Bible Truth About
Satan
and Lucifer
By Pastor F. M. Riley
August 10, 2010
“And the Lord God said unto the
serpent, Because thou hast done this,
thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy
belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
and I will put enmity [fear; hatred;
warfare] between thee and the woman, and
between thy seed and her seed; it [He] shall bruise [crush] thy
head; and thou shalt bruise [crush]
His heel.”
Genesis 3:14-15
Introduction
Dear
brother,
Yes, I received your previous email and
still have it flagged on my computer to answer your questions about Satan and
Lucifer. I apologize for not getting
back to you sooner. The closer we get to
the coming of our precious Lord, more and more of God’s people are writing for
answers to Bible questions. Sometimes it
seems overwhelming! However, this IS NOT
a complaint! Rather, I rejoice that
there is a “remnant” in the ranks of “Laodicean Christianity” [??] today who are for real, and
who are truly seeking Biblical answers to their questions. Praise the Lord! So just keep them coming!
Now let’s turn our attention to your
questions about Satan and Lucifer…..
Genesis
3:15
What many of God’s people [true believers] today appear to miss
when considering Satan and Lucifer is Genesis 3:15. This passage plainly predicted the supernatural
conception of the Lord Jesus Christ as “the seed of the woman.” No true believer appears to have any
trouble understanding this truth. All
true believers know that the Lord Jesus Christ was “the seed of the woman.” When the Holy Spirit overshadowed the
womb of Mary [Luke 1:30-35] she
conceived in her womb and gave birth to “the Son of God,” Luke 1:31-32. The supernatural conception
and virgin birth was the process by which the Divine God [Spirit…John 4:24]
took upon Himself the form of man [Philippians
2:5-8], and lived and walked among men for 33 years as a human being; literally
“God in flesh.”
But when it comes to the “seed”
of “the serpent,” even most of God’s people just totally ignore
the rest of the explicit statement made by the Lord God Himself in Genesis
3:15. Am I supposed to believe
that this passage predicts the supernatural conception of the Lord Jesus
Christ as the “seed of the woman,” but then ignore all reference in the
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same
passage to the serpent’s “seed”? I don’t think so!
We both know that it doesn’t work this way! The inspired Word of God still needs to be “rightly
divided,” 2 Timothy 2:15. If Genesis
3:15 predicts the supernatural conception of the Lord Jesus
Christ as the “seed of the woman” [and
it does!], then this same
passage also predicts the supernatural conception of the “seed”
of “the serpent.” Just as the Lord Jesus Christ became embodied
as “God in the flesh,” so the serpent’s “seed” will also become embodied
as “Satan in the flesh.”
Surely all true believers can grasp this
truth, and identify Satan’s “seed” as the coming
Antichrist. The inspired Word in Revelation
12:9 explicitly refers to Satan as “that old [ancient] serpent…” Could
it be stated any plainer? In the garden
of Eden in Genesis 3, Satan chose to enter into and possess the body of a
serpent as he worked out his deception of Eve.
But in this end-time in which we are living today, Satan himself is
going to enter into and possess a woman in order to father a human “seed”
in which his own evil spirit will dwell. Is this too hard for some of God’s people to
understand? Since Satan has always
counterfeited everything God has done, then I don’t know why this truth should
be so hard for true believers to grasp.
Now let’s go to…..
Isaiah
14:1-27
This entire chapter is prophetic, which can easily be seen if God’s people would
pay attention to what they are reading.
The chapter is not history!
Verses 1 – 3 clearly speak of Israel’s future time of “rest”
in their own land in the promised Millennial Kingdom.
Carefully read these verses yourself.
Then in verses 3 – 8 the Lord explicitly
states,
“And it shall come to pass [future]
in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow,
and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou was made to serve,
That thou shalt take up this proverb
against the king of Babylon,
and say, How hath the oppressor ceased!
the golden city ceased!
The Lord hath broken the staff of the
wicked, and the scepter
of the rulers.
He who smote the people in wrath
with a continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in anger, is
persecuted, and none
hindereth.
The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing.
Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art laid down, no
feller [feller of trees] is come up
against us.”
It
does not take a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to understand that all
eight of these verses are speaking of the future Millennial Kingdom
of our Lord, when all wickedness and the wicked one will have been put down,
and the Jewish people will have been restored to their land and their right
covenant relationship with the Lord.
This is abundantly clear to anyone willing to deal honestly with these
passages in God’s Word.
