THE ORIGIN OF PRIDE

What is evil? From where does it come? Why does it exist?

The questions echo down the centuries to haunt us even today.

Science, philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology— none of these has ever come close to explaining evil and some of them refuse even to recognize it. Inspired of the Holy Spirit, Isaiah draws the curtain aside and gives us a shocking glimpse into evil's awesome origin—an incomprehensible occurrence in heaven in ages past. How long ago it was we don't know.

We are introduced to Lucifer. Behold the most beautiful, brilliant, and powerful being God ever created. Yet, mystery of mysteries, his heart contemplates then boldly plans that which had been for an eternity unthinkable: rebellion against God! This inconceivable and terrifying drama marked the entrance of iniquity into God's perfect universe. In its wake followed inevitable cosmic chaos and ruin which threatened to drag the whole of mankind into the deepest hell. Hence the need for the Messiah to come to earth to rescue our fallen race.

The Apostle sets himself to correct certain erroneous impressions which had unsettled the church in Thessalonica. Notice how reverently he speaks of our Savior. Once and again he alludes to Him as the Lord Jesus Christ. He is surely coming, and as surely will His saints be gathered to Him, as the drops of moisture are drawn up from ponds and oceans, to cluster in the clouds in radiant beauty around the sun.

But certain events must take place first. There must be a great apostasy and the unveiling of “the mystery of lawlessness,” which even at that time was already at work. First, the man of sin; then, the Son of man. First, He that set Himself forth as God; then, God manifest in the flesh. First, the revelation of sin; then, the revelation of perfect salvation. Dan 11:36 seems to have suggested Paul’s words, which have been applied to Nero or Caligula, to Judaism or the Papal Church, and to some future manifestation of Satanic hatred toward the Church of God. But whatever form it may assume, the coming of Jesus will absolutely destroy this power of Antichrist. Let us be warned by the doom of those that are involved in this great apostasy, and ever cherish the love of the truth of Christ, that we may be saved.

How and why did rebellion against the God who had created him arise in Lucifer's heart? How could selfish ambition obsess a perfect being who had known only God's intimate presence?

Here we reach the bounds of human understanding, beyond which we cannot venture; Paul speaks of the "mystery of iniquity" (2 Thessalonians 2:6-7

2 Thessalonians 2:6–7 KJV 1900

6 And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. 7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.

— a mystery which began with Lucifer's mad passion to "be like the highest,” Though evil remains unfathomable, the place and manner of its origin carry implications which teach us much,

Unbelievable though it seems, this grotesque ambition came to birth in heaven itself and in the heart of one who was "full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.., the anointed cherub" very possibly heaven's choir director

(Ezekiel 28:12-15

Ezekiel 28:12–15 KJV 1900

12 Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. 13 Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. 14 Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and 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. 15 Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.

Isaiah 14:11 (KJV 1900)

11 Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: The worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.

Yes, it was in this perfect and blameless creature of apparent innocence, whose future seemed so bright and assured, that evil had its origin, Eons later, planet earth, like the rest of the universe, is still reeling from the horrifying effects of his downfall,

From this preposterous rebellion flows the entire saga of sin and redemption, As a result of his pride and selfish ambition, Lucifer became "the great dragon.., that old serpent, called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world" (Revelation 129), Though the sworn enemy of God, he is to this day still granted access into the very throne room of heaven, There he continually accuses those who trust and obey their Creator Job 1:6-12; Revelation 12:10).

Without Satan's rebellion, there would have been no need for a Messiah; God's Word declares: "The Son of God was manifested fi.e., Christ came to this earth, that he might destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8), Clearly, then, if we fail to comprehend Lucifer's fall and its consequences for mankind, we cannot understand why Christ came the first time, much less why and when He will return,

The Awful Birth of Self

One cannot overemphasize the devastating effects of Lucifer's rebellion; it introduced sin for the first time into God’s creation and is, therefore, an event of the utmost importance to any understanding of the problem of evil. Lucifer declared with purposeful passion and proud determination five times, "/ will." Here was the awful birth of self into the universe. Its devilish offspring self-image, self-worth, self-esteem, self-love, self-acceptance, self-assertion, and self-ad infinitum-are the scourge of today's world and have even entered the church.

