Interlocked Series – Lesson #02, Part 1
Pagan View of Origins: Spirit Beings
July 11, 2023
Dr. Robert L. Dean, Jr.
www.deanbibleministries.org
Opening Prayer
“Father, such a great privilege it is to study Your Word and just be reminded how through the centuries, through the 2,000 years of the Church Age, the ability to study Your Word, the freedom to study Your Word, the ability to have a completed canon of Scripture in our hands, to read it, to study it, to memorize it, is just rare.
“Most people in most countries, even today, don’t have their own copy of Scripture or they just have a small amount. They may not even have but one or two books of the New Testament translated into their own language. We’re thankful for the many translators that are out there working for numerous organizations to translate Scripture into these languages that don’t have it.
“Father, we continue to pray for our missionaries that we support. Father, we also pray for our other missionaries that are out there, and we just pray for them that You’d supply them with the financial needs that they have.
“Father, we pray for us as we study with this Interlocked program that it’ll give us a great understanding and overview of Your Word, and that we may be able to teach that to our children, our grandchildren, and kids in our prep school classes, that they might understand the foundational doctrines of Your Word and be able to answer why they are true, and why these alternative views are not. We pray these things in Christ’s name. Amen.”
Slide 2
All right, we are in our second lesson which is on pagan views of origins. Part one is going to look at spirit beings so we’re going to get into talking about angels, the angelic revolt, and the significance of the angelic revolt.
Slide 3
We’re going to start off with the timeline, and the timeline gives us these 11 Old Testament events and eight New Testament events as a framework for understanding the scriptures. So we’ve got a couple of kids that are going to come up, and they are going to take us through that timeline. You guys ready? All right. I’ll help you out.
You guys start with Creation and walk us through it. Go through it. Fall, Flood, the Tower of Babel, call of Abraham, Exodus. Good. The Law. Ten Commandments. Conquest. Then what? Kingdom. Very good. Exile. Partial return.
Next comes the New Testament. Birth of Jesus. Cross. Burial. Resurrection. Ascension. Church. You’re doing good. Church. And then what ends the Church Age? Jesus comes back in the air, the Rapture. And then seven years later, the Second Coming, and then the kingdom, and then final judgment. All right, good job, good job. I hope everybody got that.
Now let’s everybody stand up and let’s go through this. Are you ready? Creation, Fall, Flood, Tower of Babel, call of Abraham, Exodus, Ten Commandments, the Law, then you have the conquest, and then the kingdom. Then the Exile, both north and south go into exile. And then there’s a partial return and next, the birth of Jesus. Then there’s the Cross, death, and the burial of Christ. Then the resurrection and then the ascension. And then there’s the Church Age. At the end of the Church Age, there’s the return of Christ in the air at the Rapture and we go to Heaven. Then at the end of the Tribulation, Christ returns at the Second Coming, establishes the Kingdom. At the end of the thousand years, there’s the Great White Throne Judgment. All right. Very good.
Slide 4
Most of you are getting the idea that these events are like coat hooks that you hang your coat on. You can hang any number of things on a good coat hook.
For Creation, we talked about several things. What did we talk about? We talked about the Creator-creature distinction. Then we talked about the Divine Institutions. We can put those on there.
Slide 5
The reason we go through this is because all of these key events that we’re going to talk about are repeated, they’re referred to, and in some cases they’re prophesied. They’re referred back to many times. They are the key pegs on which all the Scripture hangs. It’s important for us to understand that the whole of the Bible is interconnected and interdependent.
We spent a good deal of time on these first four episodes, taking us through the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, because those first 11 chapters in Genesis are the main focus of attack on the historicity and the validity and the truth of the Bible. We learned last Thursday night when Aaron Lipkin was here talking about Joshua’s Altar and what they found there, that curse tablet, that there’s a tremendous amount of evidence out there that shows that the Bible is historically accurate.
In a lot of cases, it doesn’t gain the respectability from modern academics, from modern universities, and modern scholars. The reason is that they put on a pair of glasses that are colored with their presuppositions. And so when they put on their glasses, they can’t see any evidence that God exists. They can’t see any evidence that any of this was historically accurate.
As far as they’re concerned, even in Israel they may be taught the Bible as they are growing up in the home. When they go to school, they’re taught that there was no Moses, there was no Joshua, there was no conquest, there was probably no Abraham, and that these events are just all made up, and borrowed and changed from other areas, other cultures, stories about Creation or origins, and that kind of a thing.
