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If God knew satan would rebel why did He create him?
This is a question Ive thought of alot and was just wondering if anyone had any input on this. thanks
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by christopher lingk on
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Hey angie,
Well, when God created the angelic beings as well as the human race, He gave us both the ability to 'choose' our actions. This is factual as we can see that a host of heaven, (angels) chose to follow Lucifer in his rebellion. And of course we know this to be true of humans as adam and eve chose to dissobey God's commands.
One thing that seems to be evident with God is that He knows that true love must be given as a 'choice'. If God had created the angels and mankind without the abilty to 'choose', then sin, corruption, and everything wicked never would have entered into the whole equation of things. However, there wouldnt have been any real evidence that we or the angels truly loved Him, or trusted Him, would there? It is by our actions that one can discern the truth of our hearts so to speak.
Sure God knew that the angels would rebel, just as He knew mankind would be wicked and turn from His commands. But in His awesome wisdom, He made us with the ability to 'choose' anyways.
Now as an example, (forgive how far-fetched this is going to be)........Say we created a robot to be our best companion. One which would never lie to us, or turn on us, and always tell us what we wanted to hear, and love us unconditionally. Yeah, it would be kind of cool for a moment, but we would always know that it wasnt 'true' love, or obediance, becuase we "programmed" to act that way. It really could do nothing else !! Suddenly, the whole thing becomes rather 'shallow' to us, because we know there is no choice involved. How much more does it mean to us when we KNOW that someone truly loves us by choice?? It means a world of difference.
I think, (and I emphasize 'think') that God operated on the same concept when He gave both the angels and humans "choice". It only means something when freely given.
God is sooooo awesome, and His ways so much greater than ours !! It's certainly a good thing that God chose to make us even though He knew we would turn on Him. Or, this conversation wouldnt be taking place......LOL !! Alot of people tend to question whether God knows what the heck he is doing, (honestly) and are confused about His ways. We have to trust that when God does something, even though it may make no 'logical' sense to us, He is indeed in control, and there is reason behind what He does.
The bad thing for the angels of course is that God provided no means of "redemption" for them. We lucked-out so to speak in that God was merciful to us for our rebellion, and gave us a way to be brought back into communion with him, and be saved.........Jesus Christ. Bummer for the angels....... good thing for us !!
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Permalink Reply by angie on
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Dear Christopher,
Thank you so much for your insight on this. Alot of what you said I have thought of before like God creating us knowing what we would do and I think it just shows how much God truly loves us! I guess i dont always understand why He does, but Im glad He chose too. Again thank you and God Bless you -In Christ Angie
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Permalink Reply by ScribeD on
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I once had a dog that I took to work with me every day for a while. He was given to me, because his owner could not control him and he was going to put him down. I worked on a construction site and I thought I could build a relationship with the dog that made him desire to obey. I gave him lots of treats, good food and plenty of time together - I took him everywhere in my pickup truck.
After many weeks of the dog running away, jumping out of my truck, failing to learn, I became very weary of him. I couldn't get him to obey, no matter what I tried. Finally, his own disobedience caused his death. It was very sad for me. I tried to love that dog in every way I could. But, he destroyed himself.
Satan was given the riches of everything God had, but his heart was in rebellion because of pride. Eventually, God let his pride swell and let the results of that pride cause his own downfall. His ultimate destruction is yet to be seen.
Our goal is not to be like him, but to recognize that nature of rebellion in our own hearts and resist it.
- Scribe
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Permalink Reply by Carla on
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Scribe, I love the way you have answered this question. It just sums it all up so completely .....
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Thanks for your reply. My goal in life is to keep focused on the main things. I think there are two dangers at opposite ends of the spectrum: 1. get tied up on all of the obscure and irrelevant issues and make mountains out of mole-hills. OR- 2. ignore subtle clues that give you important light on the main subjects.
You have to keep a balance between those pionts.
It is important to understand what God reveals about the satanic nature, but it is not important to spend all of our time trying to sort out God's dealings with him. He is God's problem. My goal is to be sure that I don't become like him.
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Permalink Reply by Donna Hardigree on
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SATAN USE TO BE THE MOST GLORIOUS PRAISE ANGEL. BUT THAN HE DECIDED HE WANTED TO BE LIKE GOD. SO HE WAS THROWN FROM HEAVEN. IT WAS HIS MISTAKE.
DONNA HARDIGREE
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Another point came to mind in regards to your question.