Behold the very heart of evil Self-determination, the right to set his own standards, and to control his own destiny were Lucifer's selfish ambitions, for which he will yet be “cast down to hell."

For the first time, a creature God had made was demanding its own way and rebellious independence from Him. God's very right to fulfill His will for His creation was challenged. What damnable audacity!

How appalling it is to realize that the very self-qualities that are today sought, taught, and highly prized among men were conceived by Satan! The same self-exaltations that brought about Lucifer’s fall are highly prized as the keys to success in today's world! No wonder John, the beloved apostle, wrote: "The whole world lies in wickedness [, in the wicked one, Satan]" (1 John 5:19),

Even more distressing is the fact that a large percentage of the church has bought the same lies; self-esteem, self-image, and the other selfies that Satan originated are the pillars of Christian psychology. What a masterful deception!

Lucifer challenged God's right to rule the universe He had created. He demanded equality with God: “I will be like the most High.” It was an insolent assault upon God’s throne. In one stroke, Satan rejected monotheism (the belief in one supreme God) and introduced polytheism (the belief in many gods), exalting himself to godhood. Eve would later embrace the same ambition. Here, we discover why Christ requires all who would be His disciples to utterly deny themselves.

Lucifer’s heart had conceived the incredible obsession of tearing God from His throne as sovereign of the universe and exalting himself in his Creator's place. Many angels joined Satan's rebellion and are demons today. Every person on earth faces the same choice: whether to follow the true God or to claim godhood for himself and thus join forces with Satan. The battle, in essence, is self against God. Each of us remains on Satan's side until we can, with deep conviction, declare what Christ prayed as our substitute, "Not my will, but thine be done" (Luke 22:42).

Humanistic Theories Don't Align with Scripture

Since Lucifer's fall marked the origin of evil in the universe, it must provide the pattern by which all evil is to be understood. Any alleged explanation for aberrant, antisocial, or sinful conduct that doesn't fit the Luciferian model must be rejected since he is the originator of such behavior. It is immediately apparent that the psychological explanations for wrong attitudes and actions that are so popularly accepted today, both in the secular world and in the church, do not fit Lucifer's case. Therefore, these theories must be rejected as false.

No details of Lucifer's background are provided. We can only conclude that such data has no bearing on his case. And if background history is irrelevant to Lucifer's actions, it must be in all cases of wrong behavior, despite modern psychological theories. Moreover, those who insist upon probing into the past as the key to present conduct will find no comfort in Lucifer. His past life before his fall was impeccable.

Certainly, Lucifer had suffered none of the childhood traumas, disappointments, deprivations, frustrations, temptations, broken relationships, rejections, or addictions that are now brought forth to "explain" and thereby excuse what the Bible calls sin. No "dysfunctional family" warped his thinking!

Instead, his background was perfection itself, for he dwelt in the continual presence and favor of God and His angelic host.

Lucifer should have remained a paragon of virtue if background, environment, and past experiences determine present behavior. Yet pride took root in his heart and bore its evil fruit.

Certainly, Lucifer had not been "abused as a child." Most assuredly, he hadn't been the victim of

Satanic Ritual Abuse

(SRA), yet he would later be its inventor!

Nor was he suffering the traumas of "codependency,"

"Multiple Personality Disorder" (MPD),

"Obsessive Compulsive Disorder" (OCD),

or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

These new "explanations" of undesirable behavior, generally accepted even among evangelicals, do not apply to Lucifer’s case. Therefore, they do not apply in any case. For if Lucifer's behavior, which is the embodiment of all evil, needs no such "explanation," then neither does the undesirable conduct of any human being.

It would be absurd to suggest that this angelic creature of seemingly perfect wisdom, talent, and beauty, whose heart was lifted with pride, suffered from a "bad self-image" or "low self-esteem."

