of one who was controlling the prince of Tyrus. In the 12th verse he says, “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.” This could never have been said of any earthly potentate, but it could be said of the one who was dominating and controlling the ruler of Tyrus at that time. This one was in the glory of God with his whole being going out to God in praise. That, I take it, is indicated by the reference to the tabrets and the pipes. Melody rises up from the heart of Lucifer unto the great God Himself until pride came in and spoiled it all.

“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.”

No created being could have a higher place than he had. But in the 17th verse we read: “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. Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffick; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee. All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.”

Did Satan Spoil A Perfect World?

These two Scriptures carry us far back of the scene recorded in Genesis where we have Satan first appearing in this world. In chapter one of the book of Genesis we have the creation of the heavens and the earth. In verse one, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” In the next verse we have a description of the condition that came in afterwards. We do not know how long afterwards. We are told that the earth was, or literally became, without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. That the earth was not created in that chaotic condition Isaiah 45:18 makes clear. It says, “He created it not void; he formed it to be inhabited.” The earth of Genesis 1:1 was evidently a perfect world. Just what conditions prevailed upon it we do not know, only that some tremendous cataclysm came upon the world between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 and this glorious world became a ruin.

Is it not reasonable to suppose, though I do not want to lead you beyond Scripture, that the fall of Lucifer was connected with the fall of the material universe? It is not unreasonable to suppose that the sin of angels affected the lower world? We know that angels were interested in the creation of this world. God in the book of Job, asks the question of the patriarch, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth, when the morning stars (a celestial order) sang together and all the sons of God (another heavenly order) shouted together? Angels rejoiced when God created this world, which was destined to be the theater upon which God was to display the riches of His grace. May not that have been the reason that Satan’s heart was stirred and he determined to become the god of this world? At any rate, he fell and then you find God, in the six days of creation, fitting up the earth to be the home of man.

God placed Adam and his wife in the garden with just one prohibition: do not take of one particular tree. There was nothing wrong with the tree. It would not have been sin to eat of that tree if God had not made the prohibition. The sin was in disobeying the word of God. In our version we read that the serpent entered the garden. The original word does not necessarily convey that thought. On the other hand, this word literally means “the shining one.” Now the Shining One was more subtle than all God had created, and in whatever form he took, he entered that garden of delight with a view of wounding the heart of God. He began his nefarious campaign against the human race. He began it as a Modernist with the question, “Hath God said?” We talk now a days about the new theology. There is nothing new about it, except its impudence. It is as old as the Garden of Eden.

Satan comes in with the intimation that God is not good, God is not kind or He would not have any prohibition. Little by little he overcomes Eve’s resistance, having met her on the ground of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life. She sins. Our first father enters voluntarily into the sin with her and thus the ruin of the human race has been brought about—the fall of man. From that day on, you find Satan a manslayer and a deceiver seeking to lead the children of Adam and Eve astray.

Satan Is Not In Hell

I know the thought that a great many people have that after this, the devil was banished to the pit of hell and some people think of him as reigning there. They think he sits on a throne, a horrible figure with horns and hoofs and an ugly tail. Satan is not in hell; he is in Chicago! There isn’t a Scripture that intimates that he is in hell. He is going to be cast there—into hell prepared for the devil and his angels—but he is not there yet. Trace him through the Bible. You will see his slimy trail all along the way. He is here upon the earth, always tempting men, always misleading men. “Your adversary, the devil, goeth about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.” The enemy of the seed of the woman is endeavoring always to mislead those who turn to God and believe His Word. The enmity of the devil is particularly directed against Christ, so you find him always seeking to give people wrong ideas about Christ and the work of Christ.

He Rules The Air

Then you find that not only is the devil pictured as constantly going to and fro in the earth seeking to corrupt mankind, but he is called the prince of the power of the air. This unclean spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience has his dwelling place not in hell but in the upper air. We learn in the sixth of the epistle of Paul to the Ephesians that our conflict is not with flesh and blood but with wicked spirits in heavenly places and world rulers of this darkness. Satan, then, is in the heavens, and as a heavenly being, he is constantly imitating heavenly things and seeking to lead people away by false religious systems. These will be very attractive. Satan, transformed into an angel of light, presents very attractive systems. He has men and women on Earth to proclaim his teachings. The Bible calls them Satan’s ministers. These are not men who go around telling people to do vile, wicked things, to offend all the laws of morality and decency. His ministers are transformed into ministers of righteousness. They are actually preachers of righteousness, but they put human righteousness in the place of the righteousness of God, and men who listen to them, being ignorant of God’s righteousness go about to establish a righteousness of their own and so refuse to submit to God.

