THE FALL OF LUCIFER

Dr. W.A. Criswell

Luke 10:18

10-16-83     10:50 a.m.

  Now let’s begin: a survey, a summary survey of the life of Lucifer.  In the beginning of unknown infinitude of time, before time was created, before the world and the universe were created, so far as we know, the first revealed act of God was the creation of the angelic hosts.  When you read in the Bible the phrase, “the Lord of hosts,” it refers to the host of heaven: Lord sabaoth, the “Lord of hosts,” the angelic hosts of heaven.  The first revealed act of God was the creation of the angelic hosts of heaven; they are uncountable, multitudinous, innumerable.  In the Book of the Revelation, the Greek calls them “myriads, upon myriads, upon myriads.”  Ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands [Revelation 5:11], it’s translated in the King James Version, a vast innumerable multitude, the angelic hosts of heaven [Hebrews 12:22].  And they were created before the universe, before matter and time were created. In the thirty-eighth chapter of the Book of Job, we are told that the angelic hosts, the sons of God, the angels of glory looked upon the marvelous creation of our universe with joy, and wonder, and amazement, and gladness [Job 38:7].  They watched God in the creation of the stars, the planets, the universes, the galaxies, and this earth. 

Now, in that creation of the angelic hosts of heaven, God also created the most perfect and the most beautiful, the most glorious of all of the angelic creatures that He had created.  God created Lucifer, and He made him the “son of the morning” [Isaiah 14:12].  Lucifer, light bearer, to be the leader of the angels of heaven and the guardian of the throne of God Himself [Ezekiel 28:14].  He made him above all of the other creations in God’s created heaven and earth.  In the twenty-eighth chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, he is described:

Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty … Thou art the anointed—

that’s the Hebrew word for Messiah—

thou art the anointed cherub that covereth, that guards:  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.

[Ezekiel 28:12, 14]

He must have been brilliantly, beautifully created.  Diamonds and rubies and emeralds and jewels adorned his very walk.  “Thou was perfect in thy ways from the day that thou was created” [Ezekiel 28:15].  This Lucifer was so alluring and so beautiful until he was able to take out of the hand of God one-third of all of the multitude of that angelic host [Revelation 12:4].  And we read of his fall in these two places: first, in the twenty-eighth chapter of Ezekiel.  

Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou was created, until—

and that “until” is the crisis point of God’s whole universe—

until iniquity was found in thee.  Thine heart was lifted up because of thine beauty..

thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness.

[Ezekiel 28:15, 17].

And the fourteenth chapter of the Book of Isaiah describes that fall.  Isaiah 14:12, “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer,” his name means light bearer, “son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground!  For thou hast said in thine heart,” and here are five “I wills”:

I will ascend into heaven,

I will exalt my throne above the angels of God: 

I will sit upon the mount of the congregation …

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;

I will be like the Most High, Almighty God Himself.

[Isaiah 14:13-14] 

“Yet thou shall be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit” [Isaiah 14:15].  

The beauty and the glory and the splendor and the brilliance of Lucifer brought pride to his heart, and he envied God Himself.   And I repeat, so alluring and becoming and attractive is this creature, Lucifer, that he was able—according to the twelfth chapter of the Book of the Revelation—to take after him, to pull after him, the file leader of one-third of the angels of glory [Revelation 12:4].   

Lucifer and all of the angelic hosts were created as we were; with choice, the ability to choose, to will, to possess volition.  God never created them as robots; He didn’t create us as a robot.  Nor did God create them impersonally.  A mountain cannot talk back to God.  An ocean or a star or a planet cannot think God’s thoughts after Him.  God created the angelic hosts with personality and with choice, and this Lucifer was able to bring out of the reverence and adoration of God one-third of all of the multitudinous angelic hosts.  They followed him; they chose him [Revelation 12:4].  Like Absalom stole the hearts of Israel from David [2 Samuel 15:4-5], Lucifer stole the hearts of one-third of the angelic hosts from God omnipotent.  And he became known to us therein as Satan, the adversary—he became known to us as diabolos, devil, the accuser, the slanderer [Matthew 4:1].  Now in that fall there also came to pass the tragedy, the trauma, that we see in our created universe.  So the universe fell in the fall of Satan.