What we see is that we live in a world where there are many, many stories about how everything came into existence. It’s important for us to study these things. Because in the last week or so in the first lesson what we studied was what the Bible teaches about Creation and that God created everything from nothing. He just created it by the word of His mouth.
We learned some things about the character of God in the previous Creation account, and that is that God is omnipotent. He’s all-powerful, so He can do whatever He intends to do, and He can create things out of nothing. Before Genesis 1:1, what existed? Nothing. Nothing, not anything. So, God just spoke and the whole universe came into existence. Matter came into existence.
All of the chemicals that make up the earth, everything came into existence. At one second, there was absolutely nothing. There wasn’t even space or time. There was just nothing. We can’t imagine that. Then God spoke, and in an instant, it was there. That is fundamental because when you presuppose that kind of a God, then everything else that happens that’s of a miraculous nature in Scripture can be understood and believed.
The problem with most people is that they have a God that is so small and so limited because He’s just like He’s just a sort of a superhuman. They believe that God’s got more power than humans do, and He can do more things than humans, but He’s not all-powerful, and He’s not present everywhere, and He doesn’t know everything. He just knows more. He’s just like a big human that’s just a little bit more powerful and more knowledgeable.
They still don’t think that these miracles and things can happen. So these unbelieving scholars, they just put their glasses on that doesn’t believe the truth, and all of this evidence just sort of disappears. Now we call those glasses assumptions. That’s an easier word for some people to handle. But the better word is a presupposition. Some of you wear glasses. When you have your glasses on, sometimes you’re not even aware you have your glasses on. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve gone around with my glasses on, saying where are my glasses? Oh, no wonder I can see everything. I’ve got them right on my face.
Presuppositions are like that. People have these deeply held beliefs that shape how they see the world around them. That has to be attacked. So we’ll talk more about that. The other thing that we’re going to look at today is we’re going to look at the creation of the spirit beings that are called angels.
We’re also going to be looking at where alternate views of Creation come from. Where do these lies come from? Where is the origin of these lies?
Slide 6
As part of this, I want to just briefly let you see the comparison between the Interlocked series that we’re looking at and the children’s version. The Interlocked is written for 16, 17, 18 years old and up, and the children’s version is written for those that are 10 years old and up. In the children’s version, they don’t go into one of the things we’ll talk about later, maybe not until next time. I’m not sure where I’ll end tonight.
That is what’s called a worldview, and that’s a concept that even a lot of adults have a little bit of struggle with. It focuses more, as you can see in this right column, in just talking about the spirit beings that were originally created, what we call the angels. Then the problem with Shining Star, which is a good translation for the Hebrew for Lucifer. I’ll talk about that.
Then I’ll talk about just what all happens in the Garden of Eden and how Satan is really the serpent and the deceiver and his lies are that you won’t really die and you can be like God. He says you don’t need God because you can create your own reality. Adam and Eve believed Satan’s lies and then they denied that they were responsible for their own choices.
One of the things that they do in the curriculum for the younger kids is have them draw pictures of what do you think of the different kinds of angels that the Bible talks about and some activities like that. There are a number of activities there that are good to get them just thinking about angels, so they become familiar with the concept. It doesn’t focus so much on some of the mythology and some of the other false views of Creation as much as it does just trying to get a basic understanding of what Scripture does teach.
You can see this is the basic outline. The three main points are the spirit beings, the shining star, which is the fall of Lucifer, and then pagan view of origins. Notice it talks more about the pagan worldview here and what it looks like today, which is not the focus for the younger children. Just remember that for the youngest children, the main thing is you can talk about these basic main points and sub points, but they’re going to be a little different the younger the child is.
That reminds me, I got an email from Answers in Genesis today, and they’ve got some new material that’s really targeting basic material for toddlers and for preschool. If you’ve got younger kids, then you can look at that material and sort of test it out and let us know how good it is. Usually, their material is very good.
One book that they came out with was talking about the Tower of Babel. It was written for children. I had my wife check it out and she’s really good in those areas and it got about a C plus. So that’s not one we would recommend. You think it was that good? It’s important to evaluate this material even if it comes from a usually reputable source.
Slide 7
What we saw the last time in lesson one which we broke actually into three sessions, was looking at God’s Creation and what He created in terms of the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, and especially in relation to the human race. We looked at that in terms of how God established these social absolutes, these social laws that are just as absolute as the physical laws. These social structures are called the Divine Institutions. We looked at the first three of those, which is personal choice. I’m changing the terminology there. We need to emphasize the freedom of choice, so I’m calling it responsible choice. Second is marriage, and third is family.
