Isaiah 14:12-17 Ezekiel 28: 12-19 Genesis chapter 3 Habakkuk 1:13 II Thessalonians 2:7
Evil began when God's greatest creation, the cherub Lucifer, rebelled against God. Lucifer desired to destroy God and take His place as a god. God had given the gift of free will to Lucifer. God had allowed Lucifer to do whatever he wanted. God could not imagine that free will could ever be used in any but creative and beautiful ways. God was, and is, Infinite Innocence. Yet Lucifer, who had access to God's Ideas, misused limited copies of these Ideas to invent false combinations of these ideas that proved to be destructive and empty.
"God is Love." Read I John 4:8. One of the greatest components of Love is the Infinite Idea called "Innocence." Because of God's great Innocence, He had never imagined that there could ever be such a thing as evil. God must have been greatly shocked when "iniquity was found" in Lucifer. God had had great faith in Lucifer, and yet Lucifer misused God's Ideas to invent evil. God's Innocence protected Him from any blame for Lucifer's crimes.
Read Romans 8:20 John 8:44
The Word of God often refers to evil as being "vanity." Vanity means "emptiness" but it also means "pride." "Emptiness" and "pride" constitute exact descriptions of Lucifer's attitude and actions when he rebelled against God. Lucifer invented evil when he began to combine copies of God's Ideas in ways that effected destruction and emptiness. This newfound power caused pride to arise in him to the point that he thought that he could use his power to destroy God and take His place. God had always combined His Ideas in creative ways, and had never imagined that they could be combined in any other way. Because God's Ideas are Infinite, Lucifer could not create new ideas, but he did invent false combinations of those Ideas. God had always used the Idea of nothing in creative ways, so He was able to use this Idea as His means to recognize the emptiness and pride that resulted from Lucifer's invention of false combinations. But God could not comprehend the absolute nothingness that would result if Lucifer should succeed in using his false combinations to destroy Him. God was able to use His Idea of nothing to recognize the destructive effects of such false combinations as: "The desire to kill God," "untruths about God," and "jealousy of God's Power." Every individual Idea within these false combinations are true and useful in creative combinations, but Lucifer combined them in false and destructive ways. God had used even the Idea called "kill" in creative combinations as that Idea which eliminates all Ideas from any particular combination that are not needed for that combination. While all of God's Ideas are true, he had used the true combination called "not true" to identify true Ideas that do not fit into certain combinations but which will fit into others. But Lucifer used this same combination in a false way when he tried to show that God has lied. It had never occurred to God that "not" could be combined with "truth" as a destructive attempt to "kill" the Truth which is the Oneness of God with His Word. God created a useful name for all of these false combinations invented by Lucifer. God called them "sin."
Sin can in no way whatsoever be a limitation of God's Infinite Knowledge and Power. From its beginning, sin has merely been an attempt to reduce God's Being to an absolute nothingness; that is, to reduce Him to nonexistence. But this attempt could never limit God's Infinity in the least. God possesses the Infinite ability to separate an infinite something from an infinite nothing by His power to recognize that both are Infinite Ideas in His Infinite Mind. Absolute nothingness can have no effect on God's Infinite Creative Power whatsoever because it nonexists.
By using his lies and propaganda, Lucifer persuaded a third of God's angels to follow him in his rebellion. No doubt, he probably appealed to their intelligence to awaken within them a knowledge of their own free will which their intelligence could cause them to realize that they had. The knowledge of the power of free will can be quite heady and thus cause pride and rebellion. God did not immdeiately crush this rebellion because His Love and Innocence caused Him to attempt to persuade the rebels to abandon their rebellion as being hopeless and meaningless. Also, God was probably in great shock for a while, and shock can cause inactivity. "Shock" and "inactivity" are not weaknesses in God's Power; they name two of His Infinite Creative Combinations of His Infinite Ideas. "Shock" can be described as a creative combination called a "horror of evil." "Inactivity" can be described as "rest," which is also very creative.
Read II Corinthians 4:4
When God did act, He led His loyal angels in war against the rebels, arrested them, and threw them out of heaven and down to earth. On earth Lucifer became Satan the "god of this world." Satan is responsible for all of the horror, cruelty and evil that has happened in the history of the world. But all of these false combinations have always comprised copies of God's original true and creative Ideas.
God created two innocent and immortal humans and put them into the garden of Eden to live there in bliss forever. Satan entered the garden in the form of a serpent for the express purpose of destroying their innocence and ruining their bliss. Satan seduced Eve to fall into sin with his lies about God's Word, and Eve seduced Adam to sin with both her pathos and her sexual allure. Adam and Eve came to know good and evil because they disobeyed God and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They attained the intelligence that is needed to construct both creative and false combinations of God's true Ideas. Eve's disobedience was good in that her innocence was violated by a superior being, but it was evil in that she allowed rebellion against God's Word to become a part of her being. Adam's disobedience was good in that in his compassion for Eve's lost condition, he sacrificed himself in order to become equal with Eve and thus remain her friend; but it was evil in that he selfishly did not want to lose her sexual companionship, and he also allowed rebellion to become a part of his being. In addition, the good parts of their beings could never be enough to overcome the evil parts of their beings, and so they would remain in a hopeless, lost and depraved condition until they died and became separated from God forever. They needed God to come to their rescue.
God came to Adam and Eve's rescue when He prophesied to the serpent that He would give the serpent his chance to destroy Him, but that the serpent would only succeed in injuring the seed of the woman, but the seed of the woman would succeed in destroying the serpent. God made sure that Adam and Eve could overhear His prophecy to the serpent. Both the serpent and Adam and Eve understood this prophecy to mean that God would, at some time in the future, come to earth as a mere man who would defeat the Devil on his own ground. Read Genesis 4:1. The fulfillment of this prophecy would result in the final defeat of Satan's rebellion. From the time of Christ's resurrection, the Devil knew that he has "but a short time." Read Revelation 12:12. God had decided to test His Love and rescue humanity from the Devil's power by meeting the Devil in battle on equal grounds. Could God, as a mere man, endure the worst that evil could throw against Him, or would He succumb to evil? God meant to prove that His Love can never be destroyed even when pain and suffering beyond imagination were inflicted upon Him. God also meant to prove that Love could survive even death, and that those humans who would choose to trust in His sacrifice and resurrection would forever be saved from the power of evil by His Love. God meant to prove the eternal power of Love to triumph and to save.
God then confirmed His prophecy to Adam and Eve when He gave them a sign by killing an animal and clothing them in its skin. God meant for all future humans who trusted in Him to practice this sign by sacrificing animals and shedding their blood. Read Genesis 4:1-5. This sign would continue as a prophecy to humans until the time would come that God Himself would come to earth and shed His own blood, and rise from the dead so that He could wash all believers in His own blood and clothe them in His own righteousness so that they could be saved from evil forever. God meant to prove that His Love never fails to show compassion, never fails to rescue, and can never fail to protect and sanctify forever. "Love never fails." Read I Corinthians 13:8. God meant to prove that even when the most severe test possible were applied to Love, that Love will always prevail over evil.
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