In the First Age, Did Satan Take God’s Children By Force?
In the First Age, Did Satan Take God’s Children By Force?
I have two questions: In Rev 12:4 when it says the dragon’s tail swept 1/3 of Gods children to Satan’s side, do you think they all went willingly, or some by force?
The other question: What was so appealing about Satan in that time for so many souls to follow him? In the flesh Satan can tempt you with fame and fortune or stardom etc., but the souls were not in the flesh.
It makes me think Satan took a lot by of God’s children by force. I really have been thinking about this.
Steve’s Answer:
It’s important to understand that force eliminates fault. In other words, if people were forced into following Satan, they wouldn’t be liable for following him. It wouldn’t be their fault. So they couldn’t be punished by God for it.
But when God uses his servants to set His Word before the people, and Satan uses his servants to set his sweet-sounding lies before the people, the people are then faced with a free-will choice.
They can choose to embrace God’s eternal Word and reject Satan’s deceptive lies. Or they can choose to reject God’s Word and accept Satan’s lies. But no one forces them to do either. Abandoning or ignoring God’s Word, and choosing Satan’s lies, is a free-will choice.
So the short answer is this: In the first age, when Satan deceived one-third of God’s children into following him from heaven to the earth, they went willingly.
They made a free-will choice to follow Satan’s sweet lies rather than God’s truth. They made a free-will choice to abandon their place in the heavenlies and come to earth to build their own kingdom, with Satan at their head.
But they were deceived or seduced into doing so. In other words, they were lied to. And they chose to buy into the lies, and reject God’s truth in the process. It’s no different today.
It’s All About Deception
It’s all about deception, from the very beginning all of the way to the very end, just before the great white throne judgment of God Almighty. Force has nothing to do with it. Let’s take a quick look at the end before we delve further into your questions:
Rev 20:7 And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,
Rev 20:8 And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.
Rev 20:9 And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.
Rev 20:10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
As you can see, there’s nothing in those verses about God’s children being forced to follow Satan after the Millennium teaching period. Just deception.
It’s important to note that the word “deceive” in verse 8 above, as well as the word “deceived” in verse 10, are translated from the Greek word planao (i.e., Strong’s G-4105), meaning “to cause to roam from safety, truth or virtue.”
In other words, to be seduced. Let’s take a look at the Strong’s Concordance definition:
G4105
πλανάω
planaō
plan-ah’-o
From G4106; to (properly cause to) roam (from safety, truth, or virtue): – go astray, deceive, err, seduce, wander, be out of the way.
The bottom line is that deception, or seduction, is a process.
In the process of seduction, people are constantly bombarded with sweet lies that contradict the truth.
For example, turn on your TV and watch 20 minutes or so of the programming with your spiritual “eyes” open and your spiritual “ears” on. If you’ve got eyes to see and ears to hear, you’ll be astonished at the depth and level of lies and depravity designed to negate God’s Word in the hearts and minds of the multitudes watching.
Almost every TV show is riddled with propaganda that subtly, and sometimes even blatantly, contradicts God’s Word and leads people away from it. And because the lies are often very appealing…very sweet-sounding…and are repeated incessantly, day after day after day, people tend to give in to those lies over the long course of time, abandoning the truth of God’s Word in the process.
After all, as the old saying goes, when a lie is repeated often enough, it becomes “truth” in the minds of the people. And it was the same way in the first age as it is now. There’s virtually no difference, except that in that first age God’s children were not in flesh bodies, but instead, angelic. So yes, angels can be deceived. And it requires no force at all. Just clever lies.
The Millennium
Nevertheless, our heavenly Father has provided the Millennium teaching period (Revelation 20:4-5), which is that thousand year period of time designed to teach God’s wayward children the truth without any interference…without any lies getting in their way.
That’s why Satan’s propaganda outlets are completely destroyed at Christ’s Second Advent (II Peter 3:10). And that’s why Satan’s one-world religio-political system will be cast into the lake of fire at Christ’s Second Advent (Revelation 19:20).
Satan won’t be afforded those tools of deception/seduction while Christ and His servants, the elect, are teaching the truth to God’s wayward children during the Millennium teaching period. It will be a time of perfect teaching, and perfect clarity, so that, at that point in time, no one can say they didn’t know the truth for an absolute certainty.
Then, after the Millennium teaching period is over, when Satan is released from the pit in order to “go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth,” those who still choose to follow him after having had 1,000 years of perfect teaching with clarity from Christ Himself, will have doomed themselves to the lake of fire by their own free-will choice.