Then in lesson 2, we’ll focus on the wrong views of Creation, We’re going to talk about spirit beings, the fall of the shining star, and the angelic rebellion, and then how Satan deceived Adam and Eve. That’s his standard way of approaching things. He wants to deceive us into thinking something is good when it’s not. Because we’re already sinners, we fall into his traps far too easily.
Then the second part of lesson 2 will help us understand why there are so many different views of Creation and history and where they come from. That is so important because even as early as preschool, kids are being introduced to some of these concepts related to, for example, Earth Day, environmentalism, and things of that nature. We have to understand how to approach that with kids.
The media and schools just go out and say, it’s Earth Day. We all love the earth, let’s do things to make sure the earth will last longer. There’s no critical approach to those questions. We need to front load our kids’ minds with the truth so we’re going to start with some of that right now.
Slide 8
We looked at Creation, and now we’re going to begin looking at the second event, which is the Fall.
Slide 9
We have these three Divine Institutions. These are Divine Institutions, which means that God is the one who created them. He didn’t just sort of create them and then plunk them down on Adam and Eve. He created Adam and Eve in such a way that these social absolutes were necessary for them.
God’s not doing this in sort of a fragmented or isolated situation where He just goes out and says, okay, I’m going to make some human beings. And then, okay, let’s make up these social absolutes so they have to conform to it. He made human beings a certain way so that they will not be stable and prosperous and successful together as a society unless they observe these absolutes.
You have, first of all, responsible choice. Responsible choice means that, first of all, that we have choices. A lot of times we are in situations where we feel like, well, I really didn’t have any choice. The fact is that we do have choices on how we react or respond to certain situations.
There are many examples of where you have the secular worldview come along and says, well, the reason you have these problems is because of poverty or because of a lack of education, and they try to blame the environment. We’re going to see that that’s not any different from what Adam and Eve did after God came, after they had sinned. What did Adam say? He said, it’s the woman You gave me. He’s blaming Eve and God at the same time.
We come along and we say, well, you know, we have to excuse their behavior because they were poor, or because they didn’t have a good education, or because there was a breakdown in the family. All of these may be contributing in terms of circumstances, but the reality is that there’s study after study that shows that you have even twins growing up in the same house with the same parents, going to the same schools. One makes one set of choices, the other makes a different set of choices. One goes into criminality, the other one is successful in education and in college because they use their responsible choice in different ways.
Then we have marriage. Marriage only works well when people are appropriately using their responsible choice to make the right decisions. Then you have family, which is the arena of education. We delegate education of our children to public schools, to private schools, to church schools but the buck stops with daddy. Even though the mother’s home most of the time, Scripture says it’s the father’s ultimate responsibility for the education of the children.
That takes you back to responsible choice. Dads have to make the responsible choice to make sure that when all is said and done, that those kids are trained to think and that they can do their academic schoolwork, and they can do their work in relationship to the Bible and spiritual life.
Slide 10
We saw also the importance of this Creator-creature distinction. That God is the infinite personal Creator God. He knows everything there is to know, and He created everything that has been created, in a specific way to operate, to function, to interact with other things, whether it’s the elements or parts of an atom or a molecule or whether it is human beings.
God created everything out of nothing. He had a purpose. God is a God of order and purpose. He is the one who determines how things are. The creature cannot do that. When the creature comes along and says, I’m really a man and not a woman, or that I’m going to make up my own rules for living, basically what’s happening is he’s acting like he’s the creator and not the creature.
Slides 11–13
What is the first Divine Institution that we looked at? It’s responsible choice. We’re responsible to God. God’s the boss. Man is the lower-level boss. Man has to do what God says to do. That establishes the principle of authority and responsibility. This is before there’s a Fall. There’s authority in the Godhead, as I pointed out. Man is responsible to God to obey God. We’re ultimately answerable to God for the decisions that we make in life.
Slide 14
We looked at how God created man in His, God’s, image. God took pleasure in His creation. He expected Adam and Eve to exercise that same creativity and to take pleasure in God’s creation. As an image bearer, mankind was to imitate what God the Creator has done. We’re all created in God’s image and likeness. Then third, man was created in the perfect, unflawed image of God when he was sinless. That was only at the beginning.
Slide 15
Fourth, God, as part of responsible choice, gave man volition, the ability to make choices. We can decided to do something but unlike God we can’t always carry out what we choose to do because God’s sovereignty overrides us. We may want to give a lot of money to some missionary, but God says, no, I’m going to take your job away from you because I don’t want you to do that because I have other plans for him.
