Many people have
asked the question: Why did God
allow the devil to live after
casting him out of Heaven? Why
didn’t God exterminate the
devil and his angels right away
and protect the universe from
Lucifer’s rebellion? These
are great questions and the
answers are just as important.
Consider the following:
- Before
Lucifer rebelled, the
universe, with all its
created beings, did not
understand the nature or
impact of sin. If God had
immediately annihilated
Lucifer and one-third of
his angels, He would not
been able to justify His
actions. If God had
destroyed Lucifer as soon
as he sinned, surviving
angels would have
concluded, “Whoa!
God does not tolerate
angels having views that
are contrary to
His.” If God had
immediately annihilated
His opposition before the
knowledge of good and
evil had a chance to
mature, reasoning and
highly intelligent angels
would not have loved and
trusted God. Angels (and
mankind) should love God
because He is fair,
reasonable, generous, and
forgiving, not because
sudden death is a
consequence for
disagreement. If God had
killed Lucifer and his
followers before the
outcome of their
rebellion matured, the
remaining angels would
have concluded that God
was a bully. They would
have said, “He may
claim to be a God of
love, but His actions
just proved that it is
His way or death.”
- God has
infinite wisdom and
perfect foreknowledge.
His ways are perfect. He
foreknew that sin needed
a few thousand years to
mature so that the entire
universe could understand
its deadly and horrible
consequences. Bu allowing
the devil and his angels
to live, God gave the
universe two contracting
governments to study
– one in Heaven
(free of rebellion, full
of joy, happiness, and
peace) and one on Earth
(full of sin, decadence,
depravity, selfishness,
and death). By permitting
two governments to
simultaneously exist,
intelligent beings can
see the difference for
themselves. God does not
have to defend Himself.
- God gives
the power of choice to
each created being. This
means that His subjects
do not have to obey
Him, love Him, or respond
to His goodness and
generosity. Lucifer and
his angels have proven
that free will actually
exists. They chose to
rebel against God and His
law. God gave Adam and
Eve the power of choice
and they also chose
to disobey. For 6,000
years, sin has flourished
on Earth. History has
proven over and over
again (with the rise and
fall of numerous
civilizations) that human
beings always suffer
in direct proportion to
our departure from the
laws of God. Sin may
offer some temporary
pleasure and excitement,
but it always extracts a
price that is far greater
than its benefits. Sin
takes us farther than we
want to go and sin costs
more than we want
to pay. No matter how
well Satan disguises sin,
“the wages of sin
is death.” (Romans
6:23) God foreknew that
lawlessness would end in
death and His kingdom is
established on laws that
prevent sorrow and death.
Created beings that rebel
against God’s laws
are not really arguing
with God’s authority
because created beings do
not have omnipotence. The
argument with God is over
wisdom. Who knows best
what the endless
corridors of eternity
require – the
Creator of the created?
- The Father
certainly foreknew the
consequences of allowing
Satan and his angels to
live, so He created a
plan to save everyone who
would live on Earth. He
loved the people of the
world so much that He
gave us Jesus as our
atonement for sin. For no
other reason than love,
Jesus was willing to
become man and die in our
place so the penalty for
our sin could be paid!
The Godhead has suffered
more and paid a higher
price for the existence
of sin than any human
being will ever know!
Incidentally, and this is
an important point, God
did not create a plan of
salvation for Lucifer and
his angels because they
were confronted with the
truth many times yet
remained willful and
defiant, and chose to
reject God’s
counsel. Without
question, Lucifer and his
angels committed the
unpardonable sin.
(Matthew 12:31,32)
When these four
issues are synthesized, we can
see why God did not immediately
destroy Lucifer and his
rebellious followers. The
conflict between Christ and
Lucifer over mankind has been
ongoing for thousands of years.
Today, Jesus and Lucifer are
striving to win the affections of
people. Look around. Good is
being overcome with evil and this
contest will reach a climax
during the Great Tribulation.
A Demon
with Many Titles
The devil is
called by a variety of names in
the Bible. Daniel calls him a
stern-faced king. (Daniel 8:23)
Ezekiel calls him the ruler of
Tyre. (Ezekiel 28:2) Isaiah calls
him the king of Babylon. (Isaiah
14:4) Paul calls him the man of
lawlessness. (2 Thessalonians
2:3) John calls him an enormous
red dragon (Revelation 12:3), the
beast that comes up from the
Abyss (Revelation 11:7), a beast
having two horns (Revelation
13:11), the false prophet
(Revelation 16:13), and the angel
king of the Abyss (Revelation
9:11).
God gave Lucifer
various titles for several
reasons. Here are two: First, the
devil is invisible and different
titles help us understand his
vast capabilities. Second, God
gives the devil various titles to
undercut the devil’s
deceptions! For example, when the
devil physically appears on
Earth, he will gloriously
masquerade as Almighty God. His
deception will be so convincing
that it could deceive the
“very elect” if that
were possible. (Mark 13:22)
Notice how the title, “the
man of lawlessness,”
describes the behavior of Lucifer
after he appears. Lucifer will do
as he pleases and no one can stop
him. The laws of mankind will
mean nothing to him. The devil
will create and enforce many laws
that will have no purpose but
angst and destruction. God gave
Bible writers all of
Lucifer’s titles and each
one speaks volumes about
Lucifer’s character, power,
and ways
Babylon, the
Leopard-like Beast
“And I saw
a beast coming out of the sea. He
had ten horns and seven heads,
with ten crowns on his horns, and
on each had a blasphemous name.