Let us say that you are able to SEE THE FUTURE, like God. Your heart's desire is to have a large family that is filled with love and joy and that is trained in righteousness. You see the person you will marry, you see the many children you will have - 12 sons and 10 daughters. You see that your grand kids will number over 100 people. You see the joy you will have raising your kids, you see that your family will be a loving group who makes an incredible difference in the world in many profound ways.
You see that one of your kids will save thousands of people from starvation and provide an entire nation of millions with relief from desperate poverty. You also see that he will have to endure great suffering first. You see that other sons will be the traitors to their brother, and cause his suffering. You see that 5 of your sons will commit mass-murder. Yet, you also see that you grandchildren will become a mighty nation that is a blessing to the entire world. One day you see that one of your descendants will betray an innocent man to death and hang himself.
Knowing the evil that some of your offspring will commit, are you willing to forsake the joy that you will have with the many others? Do you prevent the one son from being born to save an entire nation? Do you forsake all of those other people who you don't know? Do you miss the joy of the great things that will be done, because you know of the horrid things that will also happen?
God is a creative being. He lives to love, to give, to create. He is capable of giving life to those who will betray him. Jesus was willing to offer every opportunity to Judas to repent, even until the final moment of betrayal. I believe he would even have accepted Judas' repentance, as he did Peter's, if he had just come and sought forgiveness. Instead, Judas hardened his heart and chose destruction. He chose hell.
Satan did the same. Knowing God's righteous character, he chose rebellion and destruction. God would freely have given him all good things, yet he chose to create suffering because of his own selfishness. Nothing that he has done since then has been good. Satan could have entered into the creative nature of God and done many things like God; instead he chose corruption and destruction.
God is willing to allow you to choose destruction. God allowed Jacob's sons to choose and he allowed Israel to choose. Some of Jacob's sons chose evil. Others chose apathy and others chose righteousness. In that freedom, God sovereignly orchestrated his plans for good - the salvation of an entire empire, because of the faithfulness of a single shepherd boy who became a slave.
In allowing Satan to choose the evil of pride and rebellion, God orchestrated something far greater than we could have without it. God showed his love and mercy to all of creation in a way that we could never have known without Lucifer's fall.
God's glory is revealed much more clearly, as a bright light is seen in darkness, because of Satan's fall. I don't fully understand it all, but I know which one I want to follow. It is hard: my nature is inclined toward the selfishness of Satan. I have to strive toward the mercy and love of God. But, I would NEVER have known the "JOY" of sacrifice, if I had not seen it in Jesus. And I would never have seen Jesus of Nazareth, if God had not needed to send him to save me from the sin in my life and my lineage.
God's plans are truly mysterious and beyond understanding; I can only grasp the slightest glimmer of it. But what glory I see in that glimmer!! How amazing is that tiny ray of light that I do see!!
- Scribe
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Scribe, Wow God has truly blessed you with wisdom and knowledge. What you wrote here has truly opened my eyes to things I had not seen before thank you so much for your time in writing this. In Christ Angie
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Permalink Reply by Stew on
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You don't need to worry...
Romans 8:1 - Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus
This says it all. You are free. Rejoice in that beautiful truth.
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The word of God does not give us extreme detail in relationship to the fall of Satan, but it's clear that Satan was guilty of one of the sins that God really hates - that being the sin of pride. The sin of pride is a stepping stone to so many other forms of destruction. One of the things that I sense is causing your difficulty with the issues that you are raising is that you are attempting to work out details related to "why creation done in the way it was?"
There is much that we can't understand but we know from scripture that God's plan is perfect. That we are here in this broken world - that sin was allowed to enter the world because God instituted free choice and did not seek subjects that were programmed as robots to honor and obey. The perfection of this huge and complex plan is beyond our understanding. We just know that God's plan is in play and while He is timeless (dwelling outside our time-based existence) - we are bound to the time-based life while alive here on Earth and that is just a single component of this massively complex and perfect plan that we cannot begin to imagine.
Please pray to God for comfort and relief from a desire to understand details that we cannot fully know or understand until we are in His presence and witness to His glory.
-Stew
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Permalink Reply by Pastor Bob B on
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My friend, I do not think you can place the fall of Satan and the other angels on the same plane as the fall of mankind.
Angels were not created in the image of God
We are told in scripture that one day we will sit in judgment of angels.
Angels are treated very different than humans because they are not like some have taught humans that were turned into angels. We have limited information available to us about angels so we do not know exactly how they are judged.
I do not believe that Eve sinned by being tempted, God said not to Eat, He did not say do not be tempted or do not covet. Adam and Eve were judged based on what they did.