Why?
Because they’ve demonstrated themselves to be unfit for the eternal kingdom of God. They will have known the truth, and rejected it in favor of Satan’s lies. As it’s written in II Thessalonians 2:10, “And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.”
In other words, if, even after the deception has been fully exposed to them during the Millennium teaching period, and they’ve seen Satan stripped of all of his power and thrown into the pit, and they’ve received 1,000 years of perfect teaching and clarity from Christ Himself, they still choose to follow Satan and his lies, then their place in the eternal kingdom of God is forfeited.
They don’t “love the truth that they might be saved.” Essentially, they’d rather believe in Satan’s sweet lies than follow our heavenly Father and His Savior, Jesus Christ. So it’s into the lake of fire, with them.
Had they been forced to follow Satan, however, then their free-will choice would have been negated. And Father would not destroy them under such a circumstance.
The Dragon’s Tail
Pastor Arnold Murray of the Shepherd’s Chapel used to teach that the dragon’s “tail” of Revelation 12:4, which “drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth,” represents Satan’s propaganda outlets, which are all part of the four hidden dynasties of politics, economics, education and religion.
These propaganda outlets can include “secret societies” such as the Masons, Illuminati, Rosicrucians and the various New Age organizations which are merely public offshoots of the secret societies.
They can also include numerous political, economic and educational organizations — public schools, political parties, news and entertainment publishers, news media broadcasters, and much more (i.e., television, movies, music, books, etc.).
And yes, Satan especially makes use of many of the major religious organizations, which is obvious by the fact that many of them no longer teach or abide by the truth of God’s Word. Witness, for example, the many churches now allowing and openly encouraging “gay marriage” and “transgender rebirth” ceremonies, and even consecrating “gay priests.”
So these various organizations of propaganda constitute the “tail” of the dragon that sweeps God’s children into Satan’s deceptive net, so to speak, through seductive lies that contradict God’s Word of truth.
And it was no different in the first age. Satan utilized the same tools of deception and seduction then that he utilizes now.
What’s So Appealing About Satan’s Lies?
You asked, “What was so appealing about Satan in that time for so many souls to follow him? In the flesh Satan can tempt you with fame and fortune or stardom etc., but the souls were not in the flesh.”
Yes, you’re correct. The souls were not in flesh bodies in that first age. They were in angelic bodies. But that doesn’t mean Satan was unable to tempt God’s children at that time.
You see, our spirit is the very intellect of our soul. And it’s our spirit — our intellect — that Satan targets, whether we’re in flesh bodies or angelic bodies. He tries to appeal to our intellect/spirit with his deceptive lies. He tries to pull the focus of our intellect/spirit, away from God’s Word of truth, and align it with his lies.
In other words, regardless of what kind of body we’re in — flesh or angelic — Satan will try to breach our intellect (spirit) with his deceptive and seductive doctrine, and corrupt it.
Through lies and deception, he’ll try to convince us to follow him instead of God, or, at least, to abandon following God’s Word so that God will ultimately have no choice but to send us into the lake of fire.
To God’s elect, Satan’s lies are about as appealing as finding rat hair in your ice cream. But his words are very appealing to many others, largely because he tells them their sins are okay. He blesses them in their sins, vices and lusts.
Do you want to have “gay sex”? Fine. No problem. Just recast it as “demonstrating love for your fellow man,” or “refraining from bigotry.” Or maybe “overcoming discrimination” in your life. That sounds very Godly, so it must be good, right? After all, none of us want to discriminate, right?
Do you want to have “gay marriage” in the church? Okey-dokey. Just call it “not being judgmental,” or “not being self-righteous,” and start allowing it. Or, tell people, “God loves you exactly how you are. You don’t need to change. All you have to do is believe, and your sins are forgiven.” Or, “Don’t judge others, just bring them into the church exactly how they are.”
That reasoning also sounds very religious, right? Yet it’s dead wrong, and it will set you on a course for hell if you allow Satan to breach your intellect and implant those lies.
Do you want to institute socialistic communism in your nation? Great. Just cast it as “fighting for social justice,” or “helping the poor” or “establishing economic fairness.”
Again, it all sounds very religious. But God expects every man to pull his own weight, so in reality, communism is anathema to God’s way and God’s will for us, no matter how pretty the bow is that they put on the package.