The beast I saw resembled a
leopard, but
had the feet of a bear and a
mouth like that of a lion. The [great
red] dragon gave the beast his
power and his throne and great
authority. One of the heads of
the beast seemed to have a fatal
wound, but the fatal wound had
been healed. The whole
world was astonished and followed
the beast.” (Revelation
13”1=3, italics and
insertion mine)
Ever since the
book of Revelation was written,
there has been a great deal of
speculation about the identity of
the leopard-like beast. This
beast has numerous specifications
and resolving each one takes more
than time and effort. Valid
results require a valid set of
rules. If a person just wants to
accept any interpretation that
seems reasonable, there are to
many interpretations from which
to choose. However, there is one
solution to the problem of
identifying this beast, and to
get to the truth, we need to
address and correctly resolve
each specification.
To make this
presentation as simple as
possible, I have decided to
identify the leopard-like beast
first so you can see how each
specification contributes to the
conclusion as we proceed. The
leopard-like beast will be a
religious authority; a crisis
government that religious and
political leaders of the world
will create shortly after the
Great Tribulation begins. The
leaders will create this beast of
a government to mediate between
God and man.
When the censer in
Revelation 8:5 is cast down and
the first four trumpets fall on
the world in rapid succession, it
is a gross understatement to say
that the survivors will be
overwhelmed and terrified. The
destruction of thousands of
cities and 1.75 billion people is
unimaginable –
incomprehensible. As the
survivors survey the damage,
almost everyone will concede that
God is angry with this world
because mankind is far more
degenerate and decadent than we
should be. We live on a
degenerate and decadent planet,
but most people do not know that
God’s wrath has been overdue
since 1994 when the Jubilee
Calendar ended. We have
been living on borrowed time.
God’s wrath is stirred when
He sees children abused, woman
raped, people robbed, elderly
cheated out of their savings,
addicts agonizing for more drugs,
endless violence, and bloodshed.
The chapter
on the seven trumpets showed that
God has many objectives for His
judgments. God wants everyone to
know about Jesus and His
salvation. God will judge the
living and terminate the sin
problem. God will wipe the
universe clean and start over.
His plans are written in the
books of Daniel and Revelation.
Unfortunately, few people really
want to understand the ways of
God. The mysteries of apocalyptic
prophecy are often ignored
because they take too much work
and many people think, “they
do not pertain to
salvation.” Nevertheless,
once the world sees the awesome
destruction caused by God’s
wrath (the first four trumpets),
everyone on Earth will be
traumatized. What does it say
about man’s degeneracy when
a God of love has to destroy a
third of the planet and
twenty-five percent of its
inhabitants to get the undivided
attention of the survivors?
God’s wrath
will bring the religious and the
political leaders of the world
together and for the first time
since the flood in Noah’s
day, this gathering will be a
humble meeting. God’s
judgments will embarrass them
because these events will force
the leaders of the world to
recognize the higher power and a
reality of a living God who holds
everyone accountable for his
actions. Together, the leaders of
the world will work out a
solution to appease God’s
anger. Their solution will be to
create the leopard-like beast.
The leopard-like beast will be a
religious authority, designed to
carry out a global mandate:
Appease God so that His wrath
will cease. While the idea of
appeasing God’s wrath may
sound appropriate, the process
will be impossible from the start
because our world is so
religiously diverse.
Nevertheless, religious leaders
will conclude that God’s
anger can be stopped if decadence
and corruption can be eliminated.
The leopard-like beast will have
the authority to determine for
each nation the best process for
outlawing decadence and
corruption, and the political
leaders of the world will
voluntarily submit to the demands
of the beast. At first, almost
everyone will cooperate with the
leopard-like beast because no one
wants to experience more of
God’s wrath, but this is
only the beginning of the story
and a lot of tribulation….
Several years ago,
I had the opportunity to visit an
automobile manufacturing plant in
Dayton, Ohio. It was an
unforgettable experience. I was a
kid in a candy store. As I walked
through the huge building that
covered thirty acres, I saw all
kinds of interesting parts and
pieces that would eventually come
together to make up an
automobile. I was overwhelmed,
but one thing that most
astonished me was the amount of
coordination and communication
that goes into the construction
of each vehicle. Items of all
kinds – tires, engines,
seats, horns, carpets, tail
pipes, and headlights – were
moving around on tracks and as
each moving chassis reached
another assembly station, the
necessary parts for that vehicle
arrived at that station. It was
so interesting how the correct
items arrived just in time to put
that item on the chassis! I have
shared this experience with you
because I want you to consider a
parallel. At the end of our tour,
our tour guide told us that
enough parts were in the building
at any given time to build
approximately 100 vehicles, even
though there was only one
completed vehicle in the building
at any given time. Similarly, all
of the parts necessary to create
the leopard-like beast exist on
Earth today, but the beast itself
has not been assembled. The
appointed time for assembly does
not arrive until the fourth
trumpet.