Number two now: a summary of the life of Satan in the world.  When God looked upon His fallen creation—the stars that are burned out, all of the dearth, and death, and blackness, and sterility of the whole creation of God—when the Lord looked upon the waste and the void, He chose one planet called “Earth” to regenerate, to rejuvenate, to remake, to reconstruct.  And God did that in six days; He recreated this fallen earth and He made it beautiful and perfect [Genesis 1:3-31].  And He called it “the garden of Eden.”  And in that garden, He set the man that He created [Genesis 2:8], and finding him living alone, made for him an help meet and brought her to him [Genesis 2:18, 21-22].  And they were given the dominion of the earth [Genesis 1:26-28]; it was his, Adam’s.  And God said to Adam, “Have dominion over it,” and when he brought Eve, He said, “And replenish the earth [Genesis 1:28].  It is yours.  The title deed is in your name.  The earth belongs to you.” 

On the outside of the garden of Eden, lies that sinister, evil, subtle, serpent, Satan [Genesis 3:1].  And he sits there, he walks there, he lies there in vindictiveness.  This is his creation; the whole creation has been given into his hands [2 Corinthians 4:4].  And when he hears God say, “This earth is yours, the title deed is yours,” Satan in his bitter and vindictive jealousy, watches, and he sees something—Adam loved Eve.  And Satan says in his heart, “If I can get the woman, I’ll get the man,” which is true everlastingly.  I don’t even try to reach a man if I can’t reach the wife. No need to try.  If you win him, the next morning she has him back again as he was.  “I’ll get the woman,” said Satan, “and when I get her, I’ll get the man.”  The Bible plainly says that Satan deceived Eve [1 Timothy 2:14].  He didn’t deceive Adam.  Adam chose to die with Eve rather than live without her.  “I can get the woman; I’ll get the man,” and he did.

He came before the woman in the incarnation of the most beautiful of all of the animal creation—the serpent that you see is slimy, moves on his belly, he’s cursed—but in the beginning, he was beautiful and subtle and could talk.  And he said to the woman, “Eve, you will be as of God Himself if you will eat of this forbidden tree” [Genesis 3:4-5].  Doesn’t that sound familiar to you?  Isn’t that what Satan had in his own heart?  “I want to be as God” [Isaiah 14:14], and she listened to the siren, subtle voice of the serpent, and she fell and Adam fell [Genesis 3:1-6], and therein the title deed was wrested from the authority and hands of Adam and was seized by Satan himself.  He now has the title deed of this earth; it belongs to him, he took it in the fall and sin and deception of Eve and of Adam.

How do you know all of those things, pastor?  Very simply: in the temptation in the fourth chapter of the Book of Luke, Satan says to the Lord Jesus, “The glories of the kingdoms of the world, I will give it to You if You will fall down and worship me because it has been delivered unto me!  It has been delivered unto me” [Luke 4:5-7].  It was given to Satan; and in John 12 [John 12:31], and in John 14 [John 14:30], and in John 16 [John 16:11]; our Lord says Satan is the ruler of this world.  And in the second Corinthian letter, chapter 4, Paul calls him “the god of this world” [2 Corinthians 4:4].  The title deed of this earth passed from the hand of Adam to Satan when he fell in the garden of Eden [Genesis 3:1-6].

And thereafter, the story of Satan is the story of the Bible.  He listened to God when the Lord said, “The Seed of the woman shall crush his head; the Seed of the woman” [Genesis 3:15].  And all through the millennia since, Satan has been trying to destroy the Seed of the woman.  He did it, he thought triumphantly in Cain when Cain slew Abel [Genesis 4:8, 7:21-23].  Then he thought he had done it in the antediluvian civilization when the whole world fell into sin and flood, but Noah found grace in God’s sight [Genesis 6:6-8].  And he thought he had done it in the days of idolatry, when the world earth was filled with idolatry, but God spoke to Abraham, “Blessing thee, I will bless the world” [Genesis 12:2-3].  And he thought he had done it in the barrenness of Sarah, but God gave her a child, a son, when she was ninety years of age [Genesis 17:17, 21: 2-12].  And he thought he had done it in the great apostasy, but God called the people back under Elijah [1 Kings 18:18-39].  He thought he had destroyed the Seed of the woman when Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, destroyed all of the seed of David.  But Jehoiada the high priest stole away little Joash, the baby, and kept him in the temple, hidden for seven years [2 Kings 11:1-4].  He thought he had done in the Assyrian captivity [2 Kings 17:6], and the Babylonian captivity [2 Kings 24:14].  He thought he had done it in Bethlehem, when all of the babes were slain [Matthew 2:16], but God preserved the Seed of the woman, and they fled to Egypt [Matthew 2:13-14].  He thought he had done it in the temptation, but the Man of God was able to withstand the inroads and the wooings and the allurements of Satan himself [Matthew 4:1-10; Luke 4:1-13].  And he thought he had done it when the people of Nazareth took Jesus to cast Him headlong down [Luke 4:29].  And he thought he had done it when the Pharisees took up stones to destroy Jesus, stoning Him to death [John 8:59].  And finally, he did it on a place called Calvary [Luke 23:33], they nailed the Seed of the woman to the cross and Satan watched Him die [Matthew 27:32-50].  With what glee and with what indescribable triumph and gladness did Satan exult over the death of the Son of God, “Israel has slain her own Son!” [Acts 3:13-15].