He said in Gen.2:17 do not eat of… and that was what they were judged for.
Jesus was tempted yet without sin.
I think it still comes back to what I had said to you before; that there can not be love with out a choice.
I really do not think it is Biblically correct to think that there will be temptation in Heaven to sin for the redeemed of the Lord. To speculate on such things and to say you do not look forward to Heaven because of it is sad. The scripture 2 Cor2:9; says eye has not seen, nor ears have heard of the things that God ha prepared for those that love him.
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Permalink Reply by Leonard T on
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Why Did God Create Satan if He Knew he Would Fall?
You make a lot of sense and God is honored when we seek the truth and questions are often the key to opening the door to answers guiding us to a deeper walk with Him.
I will try to address your questions in the order that they appear in your comments.
We do not know how long the angels existed in God’s presence before Satan fell. It can be assumed that it was long enough for them to know what was acceptable and what was not acceptable to God. Mankind on the other hand had not been given understanding relating to sin, and more specifically the varieties of sin and their consequences. Romans 7 teaches us that the Law did reveal sin more clearly to mankind. Romans 1 also teaches that there is a certain moral understanding in man already from the beginning (also see Psalm 19), even before the totality of the Law is or was revealed.
Eve was tempted by the sight of the fruit, but that was not a sin (James 1:14-16). The beauty of the fruit was acceptable to be appreciated. The desire to have the fruit may have been wrong, it was not the command. The command was clearly that she not eat the fruit. The law was literal. Jesus did bring to light that contemplating sin as sin itself, meaning envisioning the act itself, not just a wanting of something. If she had left it on the ground and not eaten, she would have won the victory over temptation, but she failed. Keep in mind that today we are not destined to hell, before salvation, because of Eve’s sin. It exposed mankind to sin. We are destined to hell for personal sin. I broke the law and I deserve death because of it. It is no one else’s fault. Even after Adam fell, if I lived up to the Law without failing once I would not need redemption. Not one man has ever done that. Jesus, Who is full God and full man, did fulfill the requirements of the Law and thus making Him the acceptable sacrifice for mankind.
The sin of Satan and the sin of Eve are not the same sin. They have similar results. Keep in mind that angels and humans are different beings created even for different purposes and with different characteristics. Satan rose up against God. He wanted to be God and 1/3 of the angels rose up with him. The Father was not threatened. The war was not in jeopardy. The war proved the loyalty or rebellion of the angels to God and each other. Sin and its consequences entered the human race through the actions of Adam and Eve. Angels and humans were and are freewill beings.
Satan did not need anyone to tempt him. He saw what God had and wanted it. He was privy to heaven and all that existed there. Many of my sins required no external pressure just my own evil desire (James 1:14-15). Adam and Eve had all that the world offered them and God, except the fruit from that one tree. There is no record of them visiting heaven, but only that God walked and talked with them. They had nothing to covet like Satan did.
Your railroad illustration is interesting, but has one link missing. The idea of dying while saving someone is accurate. The idea of tying one up only to save them misses an important point. It presupposes that man was free to begin with. He had freewill, but also had the ability to choose self over God. Love must be shown in action. Adam and Eve demonstrated rebellion and in essence tied themselves up and extended the rope to you and me. Christ came to stop the self-bondage caused by personal sin.
Often the argument goes, If God knew man would fall, why did He create them. I knew that one day my children would disobey me. I knew that from the day they were born that they will one day die. I still had them. God desires our love, given freely, so much that man had to be freed to choose. God gives man the right to choose Him or reject Him. If God manifested His physical presence and appeared more active today than He is would the love of man for Him be love of Him or desire for His stuff? Many fall into this trap anyway today. God wants our love and will accept nothing less. This love must be of free choice freely given.
Lastly, the fear that you refer to regarding heaven and your existence there. There is no need for that fear. (1 John 4;18) The angels who did not fall have already proven their loyalty and will not be tempted to repeat. They saw Satan fall, the greatest of them all, with 1/3 of all angels. Any such attempt would be futile. One could say then that they stay due to fear. No, they already made their choice and proved their worth. We, on the other hand have experienced the worst this world has to offer. We have already experienced life apart from Christ. When we experience the greatness and goodness of God in His presence in heaven and on the new earth we will not second guess or decision and true love, agape love, cannot change its mind because it is a state of being. Love is part of what we are becoming in His image.
Not sure if I covered all of your well thought out questions. If I have not, I am willing to address them or readdress anything list in my response. One of my passions is addressing questions and writing biblical articles. I hope this helps.
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