The World and the Word

               The Difference between Sin and Evil

God inspired the Jews to write the spiritual history of the human race. Because humans pass through time, they had to write God's Word in the past, present, and future tenses. But to God, His Word exists in an eternal tense; that is, an eternal and infinite present. This fact can only mean that the eternal Word of God cannot fail. Matthew 24:35; Numbers 23:19; Psalm 119:89. Since God is Almighty, then His Love has to be Almighty. God's Love for His living humans cannot fail. I Corinthians 13:8. God must rescue them all from eternal death. Revelation 20:5; Revelation 4:11; Revelation 21:5; Ecclesiastes 3:14. Whatever God said to Adam and Eve, He has said to the entire human race. Genesis 3:20. Luke 20:38 is God's eternal Word.

That which happens to be most important about the spiritual history of humanity happened at the beginning when God prophesied to Adam and Eve that He would send humanity a Savior, and the Great White Throne Judgment at the end of the world. The absolutely most important event in man's spiritual history became the perfect life, suffering to death, burial, descent into Hell, and resurrection of the Savior of all living humans. All of the rest of the Word of God simply unfolds the details of man's spiritual history from beginning to its end. Revelation 1:8; Revelation 1:17-18; John 16:33.

Satan believed that God had sown the seeds of His own eternal destruction when He gave free will to Lucifer. Satan believed that Lucifer succeeded in destroying a part of the good elements that God put into his system when God created him. But God's Word relates that He used His fiery wrath against evil to dissolve Lucifer's system and separate and recover all of the good elements that He had put into Lucifer's system from all of the totally evil, rebellious, and empty being called Satan whom God exiled to earth as an empty, negative consciousness; that is, a type of demon. Ezekiel 28:14-19. But Satan still believed that he had weakened God and had gained some power over Him, at least on the earth. Job 1:6-7; Matthew 4:1-11. Satan would not have bothered to tempt Jesus if he had not believed that Jesus had some weakness in Him. Only after the resurrection of Christ did Satan learn that he had been defeated and that he had but a short time on the earth. Revelation 12:12.

Satan knew that doubt about the power of God's Love had entered into God's creations because of Lucifer's rebellion. Satan also knew that this doubt would persist, and that in the future more angels might rebel against God because of it. God had to prove to His creations that His Love remained Almighty and that His gift of free will to Lucifer had not been a mistake. God had to allow Satan to do his worst to humanity to fully and completely test His Love. God could not allow Satan to claim that God had only partly tested His Love. When God gave free will to Lucifer, He had no idea that evil even existed. Actually, evil does not exist, at least to creative and positive consciousness, and yet it can produce negative consciousnesses that the Bible calls devils. Evil is wholly destructive and empty, and in that sense, it does not exist. Isaiah 40:17. That which has a positive existence tends to be destroyed by that which does not exist. Every false system, when all of its positive elements are subtracted, becomes reduced to the idea of nothing which, in turn, indicates an absolute nothingness. But God has determined to recreate everything that has become destroyed by evil. Revelation 21:5.