But there was a secret hidden in the heart of the Almighty; out of the death of Christ, His blood and suffering [Matthew 27:32-50], and out of the resurrection of the glorious triumphant Son of Man [Matthew 28:1-7], a secret God had in His mind and purpose and plan, this age of grace [Colossians 1:27].  The prophets never saw it, the Old Testament never wrote of it, Satan never dreamed of it—that out of the blood, and suffering, and cross, and death, and tears, and pathos of our Lord, was to be the gospel of the grace of the Son of God that washes our sins away [Acts 22:16], and makes us members of the redeemed family of the Lord [1 Peter 1:18-19]—this age of grace [Romans 6:14]; and therein and thereafter, the story of his persecution of the people of God.  “And the dragon was wroth and went to make war with her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ” [Revelation 12:17], hear it!

Now the third: the end time, the final judgment; in the twelfth chapter of the Revelation: Lucifer is thrown out of heaven and coming down to the earth [Revelation 12:9], the great tribulation, and it ends in the battle of Armageddon [Revelation 16:15].  At the end of the battle of Armageddon, the great mighty angel comes down and sets a seal upon Satan in the bottomless pit [Revelation 20:1-3].  And after a thousand years, he is loosed for just a season [Revelation 20:7], then he rises in the final opposition and confrontation to God Almighty, and this time he is cast into the lake of fire forever and ever and ever [Revelation 20:7-10].  Thus, the summary: the survey of the life of Satan.

I don’t think there is a couplet in human speech as vivid as this verse from Milton in his Paradise Lost.  “Him the Almighty hurled headlong, flaming from the ethereal sky.”  God cast him out.  Heretofore, he has access to us in earth and the host of heaven.  Job 1, Job 2, he’s there accusing the saints [Job 1:9-11, 2:4-5].  His name means accuser, slanderer, he’s cast out of heaven.  Then the cry, “Woe to the inhabiters of the earth … for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth he hath but a short time” [Revelation 12:12].  The devil comes down to the earth.  “Lord, Lord, how shall we then be saved?”  The answer is in the Revelation: God seals His own.  In the seventh chapter of the book and the second verse, “God seals His own” [Revelation 7:2-3].  And in the first chapter of the Book of Ephesians, God says that the Holy Spirit seals us unto the day of redemption until the full purchased possession, the soul and the body sealed [Ephesians 1:13-14].  And the devil can’t destroy us, and the devil can’t circumvent us, and the devil can’t overcome us; we belong to God!  “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death” [Revelation 12:11].

A mighty fortress is our God.

A bulwark never failing.

Our helper He amid the flood

Of mortal ills prevailing.

For still our ancient foe

Doth seek to work us woe. 

His craft and power are great

And armed with cruel hate,

On earth He has no equal.

If we in our own strength confide,

Our striving would be losing.

Were not the right Man on our side,

The Man of God’s own choosing

Doth ask who that may be,

Jesus Christ, it is He.

Lord Sabaoth—Lord of the Hosts—His name

From age to age the same,

And He must win the battle.

And though this world with devils filled

Should threaten to undo us,

We will not fear for God hath willed

His truth to triumph through us.

The prince of darkness grim.

We tremble not for him.

His rage we can endure,

For, lo, his doom is sure.

One little word will fell him.

That word above all earthly powers

No thanks to them abideth.

The Spirit and the gifts are ours

Through Him who with us sideth.

Let goods and kindred go,

This mortal life also.

This body they may kill,

God’s truth abideth still,

His kingdom is forever, forever, forever.

[“A Mighty Fortress is our God,” Martin Luther,1527]

We can’t lose.  Our enemy is brilliant, the angel of light [2 Corinthians 11:14].  But He that is with us is greater than he that is with them [1 John 4:4], and our triumph is certain.  Bless God, praise His wonderful name.