You know, God does all kinds of things. I think that He evaluates what we want to do, even though He may not allow us to do it. Other times we want to do the wrong things and He doesn’t allow us to do that either. Fifth, each person is accountable to God for our choices. So responsible choice means that there are both positive and negative consequences for the choices that we make.
Sixth, our lives are the result of the choices we make. That is so important to understand.
Slides 16–19
In summary, we’ve got a Creator-creature distinction. There’s one God. He created human beings in His image and likeness, and the natural Creation is distinct from God. Second, we have a God who is a personal, sovereign, and infinite God. Third, He is the ultimate God.
That’s the foundation of what we’ll call our way we look at life. It starts with this. If it doesn’t start with this, we’re going to have other problems.
Slides 20 and 21
We also looked at a couple of other questions. The second Divine Institution is marriage. Marriage was designed for the benefit of the human race in order to have children and in order to have grandchildren and to continue to grow and expand the human race so that mankind could do what God said for him to do, which was to rule over the planet.
Slide 22
Because of sin, all of that got messed up. God created the woman to be a helper for man, and we saw that that’s not a subservient role, but that is the same role that God has toward us. The same word for helper is used to describe God’s role in our life, as it is to describe the role of a wife to a husband.
Slides 23 and 24
Then we have the family. The family is the primary educational institution, and that’s seen in Deuteronomy 6:5–9, that we are to repeat the Word of God to our children, talk about the Scriptures when we sit in the house, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up. That’s pretty much all the time. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. In other words, on your hand means it affects the things you do and on your forehead, it affects the things you think. Then write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. It controls the family philosophy.
Slide 25
We are to discipline our children and direct them on the right path. Parents need to start that at the instant they are born. I read an article this week that said when a child is born, he has a certain number of synapses. Those are connections in his brain and they expand like 40,000 fold in the first month. If you had an analogy, if you had a baby that was born and weighed eight and a half pounds, if his body grew at the same rate, he’d weigh 185 pounds a month later.
Parents can impact children when all that’s forming by reading the Word of God to them, talking to them about the gospel. All of that helps to format the brain. Remember the old days when we used to get a computer and the first thing we had to do was take all these floppy disks and put them in there and format them before anything could happen? Well, that’s the idea with your children. You need to format the brain with the Word of God from the very beginning.
Slide 26
We’re ready now to talk about spirit beings. By spirit beings, I mean angels. The word angel is actually sort of a description of what they are. It comes from a word that means a messenger. Angels have a role as a messenger and God created all these angels. We’ll talk about the number in a little bit. He created all of them before He created the heavens and the earth. In Genesis 1 God created the heavens and the earth and before that, the angels were already there.
We know that from this passage in Job 38:4–7 where God is really reprimanding Job because Job went through some suffering and he gets to the point where he’s arrogant and he wants God to give him an answer because he knows he didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t deserve that suffering. God is addressing him by asking a lot of questions. The questions are designed to show what Job doesn’t understand and can’t ever understand.
God begins by saying, Job wants all these answers. First God asks him, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” Job wasn’t even alive then. He wasn’t an eyewitness to Creation so he doesn’t know why God did what He did. He doesn’t know anything about it. God asks, “Where were you when I laid the foundation?”
When do you lay the foundation? If you’re going to go build a building, is it the first thing you do or is it the finished product? It’s the first thing you do. So, when God uses this phrase, the foundations of the earth, it’s talking about the very beginning of God’s creative activity in creating the earth.
Then in Job 38:7, we read that when God laid the foundations of the earth, the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy. This is in poetry in Hebrew. The term “morning stars” is parallel to the “angels.” The term “morning stars” and sometimes just “stars” is a term that describes the angels. So this is another name for the angels.
Many people think that in some way they’re related to the carrying out, overseeing the functions of the universe and all of the stars. We see that what happens is they’re unified. All the angels are united and all of them sang for joy. All of them shouted for joy. What else does that tell you? What did they do? What? They sang.
That means that music isn’t something man came up with. It’s something that is inherent in the Godhead. God created the angels and gave them the ability to sing so music precedes even the creation of the heavens and the earth. Music is something that has its roots in God. That’s very important. Most people don’t think about that. They think music is something that men came up with and it’s part of man’s creativity.
A lot of people think that any music is okay. The implication of that is music would be the only thing that isn’t affected by the sin of man and that’s a problem. Music can be terrible in a biblical sense. So we’ll talk about that later.
Slide 27
What happens is you get this idea of the spirit beings being created. Then later, we don’t know how much later, There’s the Creation event.