Actually, from verse 4 forward in this chapter
only one person is the subject being described and emphasized, and that
person is obviously the Antichrist over whom the Lord at that future time
will have given Israel
and all surviving humanity victory. This
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“proverb”
[14:4] will then be a song of victory over this vile person
that the Jewish people will sing in the future Millennial Kingdom,
looking back on his person, his wickedness, and his defeat. Now this isn’t hard to understand at all if
God’s people would depend solely on what these Scriptures actually and
literally say, rather than on what men’s
tradition would like to make them say.
The Origin of a false theory…Paradise Lost
What a lot of God’s people do
not realize is that John Milton, a
dedicated Christian believer, wrote a book [originally
ten books] published in 1667 entitled “Paradise
Lost.” When he came to Isaiah
14 and read verse 12, based on the knowledge that was
available to him at that time, he assumed
that this one called “Lucifer” in the verse had to be
talking about Satan. He knew that Satan
had been cast out of Heaven when he rebelled against God in eternity past. At that point in time there were no
airplanes, space ships, rockets, satellites, etc. To his knowledge men had never left the
surface of the earth to go soaring through the heavens. So John Milton assumed that the only way anyone could ever fall out of the
heavens had to be when God cast out Satan in eternity past. Therefore Milton could not even conceive of “Lucifer”
being anyone other than Satan, and said so in his book. When his book was published it quickly became
a best seller among Christian people of that time. Literally hundreds of thousands of Christians
read Milton’s
book and what he said about “Lucifer” being Satan. This “half-truth” was adopted by thousands of
people in the ranks of Christianity, and has been traditionally repeated from that day right down to the
present time. However, it wasn’t pure Biblical
truth back when Milton
assumed it to be so, and it IS
NOT pure Biblical truth today.
I am now going to PROVE this statement by
God’s Word, exactly as God’s people are told to do in the inspired Word, 1
Thessalonians 5:21.
Identifying Lucifer…..
First…….The word translated as “Lucifer”
in Isaiah 14:12 literally means, “shining star; bright star; splendid star; to shine; day star; morning
star; shining one.” See Gesenius Hebrew Chaldee Lexicon, pages 222-223,
Strong’s No. 1966. In this verse “Lucifer”
is explicitly referred to as “son of the morning.” Obviously based on what has been traditionally taught about “Lucifer”
in the past, most “Christian scholars” [?] assume that “the
morning” being referred to here is “the morning of creation in eternity
past.” Now exactly where does one find
such an “interpretation” either stated or implied in this passage? Where..??
It can easily be demonstrated that the word
“morning”
is used again and again in the Scriptures when referring to the
future “morning” of the resurrection, the Tribulation, the Millenial Kingdom, the Eternal Age, etc. Read such passages as Psalm 5:3, 30:5, 49:14, 59:16,
88:13, Ezekiel 7:7, 7:10, Hosea 6:3, Joel 2:1-2, Revelation 2:28, and 22:16. Then why do some, without any
Scriptural authority for doing so, arbitrarily assign “Lucifer,
son of the morning” to the past?
The entire context of Isaiah 14 is pointing to the
future. There is actually more
Scriptural authority for “the morning” in this passage referring to the dawning of the future
“day
of the Lord” [Tribulation] than there is for
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assigning
it to eternity past. Isn’t the
Antichrist predicted to come on the world scene in the future “day
of the Lord”? Well…??
Further, the prophetic Scriptures are very
plain that the Lord Jesus Christ is coming again very soon to resurrect
and rapture His people to glory. When He
comes in the air He will appear to His people as “the day star” or “the
bright and morning star.” See 2
Peter 1:19, Revelation 22:16, and Colossians 3:4. Is it not reasonable then to believe
that “Lucifer”
[the Antichrist] will also appear on the world scene at or near the
same time counterfeiting the coming of Christ, and attempting to deceive the
world into believing that he is the Christ and the Messiah of Israel? Well…??
Second…….While it is
explicitly stated in 14:12 that he has “fallen
from heaven” [the sky], it is
also stated in the next two verses how he got into “heaven” in the first
place, and even which heaven he ascends into. “For [because] thou hast said in thine
heart, I will ascend [go up]
into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon
the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend
[go up] above the heights of the
clouds; I will be like the most High,” 14:13-14.
It
ought to be obvious to any honest reader that the “heaven” “above the heights of the clouds”
IS NOT the “heaven of heavens” where Almighty God dwells. It is only what we living today call “outer
space;” the area of space above the clouds.
This is where “Lucifer” [the Antichrist] is to ascend
to, and from where he will fall as explicitly stated in the next verse, 14:15. “Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to
the sides of the pit.” Compare
the inspired prophecies about the Antichrist in Job 20:4-7, Jeremiah 48:40, 49:14-16, Obadiah 1:1-4, and Habakkuk 2:9. Each of these passages predicts that the
Antichrist will ascend up into outer space, but that God will ultimately “bring
him down,” exactly as prophesied in Isaiah 14:12-15. Glory to God!
