From chapter 5 (“How You Have Fallen Oh Morning Star”) of Shawn Bolz’s new book, Encounter
Isaiah 14:12:
Look how you have fallen from your heavenly place,
O shining one, son of the dawn!
You have been cut down to the ground,
you who conquered nations.
Contrasting Satan
I don’t know what the coming war will totally look like at the end of the age as far as the actual battles, but I know spiritually what the enemy is doing now.
The angel, who was with me, said “You need to know God’s enemy. We have a devil that is so jealous of you humans because you were made to be like God before time began, to create and steward and enjoy. Satan’s whole failure was that he thought he was responsible for the glory he was created with and that he could do more for the universe than God could. He had tasted God’s glory and power and believed he was more worthy. When he left heaven, he really felt he could win the war against God, he didn’t leave a failure in his own mind. But as he left, he was stripped from that glory and power and everything the nature of God had made him.”
What a slap in the face it must have been when Lucifer saw man being created. God didn’t hide it from anyone. He boldly created His original purpose and creation all along. Man, who was more like God than Lucifer would ever be and yet was created from the soil in the ground!
Lucifer was taken from God’s own glory directly; he was the chief architect of glory in heaven. He was the one who would be considered the artisan of artisans with the most majestic tools and angel armies at his disposal. We were nothing compared to him. Again, we were taken from the dirt of the ground in the natural realm that to Lucifer was far lower than where he was created in the heavens.
And yet, that is exactly what God chose on purpose to be a prophetic picture for us, that out of the soil of everything He created for Himself to share with us, we were born. This incredibly romantic and loving God created a whole universe around a planet that He would have His sons and daughter born from the soil that also was the same soil He planted His tree of life from.
In the substance of the visible earthly realm, He established us from the works of His own hands and an eternity of imagination in the making. I love how David says it with revelation in Psalm 139.
I thank you, God, for making me so mysteriously complex!
Everything you do is marvelously breathtaking.
It simply amazes me to think about it!
How thoroughly you know me, Lord!
You even formed every bone in my body
when you created me in the secret place;
carefully, skillfully you shaped me from nothing to something.
You saw who you created me to be before I became me!
Before I’d ever seen the light of day,
the number of days you planned for me
were already recorded in your book.
Every single moment you are thinking of me!
How precious and wonderful to consider
that you cherish me constantly in your every thought!
O God, your desires toward me are more
than the grains of sand on every shore!
When I awake each morning, you’re still with me.
This is also a chapter of the Psalm that has David crying out for justice against those who war against him. In the place of deep warfare, He knew that only God was His salvation.
Although I am sure every angel is created with equal creativity to or even more than man in some ways, they were not created to be His sons and daughters in the same way that a CEO of a fortune five hundred company doesn’t hire the best CFO to be his child but to work with him and creating and keeping wealth. Angels were created with a distinct purpose and also to operate in the spiritual realm between heaven and Earth, not to help command all of the earthly realm and Lucifer wanted more.
Then God created man. It was always part of His intention and design plan, but Lucifer didn’t know that. Maybe he had been part of discussions, but he didn’t really know what was in the mysterious, everlasting God’s mind.
When Satan deceived Adam and Eve, he probably thought it was over when they were hiding from God, he could not see into the future. He was gloating and felt the evil excitement that he had dealt a death blow to God’s plans. God had told them not to eat the fruit and if they did, he was expecting the same banishment he received…they were going to be cast out and he could torment them and God all at once.
He had won a great victory in his battle because of our weakness that was similar to his. Adam and Eve wanted to wield the glory of God but didn’t understand the connection to the Father is the only way it can be sustained.
The angel looked at me again and asked, “Do you want to know the biggest blow that God gave Satan before the cross?” He had a twinkle in his eye when he asked the question.
“When Adam and Eve had to leave the garden, God did not do what he did to Satan and the other heavenly angels by removing his nature and all glory from them. All the tormenters were all watching, so happy to have corrupted God’s favorite beings but then God did something that only God could do. He spoke to Adam and Eve like a Father and gave them a promise that from their very DNA one would come who would destroy the serpent underneath his feet.” The angel walked forward with his hands clasped behind his back as he said the next thing with what seemed to be excitement and victory in his voice.
“Then God did something even more awesome then promising them deliverance. He didn’t remove His nature from them or all that He had created them for. He didn’t remove their gifts, talents, affection, love, poetry, creativity, any of it. It was hard wired in them, and He didn’t remove their capacity for glory. In this He really was making a statement to all of heaven and earth, to angel and demon that they were His children. The only thing that could remove His glory from them is if they rejected it completely in death. If they died not receiving His relationship. He gave them a lifetime to become reconnected.”
For more information on Encounter, check out CharismaHouse.com. {eoa}