Let’s Fight Principalities and Powers Now (Part 3)

Let’s check out our spiritual adversary: Satan. Scripture gives us a little insight about the evil one and a few other conclusions can be drawn through biblical reasoning.

Satan was created as a covering cherub or a type of angel. Angels are spirits and not flesh and blood creatures like God created on day five and day six in Genesis. Therefore, Satan is a spirit.

Scripture doesn’t state when God actually created Satan, but I believe we can deduce that Satan and the other angels were created before the end of the fourth day or Genesis 1:16. (Maybe even as early as the first day.) Why? Because His angels perform God’s word and the angels rejoiced when the foundations of the earth were laid. They may even have been the ones who helped to determine its dimensions.

God created Satan to be perfect in wisdom and beauty. But Satan’s pride corrupted his wisdom and caused him to rebel against God.

When did Satan rebel against God?

Jesus stated that Satan was a murderer from the beginning, never stood in the truth, and was the father of lies. Thus, by deduction, I believe Satan must have rebelled soon after God created him along with the other angels.

Where did all of Satan’s fellow demons come from? My answer will seem a little roundabout, but bear with me, okay?

Prophecies in Scripture may have an early and a later fulfillment to them. Usually, the early fulfillment is a partial one whereas the later one is a complete one.

For example, Jesus referred to John the Baptist as the “Elijah who is to come.” His words referred to the prophecy in Malachi 4:5. Yet, John did not fulfill all the words of the Malachi prophecy. We have to wait until the time just before Jesus returns to earth for the complete fulfillment.

Another example, Jesus answered the disciples’ questions about when things would happen by prophesying in Matthew 24: 4-31. The disciples would have thought Jesus was referring to the destruction of the Temple. Yet, when Roman soldiers destroyed the Temple in 70 A.D., not all of the scriptures were fulfilled. The complete fulfillment will occur during the tribulation.

And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So, the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. (Revelations 12:7-9)

If you read Revelations Chapter 11 and all of Chapter 12, the only conclusion you can reach is that this will happen during the tribulation. But I believe an early fulfillment of this prophecy happened when Satan and a third of God’s angels rebelled against God and were cast out of God’s third heaven. I believe these angels then became Satan’s demonic hierarchy in his kingdom of darkness.

One scripture that backs my theory was when Jesus said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” His words did not refer to the tribulation, but something He saw while He was in heaven, before His birth to Mary.

There are other scriptures, but this should give us a basic understanding about Satan and his demonic horde.

(Continued in Part 4)