Yet Christian psychologists, parroting the humanists, have convinced many Christian leaders and much of the church that a low view of self lies at the root of every evil plaguing society, from drug addiction and homosexuality to pornography, fornication, and abortion. Lucifer's case gives the lie to selfist theories. His problem was quite otherwise: the desire to exalt and assert self.

The highly exalted "son of the morning" needed no training in "self-confidence, self-affirmation, self-development, self-assertion" or in "looking out for number one." These passions were foreign to his nature as God created him. They sprang spontaneously from the depths of his being. That Eve so readily embraced these same self-centered desires and that they come so naturally to all mankind only confirms Christ's indictment of our race: "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do" (John 8:44).

Nor would psychotherapy or the newer 12-step programs have helped Lucifer. Such recently invented humanistic methodologies are becoming increasingly popular. Yet they cannot solve the basic problem of self-willed evil, which originated with Lucifer and now festers in every human heart. On the contrary, most psychotherapies foster and encourage the very selfisms that Lucifer brought to earth so long ago.

Like Lucifer, we are not automatons forced by circumstances to react in a certain way. Temptations and traumas may be rationalized as excuses for retaliating or reacting angrily, vengefully, destructively, or irrationally, but they do not “explain” one’s behavior. It is the heart, not circumstances, no matter how traumatic, that determines one's actions.

One is not compelled to retaliate or nourish resentment when ill-treated, but one decides to do so in defense or promotion of self. Thus we prove ourselves to be the offspring of Lucifer and in partnership with him against God. His rebellion could not be explained, much less excused or justified, as a reaction to some prior mistreatment he had suffered. There had been none. Evil originated in his heart, and environment and past experiences had nothing to do with it. So it is with each of us. We choose to behave the way we do, and psychological theories that attempt to place the blame elsewhere promote a delusion.

Love, Evil, and the Power of Choice

Why would God give mankind the power to choose evil?

Why not only the power to choose good? A limited choice is not a choice at all. The power to say yes is meaningless without the power to say no. It is not a genuine choice if what one is supposedly "free to choose" is all there is. And any being that has the power to choose and is prevented from doing so becomes frustrated, like a wild animal in a cage.

Heaven would be a prison for those who were forced to go there.

While evil could not exist without a genuine freedom to choose, neither would love be possible. We all intuitively recognize that real love comes from the heart. Submission to rape at the point of a knife or gun is not love. Love cannot be forced. Even God can no more make us love Him than He could sin, for to do either would violate His very nature.

God loved us so much that He wanted to give us the most beautiful gift possible: Himself in a relationship of love. For such a transaction to be possible, however, we must have the power of choice. Without genuinely being able to choose, it would have been impossible for us to enjoy that which we all recognize as the highest of all human experiences: love of God and of one another.

We had to be accessible to rebel against and even hate God or we could never truly love Him. Love and hate, good and evil, are two sides of the same coin. It was inevitable that the power to choose would open the door to evil and make it possible for Satan to rebel against God and to despoil Eden's innocence.

God knew the consequences and provided the remedy before sin entered the world. That remedy is in the Messiah, and each of His comings plays a significant part in destroying evil.

Love is as much a mystery as is evil. To deny the genuine power of choice is to deny love and evil. One can neither give love under duress nor be held responsible for what one is forced to do. Such is the problem with all psychological diag-noses: they absolve us of guilt by turning us all into victims who parrot in the endless refrain: “It’s not my fault… I had no choice... I was made this way. My family didn't understand me ...circumstances forced me." Everyone becomes a victim.

It's always someone else's fault. On the contrary, a choice was exercised; and until that fact is admitted and responsibility taken for one's actions, there is no real solution.

Conflict of the Ages

We are not told what battles raged across the galaxies in ages past as a result of Satan's rebellion. We are informed only that God and Satan are still locked in deadly combat for control of the universe. We know also that this unimaginable cosmic struggle now centers on planet Earth and involves the destiny of mankind. Man has become the prize for which both sides are striving. God desires to save mankind; Satan's is to dupe earth's inhabitants into joining his side and thus to share his eternal and abhorrent fate.