In the chart that you see in the curriculum, in the notes that you have, they have the word time over here on the left, and then they have a question here, is it short, long? How long is this time? Was time created before the angels? I see a couple of people shaking their heads. How do you know that time wasn’t created before the angels? Now this gets you a little bit beyond first grade and second grade.
In eternity past, there’s no time. It’s timeless. But there’s still a progression of events. God did some things before He did other things. So there’s a progression of events, but there’s no time. How do we measure time? By the earth’s rotation around the sun and that doesn’t start until the first day. We’re told in Genesis 1:2 that there’s darkness on the face of the earth. Then God had to create light. We’ll come back to that in a minute.
God had to create light and separate it from the darkness. Then He had to start the rotation of the earth so that morning and evening would make up a 24-hour cycle, and that would be the first day. Until that point, anything before that, has no time. So, I took that out of the chart [in the curriculum] because I don’t think that has been thought through very well.
Slide 28
Next question is, when did God create these spirit beings? Well, from Job 38:4–7 that we just studied, it’s before God laid the foundation. We don’t know, in terms of the clock that is created on day one, how much time. I think it’s even wrong to ask the question of how much time went by, because there’s what? There’s no what? There’s no clock. There’s no time. Time hasn’t been created yet. God creates the angels. And then after that, God created, laid the foundation of the earth.
Slide 29
When God created the spirit beings, God exercised His artistic capabilities. We see God as an artist, as exceptionally creative artist. Remember, this is before God ever creates the heavens and the earth. It’s before God created any animals.
Yet we’re told that some of these spirit beings look like what we think of as certain kinds of animals. What does that tell you? That tells you that before God created the angels, long before God created eagles, or oxen, or anything else, God already had those ideas in His mind, and He used them in different ways.
The first thing you see is a group of angels that are referred to as seraphs, which means burning ones. We think seraph is singular, one seraph. In English, if it’s more than one seraph, we would say it’s seraphs. In Hebrew an “im” is added to the end of a word to make it mean more than one, so more than one seraph in Hebrew is called seraphim because Hebrew has an ending that’s a dual. So if you’re talking about two, you would say seraphim. And that would tell you that there’s two. That’s your extra credit if you remember that in two weeks.
The prophet Isaiah tells us that all of a sudden, he’s brought into the throne room of God. God pulls back the veil so we get a look. Attending God are these mighty seraphim, more than one seraph. Each has six wings. With two, they covered their faces. With two, they covered their feet. And with two, they flew. Now, what’s that going to look like? You know, for kids, a good exercise would be to try to draw that, to see what that looks like.
Slide 30
Another category of angels are the cherubs. Cherub singular, cherubs plural in English. Cherubim would be Hebrew for more than two. There’s a whole section in Ezekiel 10 that describes them at length. In Ezekiel 1:10 it says that they had four faces, that all faced forward. That’s really an odd thing to imagine. One’s face is that of an ox, another has the face of an eagle, another a lion face, and the fourth face is that of a human. All face forward. So one is the face of a human, one’s the face of a lion, one’s the face of an eagle, and one’s the face of an ox. When God created the cherubim, there were no oxen, there were no eagles, there were no lions, there were no humans.
So, God already had those body parts in mind and He used them in a different way to create this class of angel.
But in Ezekiel 10:8 they have the face of a cherub, a man, a lion and an eagle. It’s a little different but I’m not going to get into the details here. They have wings and under their wings they have a human hand. There are four human hands so that implies four wings, whereas seraphim had six wings. You know how you can remember that? Seraphs have six, “S.” Cherubs have four.
They’re always presented as being over the Ark of the Covenant and they’re always presented as being in the presence of God. They are embroidered on the inside of the tent covering the tabernacle and on the door, on the fabric like it were the curtains at the opening of the tabernacle. All have the image of a cherub embroidered on them.
Slide 31
You have another group called living creatures and they’re said to be full of eyes. One of the living creatures, Revelation 4:11 says, was like a lion. Another was like a calf. The third is like a man, and the fourth was like an eagle. They’re just called living creatures. So they’re very different as well, but they’re also associated with the throne room of God. And each one of them has six wings. Some people think that they’re also seraphs, but it’s not clear. There’s not enough information given there.
Slide 32
There are also different types. There’s only one archangel and his name is Michael. There is only one other name given for an angel, and that’s Gabriel. He seems to be a special messenger to give revelation to those in Israel. Michael also seems to be a special protector for Israel. But you only have those two names.
