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https://byfaithonline.com/why-does-a-good-god-permit-evil/

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Very briefly ALL that was of God was faultless. God Created forms to do His Will.

“I can do so much, I am like The Creator. I can be as The Creator. ” This was thought by one of the highest ranking angels – Lucifer.

Lucifer wanted to take God’s place, by killing Him. But would he have rebelled if there was no chance of winning? Of course not. That would have been stupid, right?

God did not create the Devil. When Lucifer fell from grace, he became the Devil, Satan, meaning the enemy of God. It is absurd to say that God created the enemy of God. Did God know that Lucifer can choose to become Satan?Of course, but we know, too, that our children can choose to lie to us and yet we choose to have them, their value is bigger than the mistakes they make. But Lucifer’s fall WAS NOT A MISTAKE, it was open rebellion.

Why Lucifer rebelled: it all started with narcissism

Lucifer’s beauty was perfect

Have you ever contemplated how cats behave? Have you seen their narcissistic behavior? Maybe that is the right starting point in understanding how can somebody love oneself without limits like Lucifer did and still does. Or the youth in a never-ending selfies session, believing they are wonderful without achieving anything worthy of respect. Yes, we live in a world imbued with a more and more satanic mindset. Take care of your souls!

Is there an escape from narcissism? Yes, there is a solution that can reduce a lot that kind of love of oneself:

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
(Matthew 19:19)

It goes the other way, too: love yourself as you love your neighbor. It does not mean taking selfies with your neighbor, but rather making him/ her your equal in everything, help him/ her as you help yourself. Loving God and at the same time avoiding to serve your neighbor can lead to pride.

So Lucifer had a way out of the test, but he never wanted to serve others, like Jesus did when he washed His apostles’ feet. Lucifer was just too proud.

But who drove Lucifer crazy? There were no demons back then to tempt Lucifer, so who did it? Has God tempted him? No. God does tempt anyone:

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone.
(James 1:13)

Lucifer has tempted himself by feeding thoughts and desires that made him fall from grace

But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
(James 1:14)

Lucifer was perfect in every way:

You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. […] Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor; I cast you to the ground, I laid you before kings,
That they might gaze at you .
(Ezekiel 28:12, 17)

A painting in which Lucifer
is starting to transform into Satan

He knew God’s Law at perfection. That’s why today he is the most fierce adversary of God, he knows all the applications of God’s Law and knows of what to accuse each and every one of us, like a lawyer that went mad:

The accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.
(Revelation 12:10)

Not only Lucifer, but people can also deceive themselves, too. Actually, in many cases, it is not the Devil the one who is tempting us, but our hearts which are full of evil things. This is what God says after the flood:

I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.
(Genesis 8:21)

Why was Lucifer cast out of Heaven: he committed MURDER

For God, sin and death are like two sides of the same coin. For the Devil, sin was a weapon.

We do not know how it took place, but we know from the Bible that Lucifer committed murder (or made somebody sin?). We really do not know how it happened, but this cherub found out that sin is truly LETHAL:

He was a murderer from the beginning.
(John 8:44)

Those are Jesus Christ’s words. He did not overstate it: Lucifer became Satan when he killed somebody. So, from the first moment, he was no longer Lucifer, he was Satan, a murderer, and God’s enemy. Jesus always chose His words carefully, He was The Word of God, and this time He called the Devil a murderer.

Pride is a form of egolatry,
the worshiping of oneself.

We know very well that a narcissist can become a murderer in no time. Psychopaths are narcissists. There are narcissists who have a fixation of their appearance and there and narcissists who have a fixation on their personality. Or both, like Lucifer. A narcissist takes him/herself as a base unit for everything, he/she is The Law, not God’s Law: “compared to me, how are you or how the world is”. More about narcissism HERE.

Honestly, I would have been astonished if Jesus said: “The Devil is a liar, but he never killed anyone”. Now that would have been surprising.

Why did God let Lucifer fall?

God did let Lucifer fall because nobody, not even His Son, escapes testing, to see you stand on your two feet. Isn’t absurd the question: why does God hate you being independent? He LOVES YOU BEING INDEPENDENT, it’s just that independence does not mean doing any stupid thing that passes through your head, but rather being able to stand on your two feet.

Lucifer was allowed to develop that sick passion for oneself, but not beyond the point of return. There is always a choice:

No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.
(1 Corinthians 10:13)

So, as stated before, Lucifer had a way out, to love his neighbor with the same passion he loved himself, to serve his neighbor as he served himself: Matthew 19:19.

Who is Lucifer? A tyrant. But God is not a tyrant!

God always respects your free will, but He will show everybody how wrong your ways were. Like he did with the Jews:

Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.
(1 Corinthians 10:11)

All those people thrown into the lake of fire will be an eternal example for the inhabitants of Heaven:

He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.
(Revelation 14:10-11)

What followed when Lucifer saw that sin is lethal?

Sin is an abomination. Sometimes I think of sin like cancer or a computer virus, it corrupts and destroys everything it touches. But how does the Bible describes sin?