Do you want to commit adultery on your spouse, perhaps? No problem. Just call it “God wants you to be happy.” Sounds great, right? Certainly, God wants us all to be happy. But again, it’s an ungodly application of a truth that’s designed to justify an egregious sin that will ultimately estrange you from God and His Word.
I could go on and on with this list of sins and the many kinds of false justifications — often very religious sounding justifications — that can be used for committing them. But I think you get the point. What’s appealing to some folks about Satan is that he gives them permission to disregard God’s Word and to commit their favorite sins.
Satan gives people permission to step outside of the bounds God has set for us for our own good. As you know, we now live in a world in which many people are now even forming identity groups based upon their favorite sins.
Finally, it’s important to understand that the same egregious sins you see being mainstreamed and normalized today, through Satan’s many political, economic, educational and religious propaganda outlets on this earth — are some of the very same sins he mainstreamed and normalized in the first age, resulting in Father’s wrath and subsequent overthrow of that age (i.e., the katabole).
Do you remember that deceptive line Satan fed Mother Eve in the garden, when she initially refused his offer to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Eve protested to Satan that she couldn’t eat of the forbidden fruit, because God’s Word said it would ultimately result in her death.
But then Satan targeted Eve’s intellect, which is to say, her inner spirit, replying to her: “Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5)
You’re going to be really special if you’ll do this with me, he told her. God won’t care, under the circumstances. And the end result will be a winner for you.
Likewise, in the first age, it’s a safe bet Satan told God’s children, the angels, the same thing, i.e., that they could abandon the heavenly realm, go down to earth and set up their own kingdom with him as their head, and suffer no consequences from God over it. They’d be little gods over their own lives, rulers of their own destinies.
But as you know from your Bible studies, when the sinfulness got out of hand in that age, God responded by utterly destroying that age. Even the heavens went dark in that destruction, so great it was (Jeremiah 4:23).
God then started over with this flesh earth age (Jeremiah 4:19-27) so that He could come through the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, and give His life for our sins, allowing us the opportunity for salvation through faith.
So it’s not just fame, fortune and stardom that Satan tempts with. It’s whatever sins we lust after, on an individual basis. He gives us the “out” to sin, which is to say, the religious-sounding excuse or justification.
Unfortunately, in this flesh world age, God’s wayward children are still as “sottish” (i.e., stupid; Jeremiah 4:22) as they were in the first age, falling for the same deceptive garbage they fell for the first time around. And once again, it’s their free-will choice to do so. No one is forcing them.
Therefore, in the final days of this flesh age, God will once more overthrow this earth, just as He did in the first age when Satan originally led God’s children astray. And He’ll institute a new and eternal age in which only the righteous will exist:
Heb 12:26 Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.
Heb 12:27 And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.
Heb 12:28 Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:
Heb 12:29 For our God is a consuming fire.
Those who reject the truth (and God’s grace through Christ Jesus along with it) will end up in that great lake of fire, which is the culmination of our Father’s furious anger. And they’ll never exist again.
Why? So the rest of us can enjoy a peaceful eternity with each other, and especially with our heavenly Father.
In Summary
So, to sum up:
- In the first age, Satan used deception (i.e., seduction) to draw one-third of God’s children into his net. He did so by appealing to their intellect, i.e., trying to get them to abandon God’s will for their lives and follow his sweet-sounding religious lies, instead.
- The one-third of God’s children who followed Satan did so willingly, not by force, just as they do today. That’s the nature of deception/seduction. If you allow it into your life, it appeals to your very spirit (intellect) and ultimately causes you to reject the truth and willingly follow the lie. It’s called apostasy.
- In the first age, as well as now in this flesh age, the deception/seduction was carried out through Satan’s many propaganda outlets, including organizations that make up the four hidden dynasties, such as political organizations, economic organizations, educational organizations, and religious organizations. Both then, and now, Satan uses everything at his disposal to target and deceive God’s children, including the news media, entertainment media, schools, churches, etc.
- Satan’s great appeal to God’s wayward children — whether we’re in flesh or angelic bodies — is that he tells us our sins are okay, and that we’ve either misunderstood God’s Word, or that God’s Word prohibiting those sins is just out-dated nonsense that we need to “progress” beyond if we want to be happy.
For more information on this subject, you might want to read my previous Bible study, Three World Ages: Understanding God’s Creation from Beginning to End.
Regards in Christ,
Steve Barwick
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