Slide 33
How many angels are there? Well, in Revelation 5:11, it says, “Then I looked again, and I heard the voices of ... And it means..”. It’s MURIAS in the Greek, which comes over into English as myriads. How many is a myriad? We don’t know. It’s just an enormous number. Some will say millions and millions, but we don’t know how many a myriad is. So there’s myriads and myriads and thousands of angels around the throne and of the living beings and the elders. There’s just billions of angels probably. We don’t know how many.
Slide 34
Fifth, the name “angel” means a messenger. Angels were created to serve God. I think that man was created to rule over God’s creation. I think that creativity is part of the image of God that makes humans distinct from angels. We are also to rule as God’s under lords.
Slide 35
There was one angel that’s actually a cherub, which I talked about a minute ago, and that angel is sometimes in some translations called Lucifer. Later he’s called Satan. So I want you to understand who this is. In Isaiah 14:12–14 we learn about his fall and how he became a sinner.
When God creates something, it’s going to be perfect. It’s going to be sinless. This angel had free choice, responsible choice, so this was also true for the angels. He had a choice whether he was going to be completely obedient and serving God, or if he was going to try to break the Creator-creature distinction. That’s why that Creator-creature doctrine is so important, because the first sin is of a creature trying to be the Creator.
Does that happen anymore? Yeah, that happens every day. Every one of us thinks that we know more than God does at some point. The statement is made, “How you have fallen from heaven, O shining star, sun of the morning.” That’s the translation from the New Living Translation, which is a good translation. The Hebrew is Helel ben Shahar. Helel is son of Venus rising. It’s the morning star.
It was translated into Latin as Lucifer, because the word lux is the Hebrew word for light. Lucifer was the name for Venus, because Venus is the first to appear and the last to go out of sight. It looks like a star, but it isn’t. It’s a planet. And that’s the first or last that is seen. That’s why people think that’s his name, but that’s not his name. In Hebrew, it’s Helel ben Shahar. In English, it’s shining star, so he is the shining star.
He was the most beautiful, the most powerful, the most intelligent of all of God’s creatures. Now, what happened is that he wanted to be like God. That’s what we see in those verses. He said to himself in Isaiah 14:13, “I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God’s stars.” Who are God’s stars? The angels.
Lucifer sets himself up. He wants to rule over all of the angels. And he says, “I will preside on the mountain of the gods far away in the north.” What he’s alluding to there is that in the north in Syria, there was a mountain like Mount Olympus was for the Greek gods. There’s this mountain in Syria, which is where those gods were. And we also know that the term used for Elohim is a term that referred to those who acted like they were gods, which were really the demons. So he says, “I will preside on the mountain of the gods.”
In other words, he’s saying, I’m going to rule over all the angels. He keeps saying it in different ways. And then in Isaiah 14:14, he says, “I will climb to the highest heavens and be like the Most High.”
Slide 36
See, what he wants to do is level up. He wants to go from the second level of being a creature to the upper level, which is being a Creator, being on par with Yahweh, which is the specific name of God. We’ll talk about that and develop that as we go along.
He wanted to promote himself to be like God. Some of you have worked for different companies. Can you promote yourself? Can you give yourself a raise? That doesn’t usually work really well. You usually don’t have a job if you try to do that.
Slide 37
So this is his name, Shining Star, Son of the Morning, or Helel ben Shahar, which is what I just said. He’s described in Ezekiel 28:14 as an anointed cherub.
A cherub was one of those creatures that had four different faces. He had hands under his wings, had four hands, so he had four wings.
Slide 38
In this chart we see that in those two passages, one passage in Isaiah is addressed to the king of Babylon, but he’s really talking to the power behind it, just like in Genesis 3, the serpent. Who was indwelling the serpent? Satan.
When God spoke to Satan, how did He do it? He addressed Satan through the serpent. So in Isaiah 14, God is addressing Satan as the power behind the king of Babylon. And in Tyre, in fact, when we look at this passage in a minute in Ezekiel 28, the first 10 verses are addressed to the prince of Tyre, which would be the human king. Then the next set of verses from verse 11 down to the end of the chapter, are addressed to the king of Tyre, which is the real power behind the throne, and that would be Satan again. God addresses the human king, but He’s really talking to the evil angel of darkness that is behind the human power. Both of these passages address a human king, but ultimately, He’s speaking to Satan.
Slide 39
When did the shining star fall? Now this is a little different argument than some of you have heard before, so I want you to pay close attention. From the name shining star, it’s clear that light is already present. Understand what I’m saying? If there’s no light in the universe, then why would you call an angel a shining star if he’s not reflecting light in some way? So light’s there, right? Of course, right.