Sin is the weapon of death, as described:

The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.
(1 Corinthians 15:56)

Death draws its power from sin and sin draws its power from the Law. In other words, when you sin, the accuser of our brethren will ask God to punish you, according to the Law, and the punishment for sin is always death. So how did Satan wanted to take God’s place? Here are two scenarios:

1. The Devil wanted to use God’s Law against Him, to make Him sin (through temptation and suffering)
2. The Devil orchestrated Jesus’s death in order to keep Him locked in Hell, as blackmail against God The Father

With a weapon as dangerous as sin, Lucifer said:

For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’
(Isaiah 14:13-14)

With this, God also assured us that He knows everything, even what Lucifer said in his heart. He knows everything. What is interesting is that Lucifer did not say: I will be greater than the Most High. He knew there is nothing above God. No man is the author of the Bible, God is because a man would have written: I will be greater than God. It is such a small detail which gives you such a big clue about the author of the Bible: Isaiah, like a good secretary, wrote what God told him to write.

Lucifer believed that he can make God sin

You can starve Him, throw prostitutes at His feet, shame Him, slap Him in the face, beat Him almost to death and then crucify Him, GOD WILL NOT SIN. He did practice what He preached.

If God did not have the love He claimed he has, the Devil would be a winner today. Lucifer’s plan was pretty strong: make God descend from glory into flesh, make Him sin or keep Him imprisoned to blackmail Him. And Jesus was tempted countless times, not only three times:

Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time.
(Luke 4:13)

For the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me. But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, so I do.
(John 14:30-31)

Did Lucifer really wanted to kill God?

Well, he did it! He killed Him! It’s obvious that this was his plan all along. BUT GOD DID NOT STAY DEAD. Jesus not only died, that is not the end of the story, HE IS ALSO RISEN AND ALIVE TODAY! He became the firstborn from the dead:

And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.
(Colossians 1:18)

Can you guess Jesus’s age? Well, it’s simple: 2019 years today + the eternity-past. The calendar is made after Him, Jesus was born in 4 BC. Jesus is now with His Father, and He is flesh and bones (glorified), you can actually touch God if you meet Him. My God is palpable, He ascended to His Father, in Heaven, with that body:

Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.
(Luke 24:39)

From God’s point of view,
this is how a winner looks like:
humble, not proud.

One small curse from our Savior’s mouth during his crucifixion and everything would have been lost. Everything was at stake.

But God outsmarted Lucifer, He has won: death was not a contradiction, something to make Him “cancel” Himself because of the Law, but it was something victorious, something that can defeat the death brought by sin. The Devil is defeated.

O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?
(1 Corinthians 15:55)

So now we have two types of death: dying in Christ or dying in your sins. Death itself will be thrown away in the lake of fire.

Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
(Revelation 20:14)

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.
(Revelation 14:13)

Why Satan is not forgiven

Like any true narcissist,
Satan wants to be worshiped

If thousands of years passed since he has fallen, did he not correct his narcissistic character? NO! Never. You cannot be good without God. Here is the proof, that after thousands of years, Satan was (and still is) narcissistic:

Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”
(Matthew 4:8-9)

Satan is evil and he stays that way. That’s not negotiable and will never change.

We, the humans, can sin and through His sacrifice, be forgiven. No other being has this privilege. We are made of dust, but the angels are made of fire, they are in God’s presence and they do not have the doubts we have (does God really exist?). That is the world of Truth:

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
(1 Corinthians 13:12)

Here is a description of Lucifer’s beauty:

Every precious stone was your covering: The sardius, topaz, and diamond, Beryl, onyx, and jasper, Sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes Was prepared for you on the day you were created. “You were the anointed cherub who covers; I established you; you were on the holy mountain of God; you walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you.
(Ezekiel 28:13-15)

Everyone who is not in Him is evil and does not change by its own will

Lucifer’s fall was no accident, he WANTED to rebel against God. And because God is full of goodness, he proves us, humans, that SATAN IS EVIL AND HE STAYS THAT WAY FOREVER:

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him. Now when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle.
(Revelation 20:1-8)

The Devil will be imprisoned for 1000 years.

Did the Devil change after 1.000 years of imprisonment? No. That is why God has to throw every wicked person into the lake of fire. This life is like a draft, but when we die, everything is like a published paper: you cannot change it anymore. If you were a sinner, you will die in your sins.

What is the correct attitude towards Satan?

Do not curse the Devil. What? Yes. Do not curse Satan. Hate is never the answer in God’s kingdom. Not even angels allow themselves to be carried away and say curses or a judgment:

Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.
(Jude 1:9)

Lucifer becomes Satan and is banished.

And Jesus Christ never said that He hates the Devil. He took him seriously, and the proof is that he included him in the Our Father prayer: And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. God does not tempt anyone (James 1:13). By do not lead us into temptation, Jesus meant do not let us vulnerable to temptation, like in this verse:

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
(Matthew 4:1)

No sympathy for the Devil. Do not feel sorry for him, he is a murderer by choice. If we are ever to encounter the forces of darkness (God forbid!) face to face, we should not curse them, but talk like Jesus did with the unclean spirits from Mark, chapter 5.

This conflict between Satan and God is not eternal

There is no such thing as “eternal conflict” as Hollywood likes to put it. No. This conflict has a beginning and God will put an end to it. Devil will be thrown in the lake of fire:

The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone.
(Revelation 20:10)

The Devil will be tormented and… he will be mocked by everybody down there:

They all shall speak and say to you: ‘Have you also become as weak as we? Have you become like us? Those who see you will gaze at you, and consider you, saying: ‘Is this the one who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world as a wilderness and destroyed its cities, who did not open the house of his prisoners?’
(Isaiah 14:10, 16-17)