An Unfailing Test

You may know at once whether you have been following a satanic system or whether you have been following the Gospel of the grace of God if you will put this test to yourself. Am I trying to be good enough to get to heaven or have I confessed that I am bad enough to be damned and I can only be saved through the merits of another? You just put that question to yourself and you will know at once where you are. If you are trying to make yourself fit for heaven then you are giving heed to Satan’s false gospel, but if you have come to the place where you can say: “In my hand no price I bring, Simply to Thy cross I cling,” then the devil is defeated and your soul is saved.

Satan’s Tactics

Now you go all through the Old Testament and you will find Satan, the unseen enemy of the church of God. God had given the promise that the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head, and the devil at once undertook to make it impossible to fulfillment. He stirred up Cain, who was a child of the Wicked One, and Cain slew Abel and at once the devil said, “Now all this talk about the seed of the woman bruising the serpent’s head is over.” But God said, “I will give you another seed,” and Seth comes on the scene, and his very name means “appointed”—appointed in the place of another.

The devil finally so permeated the race of mankind that corruption and violence filled the earth and God said, “I will have to blot it all out with a flood.” Then Satan chuckled and said, “What about the seed of the woman that is going to bruise my head?”

But God said, “Noah, make you an ark of gopher wood.” And so God saved Noah and his family and started the world again.

But eventually, the devil led the people dwelling upon that renewed earth into idolatry and defiance of God and there actually came a day, from what we can gather from the book of Genesis, when almost the whole world had lapsed into idolatry, and the very one through whom the promised seed was to come was a member of an idolatrous family. But God took Abraham and gave him the knowledge of the one true and living God. The promise was renewed to him and his seed. You will now see Satan making every effort to destroy the seed of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. Follow them on down to Egypt. Pharaoh made a decree, “Cast every male child into the river”; then there never can be the seed of the woman to bruise the serpent’s head. But God intervened.

By and by, the people got into the land. Finally, the day came when all the hopes of the universe are centered in a little six-year-old boy in the temple of Jehovah, and if that little life had been blotted out when Athaliah destroyed all the seed royal, God’s promise could not have been fulfilled. But there he was, hid away in the temple, until at seven years of age, he was brought forth and proclaimed king. And God preserved him.

One Sleepless Night Defeated Satan

There came a day when Israel, because of their sins, was scattered among all the nations of the Gentiles and Haman was the closest to the ruler of the then known world, Ahasuerus. The decree was written and signed with the king’s signet to destroy the Jews. It was Satan’s effort again to make God’s promise impossible, and everything seemed to go according to Satan’s ideas up to one night when the king could not sleep. Everything hung on an attack of insomnia that came on King Ahasuerus just at the right moment. Read the book of Esther and see what that sleepless night meant to the king and to Mordecai and to Israel and to us, because through that sleepless night, God’s Word was maintained in its integrity.

When at last Jesus was born on Earth, you remember how Herod attempted to kill Him. According to the divine plan Satan was permitted to nail Him upon a cross, and oh what jubilation of the infernal hosts when the head of the blessed Christ of God dropped ever in death, and they said, “It is all ended now. God’s plan is defeated. The seed of the woman is dead! Dead—and He will never live again.”

[The chief priests and Pharisees] said, “Put a guard about his tomb. Make it as strong as you can.” But—

Up from the grave He arose,
With a mighty triumph for His foes,
He arose a victor o’er the dark domain,
And He lives forever with His saints to reign.

The Accuser Of Us All

Satan is a defeated foe today. His power is broken, but he is not yet in the pit. Neither has he yet been cast out of the heavenlies. He is still permitted access into the presence of God. What is he doing? He is called the accuser of our brethren who accuses them before our God day and night. In the book of Zechariah, we have the picture of a high priest, and Satan constitutes himself as the prosecuting attorney of the high court of heaven and he dares to look God in the face and say, “Can you have a man like this whose garments are stained with iniquity?” And the answer comes back, “Jehovah rebuke you. Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” That is redemption, and redemption answers all the stains that sin has made. And Jehovah said, “Take away the filthy garments,” and he was robed in garments of glory and beauty and Zechariah, looking on, got so excited that he said, “There is only one thing needed to top it off. Bring forth a golden crown. Set a fair mitre upon him.” And they clothed him and cleansed him and crowned him—a beautiful answer of Jehovah to the devil’s accusations.