It
is also explicitly stated in 2 Thessalonians 2:4 that “the
man of sin” [the Antichrist] will sit “in the temple of God,
showing himself that he is God.” If
people would seriously study the Word, the Temple
mount is located on the north side of the city of Jerusalem.
When the Tribulation Temple is rebuilt, it will apparently be rebuilt on the
Temple mount on
the north side of the city. This
is exactly where Isaiah 14:13 says that “Lucifer” wants to sit. Hello! Is all of this just
“coincidence?” I would remind our readers
again that there is no word for “coincidence” in the Hebrew language.
Third…….In
verses 16-17 it is explicitly stated that the same “Lucifer”
being spoken about in verse 12 [the person in the context hasn’t changed] is “a man.” No where
in this entire chapter is it stated or even suggested that “Lucifer” is a “fallen
angel.” Rather, this verse emphatically
states that he is “a man.” “They that see
thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and
consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to
tremble, that did shake kingdoms; That made
the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?” Obviously the father of “Lucifer,”
that is, Satan, is a fallen angel, but there isn’t the slightest indication in
this chapter that “Lucifer” is a fallen angel.
Compare also verse 6 where it is explicitly stated that
he [Lucifer] will rule the nations. Anyone who seriously studies the
prophecies ought to recognize this as a description of the Antichrist. Again see Habakkuk 2:5. This simply reinforces the truth that
“Lucifer”
is the “seed” of Satan; the Antichrist; “the son of perdition,” 2
Thessalonians 2:3.
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Fourth…….Now I want those of our readers who still insist on
believing that “Lucifer” is Satan to give me an honest answer about Isaiah
14:19, “But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the
raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to
the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden under foot.” I emphasize again, the exact same
person is the subject of discussion from 14:4 right on through 14:27. If I am wrong on this statement, then
show me the Scriptural authority for changing the person being spoken
about in these verses to a different person, and point out the verse where the
change is made. Hello!
Further, all true believers
KNOW that Satan is indeed a “fallen angel.”
No argument about that. The
Scriptures explicitly state that angels are spirits, Psalm 104:4; Hebrews 1:7;
1:13-14. Since the whole context
from verse 4 through verse 27 talks about the same person, and
that person is “Lucifer,” and even most Christians today insist that he is Satan, a
fallen angel, then please explain to me…..
How does one bury a spirit [a fallen angel]?
What
kind of grave do you bury a spirit in?
What kind of sword does one use to kill a spirit?
How can one tread on the “carcase” [body] of a spirit?
Hey, don’t get upset with
me! In view of this silly theory about “Lucifer” that has been taught by tradition for over 300 years now, I am asking perfectly legitimate
questions. Isaiah 14:19 explicitly
states that “Lucifer” [verse 12]
is cast out of his grave, that he has been slain with a sword, and that his
carcase will be trodden underfoot. If “Lucifer”
is then the fallen angel, Satan, who is most definitely a spirit,
then how can these things be? I’m
breathlessly waiting for some Scriptural answers to these perfectly
legitimate questions.
Wouldn’t it be much easier for those of
God’s people who really love the truth of the Word to just admit that
they have been listening to vain
tradition about “Lucifer” instead of seriously
studying this chapter for themselves?
“Lucifer” is quite obviously the
coming Antichrist, and he will be a “man,” not a spirit, 14:16.
Comparing Spiritual with Spiritual
We are explicitly told in 1
Corinthians 2:13 that “we” who are true believers compare “spiritual
things with spiritual.” When we
then put this into practice, comparing “Lucifer” with those Scriptures
which speak of the coming Antichrist or “beast,” there is a perfect match
in every area.
The future Antichrist is going to rule the
entire world during the last half of the Tribulation, and he will rule from the
rebuilt city of Babylon, Revelation 13:7-8; Zechariah 5:1-11;
Revelation 18. Doesn’t Isaiah
14:4 explicitly state that the person under consideration in this
entire chapter, “Lucifer,” is “the king of Babylon”?
You know it does!
The future Antichrist is going to be
assassinated [killed] during the
coming Tribulation by being attacked by a person or persons using a “sword,”
Revelation 13:3; 13:14; Zechariah 11:17.
Doesn’t Isaiah 14:19 explicitly state that the
subject under consideration in this chapter, “Lucifer,” will be killed
with “a
sword”? You know it does!