Slide 40
Second, we know that God is light. In 1 Timothy 6:16, we’re told He lives in light so brilliant that no human can approach Him. The King James Version says God “dwells in unapproachable light.” God and everything around God is brilliantly lit. In 1 John 1:5, John says “God is light.” He is light. That means light radiates out from God and “there’s no darkness in Him at all.” If God is existing and there’s no universe yet, it’s before Genesis 1:1, is there any darkness? No. Okay, that’s important. I’ve been thinking about this for about three months, “where did that darkness come from?” I never heard anybody address it from that vantage point before.
Slide 41
Then we learned that at the end of time, in Revelation 21, when we’re in the new heavens and the new earth and the new Jerusalem comes down to the earth, the city doesn’t have a hydroelectric plant. It doesn’t have a nuclear power plant. It has God.
Revelation says the city has no need of the sun or the moon. In that new heavens and new earth, there’s not going to be a sun or moon. I take it there aren’t even going to be stars. “The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminates it.” The Lamb is its light. Is there any darkness? No. I think it mirrors what things were like before Genesis 1:1.
Then in Revelation 22:5 it says, “There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever.” So the Lord God illuminates everything just from His person.
Slide 42
When we come to Genesis 1:2 we read when God created the heavens and the earth, stars aren’t created till the fourth day. So if you’re imagining the universe at this point, it better be empty, except for one planet.
I described this when I was in the seventh grade. I had to do a science project. My parents had just gotten a new refrigerator-freezer, so I had that refrigerator-freezer box. I painted the inside of that box black. I want you to imagine God created the universe, which is finite. It’s just a big black box. We call that space. Then He created the earth so the only thing hanging inside that dark space was what? The earth. That was it. No planets yet. No universe, nothing else. No stars, nothing else.
In Genesis 1:2 it says, “The earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep.” Where did that darkness come from? If God dwells in a brilliant light that is unapproachable, and that’s all there is prior to Genesis 1:1 and if the angels are called morning stars and they’re existing by then, morning stars have what? Light. And Satan, the shining star, then with their creation, there was light when they were created. There’s no darkness yet.
Slide 43
Third, we have to ask that question, then where did the darkness come from in Genesis 1:2? The answer is that between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 is when the shining star sinned. The earth was plunged into darkness. because there was a physical place where the shining star had his domain, we believe that was the earth, and it was plunged into darkness as God’s judgment on Lucifer’s sin. Then we realize that darkness throughout Scripture is also a picture of sin and the Fall.
Slide 44
Look at these verses. 1 Thessalonians 5:5, “For you are all children of the light and of the day.” This verse is talking to believers. “We don’t belong to darkness and night.” See that contrast? Darkness and night are used metaphorically for evil, for the fallenness of mankind. 2 Corinthians 11:14, Paul writes, “But I am not surprised!—talking about the false prophets who present themselves as messengers of light—Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”
Wait a minute. If he has to disguise himself as an angel of light, what is he really? He’s an angel of darkness, but he disguises himself as an angel of light. If Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, this implies that in fact, he’s an angel of darkness.
Slide 45
Let’s turn to Ezekiel 28:11. Let me read through this. This is the second major passage on Lucifer’s fall. He says, “Son of man,—addressing Ezekiel—sing a lament for the king of Tyre.” It’s not the prince, who’s the human leader, but the king, which is the power behind the throne. “This is what the sovereign Lord says. You were the sealer of perfection, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty.”
Lucifer, as he was created from the hand of God, was absolutely perfect. He was sinless. He was the epitome of perfection. He was full of wisdom. He was smarter than any other creature. He was the most beautiful of all of the angels, all of the spirit beings. Then it says, “You were in Eden, the garden of God”. Now, this Eden isn’t the Eden of Genesis 2. This is before that.
How do I know that? Well, I’ll show you. It says, “Every precious stone was your covering, the ruby, the topaz, the emerald, the chrysolite, onyx, and jasper.” All but three of these, nine of these 12 are precious jewels that are on the breastplate of the high priest. There’s something significant about those. It says the settings and mounts were of gold. In other words, every part of you was created perfectly. Then He says, “I placed you there with an anointed guardian cherub”. The word “anointed” is the Hebrew word mashiach.
What is that in English? Messiah. It means someone who’s anointed or appointed to a specific responsibility. It doesn’t mean that he was also a Messiah. I’ve heard people say that. No, that’s not right. He was just appointed to be the guardian cherub. He is the number one Secret Service agent guarding the throne of God. “As I placed you there, … you walked about amidst fiery stones.” So this planet had fiery stones. So that’s not the planet we see in Genesis 2.