But we read that “they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.”

I hear the accuser roar
Of ills that I have done,
I know them all, and more;
Jehovah findeth none.

Though the restless foe accuses,
Sins recounting like a flood,
Every charge our God refuses,
Christ has answered with His blood.

The End Of The Day Of Grace

By and by, the dispensations of testing and trial in which we live is coming to a close. And how will it come to an end? “The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” And what is the next? Why, John says, “There was a war in heaven.” The devil and his angels fought and Michael and his angels fought and there was no place found any more for the devil in heaven. But Michael laid hold of him, and he was cast out of heaven. He descends to this lower earth, having great wrath because he knoweth that his time is short. We remember that our blessed Lord Jesus is coming again as our Redeemer from the wrath to come. The Word “Redeemer”  literally means “snatcher away.” There is wrath coming—three-fold wrath. We read in Revelation 6 of the wrath of the Lamb. We read farther on of the vials of the wrath of God, and in the 12th chapter we read of the wrath of the devil. But our Lord is coming to snatch us away from the coming wrath. We won’t be here at all, but there will be people down here on the earth. Christ-rejectors will be here, and Israel will be here.

Days Of Tribulation

Satan descends, having great wrath because he knoweth that his time is short and if he is going to hurt the heart of God, he must do it quickly, for his days are not long. And so we have the Great Tribulation in all its intensity because of the activity of the devil on the earth. He stands on the sands of the sea. He calls up from the abyss then ten-horned, seven-headed beast and the false prophet and our Lord says that except those days should be shortened there should no flesh be saved, but for the elect’s sake, they shall be shortened. When things are darkest, “The Lord they God shall come.” His feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives. His enemies shall be put down, and we read of a mighty angel who came down from heaven and laid hold of the serpent, the dragon, the devil and Satan. How careful God is to give us all of his names. The devil—that means the slanderer. Be careful that you don’t get like him, one who passes on untruthful tales about people. Satan—that is the adversary, is laid hold of and upon and cast into a bottomless pit to go out no more until a thousand glorious years are fulfilled, years in which

Jesus shall reign where’er the sun,
Does his successive journeys run,
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.

Does your heart cry out, “Come, Lord Jesus, come and take They rightful place: Come and reign in righteousness”? For until Jesus comes, this world will never have a competent ruler, and if there is anything that men need today, it is competent rule. Oh, how the nations are crying out for it, and they will never get it until Jesus comes and reigns.

Satan’s Authority Forever Lost

You say, “Then at last he becomes king of hell.” No, he will never be king of hell. He is the god of this world, he is the prince of this age, men own his authority now, but no one will own his authority in hell. Hell is not pandemonium. It is God’s well-ordered prison house where people who never behaved before will have to behave at last. We read, “At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow,” of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, or in the infernal regions, “and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

When it is a question of reconciliation, we have two spheres (in Colossians), heaven and Earth. When it is a question of subjugation, it is a question of three spheres. Instead of hell being the throne of Satan, it will be his prison house. He will be the most abject creature in the dungeon of despair—he who once was the covering cherub of the throne of God—and all because of a sin that you and I are inclined to pass over lightly—pride, the condemnation of the devil.

The doom of the lost will never give you to see how abhorrent sin is in the eyes of God. There is only one place where we can properly understand it and that is when we draw near to the cross of Calvary and we try to peer through the awful darkness, when we listen to the heart rending cry that comes from the Son of God when He takes the sinner’s place and drinks the cup of judgment, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Oh, we understand now what sin is in the eyes of God, what sin deserves, and why Satan and those who choose to follow him must spend eternity in the outer darkness.

Spend eternity, did I say? This English language of ours, rich as it is, is inadequate to express divine mysteries. Spend eternity? You will never spend eternity anywhere. You can spend an hour and it is gone. You can spend a week and it is past. You can spend a year and you know it no more. You can spend a life and it is done. But eternity you will never spend. Oh, make sure that you are not destined to that awful prison house prepared for the devil and his angels, but that through infinite grace you shall have your part with the Lamb who was slain, the Lamb who has overcome the dragon, in whom be power and glory and honor for ever and ever. Amen.