In this battle for control of the universe, God works through a man called Christ. Satan, too, is represented by a man, the Antichrist. This cosmic conflict will reach its climax in an incredible face-to-face confrontation between Christ and Antichrist here on planet earth. We will deal specifically with that event later. The coming of Christ 2000 years ago, as well as the Rapture and His Second Coming soon to take place, are all part of this titanic struggle between God and Satan and can only be adequately understood in that context.

In some mysterious way that Scripture does not explain (indeed, probably cannot fully explain to finite beings), every human heart is a microcosm of this colossal contest between God and Satan. "Have you considered my servant Job?" God asked Satan (Job 1:8). With that challenge this unsuspecting man's world fell apart and his soul became a raging battlefield between self and God. Job's eternal destiny hung in the balance and depended upon the outcome of that warfare, which was decided by his choice.

Satan was convinced that Job's loyalty to God depended upon the protection and blessings God provided. Take those away, Satan challenged God, and Job "will curse thee to thy face" (2:5). So God responded by allowing Satan to do his worst, short of taking Job's life. It was a test of Job's love and loyalty to God, a test that we must each face, though not necessarily in the same manner or intensity. Whether we pass or fail reveals which side we have chosen to be on in this conflict of the ages and thus determines our eternal destiny.

Job won the battle the only way it could be won—by total submission to God's will, even to the point of saying, "Though he [God] slay me, yet will I trust him" (13:15).

Indeed, we must allow ourselves to be slain, "crucified with Christ" (Galatians 2:20) as Paul put it, accepting His death on the cross as our own death, and thereby admitting that was what we deserved. We must give up the rebellious life of self as we would live it, in exchange for the life Christ would live through us, or we remain the servants of sin and Satan forever.

Did not Jesus say: "For whosoever will save [hold onto] his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose [give up] his life for my sake shall find it [i.e., the real-life God intended for him]" (Matthew 16:25)?

A Raging Battle in Every Heart

Job, of course, was not the first to be tempted to rebel against God. Having convinced a large number of God's angels to join him, Satan had long before brought his rebellion to planet Earth. How long this occurred after mankind was created we do not know. It is likely, however, that Adam and Eve had children before their fall. They had been told to "be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28). And part of God's judgment upon Eve was to "multiply her conception" (3:16). These early offspring of our first parents were likely the "sons of God" who married "the daughters of men" and produced unusual offspring (Genesis 6:2-4).

Unlike Job, who triumphed in his temptation and to whom God restored even more than he had lost in the battle against evil, Eve failed miserably and lost all. When tempted to put herself and her own desires ahead of God, she fell just as Satan had. In her wake she dragged down the entire human family that has descended from her.

The serpent seduced Eve with the very lie to which his own heart had given birth: "You can become one of the gods" (Genesis 3:5). The biblical story of the Garden of Eden is not a myth. However, history is evidenced by the fact that each member of the human race is still obsessed with the same Satanic ambition. The universal obsession of mankind is to have godlike freedom to do whatever one pleases and to develop the godlike powers that will enable one to control life and circumstances. It is a fact, too, that the memory of a paradise lost seems to haunt us all. Restoring this world to its lost Edenic bliss by self-effort rather than submission to God’s sovereignty is still the dream and highest ambition of mankind.

Rescuing our fallen race from Satan's grip, redeeming us from the penalty of sin, and restoring the universe to God's sovereign rule is the task of the Messiah. Our Lord's first advent laid the foundation, and His second will be stage two.

Nor will the final battle be fought until the end of Christ's millennial reign on David's throne.

However, before going into the future, we must look at this conflict of the ages as it rages in every human heart. This desperate battle between self and God has ruined every person to walk this earth except for Christ Himself. Consequently, He alone can rescue us. Furthermore, the problem of evil must be solved justly and on a practical level, or it cannot be solved at all.