Slide 46
“You were blameless in your behavior from the day you were created, until sin was discovered in you. In the abundance of your trade …”. So he’s trading on something. I mean, this is a really picturesque word. It’s the word that was used for the Phoenicians who were traders. They had the biggest fleet. They would travel all over the Mediterranean and they would buy things here and sell them over there. This is the idea. He’s trading on something.
What’s he trading on? He’s like the one who determines who goes into God’s presence and who doesn’t. So that must be what he’s trading on. “You were filled with violence, and you sinned.” Why? Because he wanted the worship that others were bringing to God. God says, “so I defiled you and banished you from the mountain of God—the guardian cherub expelled you from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom”.
Arrogance is the original sin. “You corrupted your wisdom on account of your splendor. I threw you down to the ground; I placed you before kings, that they might see you.” That would be referring to rulers among the angels.
Slide 47
“By the multitude of your iniquities, through the sinfulness of your trade, you desecrated your sanctuaries. So I drew fire out from within you; it consumed you, and I turned you to ashes on the earth before the eyes of all who saw you.” That is very picturesque judgment that occurs. “All who knew you among the peoples are shocked at you; you have become terrified and will be no more.”
Slide 48
So he becomes Satan. The word Satan means the one who accuses. So, Revelation 12:10, there in the underlined section, this is talking about Christ who will come. And “for the accuser of our brethren,—that is Satan—who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.”
His original name was Shining Star, Morning Star. And now he’s known as Satan or Devil. Satan is Hebrew. Devil, DIABOLOS, is Greek. They both mean accuser and adversary. He is the ruler of this present darkness, and he’s called the Prince of demons. He’s also referred to by several other names, but that is where sin entered into human history.
We got through the angels. Now we understand that God created everything. He created it perfect. There was no sin. He created the angels first, and then He laid the foundation of the earth. And at some point in there, there’s this judgment on the earth that brings darkness on the earth. The only thing that can explain that is going to be the fall, the sin of Satan. Then God is going to redo the planet. He’s going to have a little renovation project and he’s going to redo the planet.
Some people say, well, you know, we can squeeze all of the ages and all the all the geologic ages in there. No, you can’t. What did I say? When is time created? Day one. There are no clocks before day one. That’s just one of many reasons. But there’s nothing there. The only creatures God has created at that point are the angels. And there’s this angelic revolt that takes place, and then God renovates the planet with a special focus on humanity.
Man is created a little lower than the angels, but he will be elevated above the angels because he’s in the image and likeness of God. That tells us a tremendous amount. People always ask me, I got this asked by a friend of mine the other day, do you think there’s life on other planets? And I said, no, I don’t. I mean, when I was in junior high and high school, I read all kinds of books about UFOs and I read all kinds of science fiction and everything, but when you live in the text of Scripture, it’s all about the human race. Every focal point is on humanity. And there is nothing else.
Every aspect of creation is focused on the earth. That is the centerpiece of where Christ died for sin. Once. If God creates other creatures, He would have to give them choice because of who He is. If they choose and they disobey God, the only Redeemer has died once. He’s not going to die again. How’s God going to redeem them?
The Bible does not portray a universe where there’s life anywhere else but planet Earth. And there’s lots of variation, I think, just from what we see among the angels. I think there’s lots of variation among the angels.
We’ve seen the importance of the Creator-creature distinction. We’ve seen that God created the angels. They were brilliant creatures who had choice, but they weren’t in God’s image. The most brilliant and beautiful of all of them was a musician. The terms there that are used I think it was something that has to do with musical instruments. So he’s a musician.
Others laugh that when Satan fell, he fell into the choir loft. He was a musician. Choirs have been known to cause disruption in numerous churches. Then he bounced into the Old Testament Department at seminaries. because the Old Testament Department is usually the source where heresy begins in seminary. So that’s the little saying.
Satan fell, and then God is going to remake the planet to be habitable for the human race who will rule over the planet in God’s place, and is His under lord. That takes us up to where we are. So we have to then ask the question, well, if everything was so perfect and everything was so beautiful, how did it turn into such a wreck? We’ll cover that next time. That also explains where all these other theories come from.
Closing Prayer
“Father, thank You for the opportunity to look at these things this evening and to understand them and to think our way through them and to help parents, and help the teachers, and grandparents be able to communicate this at a more basic level to their children and grandchildren. We know that these children are the hope for the future of our country. We just pray that You will truly use this material to transform many in the next generation. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”