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The future Antichrist is going to be
restored to life again as the spirit of Satan himself enters into and possesses
his body, very likely after he has been dead three days and three nights
thereby counterfeiting the resurrection of Christ, Revelation 13:3-4; 13:12;
13:14. This means that his
soul is then going to be released from “hell,” the place where the souls of
the wicked dead go when they die. Read Revelation
11:7, 17:8, and 17:11.
Doesn’t Isaiah 14:15-19 explicitly speak of “Lucifer”
being “brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit,” and then his
body being “cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch”? You know it does!
In making this comparison it is quite
obvious that “Lucifer” and the Antichrist are one and the same person.
“Lucifer”
is the “seed” of the serpent; that is, he is the son of Satan embodied
in the flesh. As such he stands as a
direct counterfeit of the Lord Jesus Christ, the “Son of God” who was [and still is] Almighty God embodied in
the flesh. Read Isaiah 7:14. Let God’s people [true believers] wake up to the truth, and stop teaching the silly theories of men handed down
to us living today by vain tradition.
Further Verification
Those of God’s people [true believers] today who are seriously studying the Word are
surely aware that the wicked, God hating, Christ rejecting, leaders of the
whole world system today are anticipating the coming of “Lucifer,” just like we
believers are anticipating the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We believers today are anticipating the
bodily return of our Lord, for the angels told the disciples some 2,000
years ago, “…this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall
so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven,” Acts 1:11.
Likewise,
the wicked are not looking for a spirit to come to them. They are looking for a man whose name
will be “Lucifer.” I KNOW what I
am talking about here, for I have read their rotten literature numerous times
and KNOW whom they are expecting.
Those involved in the New Age Movement
today are expecting the man, “Lucifer,” to come and establish
their New World Order on this earth.
Those involved in Humanism believe and teach
that a man; “Lucifer,” is about to appear on the world scene and set up a
New World Order which will elevate “mankind” to the status of “gods.” Sic!
Those involved in Satanism are eagerly
anticipating the coming of the man,
“Lucifer” to establish
Satan’s kingdom on the earth, thereby allowing the followers of Satan to
indulge themselves totally in the lusts of the flesh without any moral
restraints to hold them back. Sic!
Ditto for those involved in Demon worship,
Witchcraft [Wicca], Baal worship,
Paganism, and a hundred other demon inspired religions on the earth today. They are all anticipating the coming of “Lucifer,”
Satan’s MAN to be their leader and their “god.”
Now do any of the “diehard traditionalists” in the ranks of Christianity want
to stand up to these wicked followers of Satan and tell them that “Lucifer”
is not a man? Well..??
Conclusion
When I was a young preacher 56 years ago I assumed that what I was hearing
from the
6
older
preachers was Scripturally correct and that I could safely preach and teach it
to others. But sadly, as I began to
seriously “dig into” the Scriptures for myself, I began to find a number of
things that were simply passed on as “truth” from one generation to another in
the ranks of Christianity, that simply wasn’t so! One of those things is this traditional teaching about “Lucifer.”
There are other things also that
are taught as truth in the ranks of Christianity today which in reality is just
silly tradition.
Folks, our precious Lord and Savior is
coming! His coming is right at the door,
exactly as prophesied in His Word.
It is far past time for God’s people [true believers] to awake to the truth of God’s Word and get serious
about studying the Word for themselves.
Lay aside any teaching that is suspect, regardless of who is teaching or
preaching it, until you have thoroughly checked it out with the inspired
Word of God, 1 Thessalonians 5:21. Genuine
Biblical truth can be proven! If it
is absolutely proven true, then cling to it and refuse to be moved. But if you discover some things in a teaching
that just don’t quite harmonize with the whole revelation of the Word in some
points, then back off and ask the Lord in humble prayer to guide you “into
all truth” on the subject, John 16:12-15. He is able to do so,
and He will for those who truly want His truth. God’s inspired Word will
stand when all of the silly theories, opinions, ideas, fantasies, and
so-called “interpretations” of men have been swept away and vanished like chaff
in the wind.
“That we henceforth be no more children,
tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the
sleight of men, and cunning
craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; But speaking the truth
in love, may grow up into Him in all things; which is the head, even
Christ:..,” Ephesians 4:14-15.
If
any reader needs spiritual help please feel free to contact me. I want to meet every reader in glory when our
Lord comes, and He is coming soon.
Don’t disappoint me!
May our gracious God bless His Word to the
heart and mind of every reader is my prayer.
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NOTICE: Permission is granted to any true believer or Christian
ministry to reproduce this study to share with others, or to quote from it in context as written.
Please address all questions,
comments, and correspondence to: Pastor F. M. Riley, 184 County Road 108, Harrisburg, Missouri 65256.
I can also be contacted by email at:
fmrglbd5@yahoo.com or fmr7sngn@centurylink.net
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