Lucifer was in the very presence of God, he was the highest of the creation, he was over the other angels, and he was perfect. Then, remarkably, unrighteousness was found in him:

Accounting for the origin of unrighteousness is difficult. Consider the following:

• The sin within Lucifer was not due to external temptation, because there was no sin in that created realm and there was no external force acting on Lucifer.
• To say that sin was totally within Lucifer is not accurate, because he was created perfect.

We do not have the slightest idea how it happened, but we do know:

• God did not originate that sin and God was not at all responsible for that sin, however, He did allow it.
• Lucifer was 100 percent responsible for that sin.

What unrighteousness did God find? Lucifer did not steal anything nor did he kill anybody, so what did he do?

The unrighteousness of Lucifer is found in Isaiah 14:13-14 in the five I wills:

God found all of that unbelievable pride in Lucifer's heart! God created the angels with a free will [to choose good or evil], and Lucifer chose evil.

Something that has always been of interest to me is that before God struck Lucifer down, he was able to say I will… five times. In another words, God did not strike Lucifer down the moment pride appeared in his heart.

I believe that God's forbearance (long suffering) and mercy (God not giving me the punishment I deserve) was extended to Lucifer. It was not as if God hard-heartedly and with no mercy struck down Lucifer the instant he blew it. Lucifer says I will… five times, so maybe, again just maybe, prideful thoughts were in his mind for a long while; Lucifer had an opportunity to repent (change his mind), and if he had done so, then everything would have gone on just the way it was.

God watched that pride develop before He struck Lucifer down.

In the Bible, every time God gives the first warning to a nation, there is also an opportunity for the nation to repent — God extends His forbearance and mercy to the nation.

1. God said [through Jonah] to the Ninevites You will be destroyed,
2. The Ninevites repented (believed the one true God), and then
3. God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it.

In the leader of Tyre's case, he really started thinking he was a god, and that meant that when the enemies started mounting up against him, he did not take any action Why should I take action? The enemies cannot kill me because I am a god.

God gave Tyre a warning:

Though God had said Tyre, I am against you and I am going to destroy you, if the Tyrians would have repented (changed their minds) then God would have withheld His punishment.

The king of Tyre did not heed the warning; pride led to his own destruction:

That is exactly what happened! Tyre is judged, is destroyed, and is ruined; however, it came in stages. First, the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, destroyed the mainland city of Tyre. Many years later, Alexander the Great scraped all the debris from the ruins of Tyre and built a causeway using the debris to the Island of Tyre that he wanted.

Have you ever seen pictures of Tyre? Today, that causeway out in the Mediterranean Sea looks like one of the piers in Galveston, Texas, USA, except it is much longer. And just like the Scripture says, it is used for people to spread out their nets.

Picture: It is very possible that what happened with Tyre is a picture of what happened to Lucifer:

1. God created the spiritual realm and the angels, including Lucifer, and there was total harmony with no sin or rebellion in the kingdom.
2. Lucifer had pride in his heart.
3. God saw the pride, but instead of striking down Lucifer, He let Lucifer keep talking and talking.
4. God sent Lucifer a warning: You are going to be knocked out.
5. Lucifer did not heed the warning.

And as we saw with the ruler of Tyre [and of Babylon]:

It is not surprising that ultimately — after the time of mercy went by and Lucifer did not repent — Lucifer fell and God punished him.

When Lucifer fell, he became Satan. He was Lucifer, the shining one; however, because of his own pride, he became Satan, the adversary, the opponent. Because of God's direct judgment on him, when Lucifer became Satan he was forced to leave the presence of God. Apparently [from all that we know], that was:

When Satan sinned, apparently he persuaded one third of the angels to come with him and defect:

One third of the angels, who had helped build Lucifer's magnificent kingdom, now made a freewill choice to go with him. Satan has [probably] millions of angels with him; apparently, he took with him a whole cross-section of the angels, including some from every rank of the angelic hierarchy.

When these angels fell, their entire nature changed and they became demons (wicked angels). The fallen angels must have been in anguish. Why? At one time they were empowered by God through Prime Minister Lucifer; now they lost what they had.

God could have created a universe in which He decreed there would never be any sin.

In the beginning God did not decree that there would never be any sin, though He could have. That means that God, knowing sin would happen, allowed it to happen. Why? I believe that if we recognize that God is sovereign and we look at the results of what happened, it is probably safe to assume that was part of the answer to why God allows something to happen.

For Example: Let us go back to that condition before time when the only presence in the universe is the Godhead (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit). A problem exists because God wants Himself to be known; He wants other beings to know about Him:

How could God be known if there was nobody else in existence? Maybe that is why, to begin with, God created the angels.

What did the angels know about God? [We assume God wanted to be known back before there was sin.] All the angels had to have known that God loved them, because the Bible tells us:

God is pure love, concentrated (see our Ezekiel 1, God Manifests Himself To Man study); the angels must have felt His love radiating from them.

Then something else happened — Lucifer fell. Was that good or bad? It was bad; however, because Lucifer fell, another one of the attributes of God was revealed.

Apparently, Lucifer was the highest of all creation, and obviously, God loved him. But then Lucifer sinned and he was cast out of God's presence, taking one third of the angels with him. After that, the two thirds of the angels who remained learned something about God. I think we get a picture of what they learned in the following verses:

In both of those passages, we see a vision of heaven and we see the angels who are saying the same thing:

In the Bible, it seems that the angels are always saying Holy, Holy, Holy; they are never saying Love, Love, Love. Do you know why? Although the angels know about the love of God — they must feel His love — angels do not know God's love as redeemed human beings do.

Though the angels have never experienced Messiah's redemptive, merciful love in a personal way, they have learned that:

God is holy and He cannot tolerate the presence of sin.

When Lucifer and one third of the angels fell, the remaining two thirds of the angels said Whoa! When somebody sins, it does not matter who he is [even His highest creation], he is out of here! The incidence of Lucifer's fall was tragic, but the results were: the angels learned that God is holy.

What is interesting to me is the attitude of God toward the fall of Lucifer. First, we have to say God judged Lucifer's sin, and He judged it severely. Satan will suffer the eternal consequences of his sin, because for eternity Satan is doomed; God does not have a plan for Satan to get out of the mess he is in.

However, it seems to me that God was in mourning over Lucifer once he fell:

Notice that God is using His old, given names for Lucifer (O star of the morning, son of the dawn). I believe this is an indication that God is mourning and grieving over the fall of Lucifer, because this was not what God wanted for Lucifer.

As we have seen, God allows His own creation to rebel against Him. I think if I were going to create a world, I would make sure that my created beings would not rebel against me. But God allows His own creation to rebel against Him, even though it breaks His heart. So:

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