The purpose of this document is to give a logical explanation for the course of history and why things occur and/or exist as they do based on the statements, logical deductions, and inferences in Scripture.

In the Beginning…

We must begin at a beginning, which is not a beginning, but the only reason for the existence of all things material and immaterial, and the reason for their existence. That “beginning” is the eternal existence of the triune God: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Eph 4:4-6, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.”) God has no beginning (Heb 13:8, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”) God is the origin of all things immaterial and material (Gen 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens [the material universe] and the earth.”)( Isa 44:24, “Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, ‘I, the Lord, am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself and spreading out the earth all alone,’”) God is also the creator of angels (This is inferred by the statement of God in Job 38:1–7, “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now gird up your loins like a man, and I will ask you, and you instruct Me! Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding, who set its measurements, since you know. Or who stretched the line on it? On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars [a title for angels] sang together and all the sons of God [another title for angles, Gen 6)] shouted for joy?’”) The implication here is that the angels witnessed the creation of the universe. Therefore, they existed as part of God’s creation prior to the creation of the universe. Therefore, the order of existence is: God, angels, the universe, and finally man (Gen 1-3).

Why did God create angels?

One of the attributes of God is love (1 Jn 4:8, “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”) God wanted to express His love and be loved by those He created. Therefore, He created angels, in order to love them and be loved by them. Unfortunately, not all the angels loved God or appreciated God’s creation and love of them. The leader of these angels that didn’t appreciate God was the greatest angel created by God, named ‘Satan’ or ‘Lucifer’. The name ‘Satan’ in Hebrew means ‘adversary; opponent.’ The name Lucifer is Latin, meaning ‘light-bringing’ ‘morning star’. Satan/Lucifer is described in Isa 14:12-14, “How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nations! But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God [other angels], and I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’” Another description of Satan/Lucifer is given in Ezek 28:12-17, “You had the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; Every precious stone was your covering: …; And the gold, the workmanship of your settings and sockets, was in you. On the day that you were created they were prepared. You were the anointed cherub who covers, and I placed you there. You were on the holy mountain of God; you walked in the midst of the stones of fire. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created until unrighteousness was found in you. By the abundance of your trade you were internally filled with violence, and you sinned. Therefore, I have cast you as profane from the mountain of God. And I have destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I put you before kings, that they may see you.” A number of things should be noted here:

Satan was created perfect from the hand of God. He became arrogant from his own free will because of his beauty and great intelligence.

He wanted to be equal with or better than God, which resulted in his rebellion against God. He clearly didn’t love God nor care that God loved him.

In Rev 12:4 we are told that he convinced one-third of the angels to follow him in his rebellion against God. These ‘fallen’ angels are thrown down to earth during the Tribulation, “And his [Satan’s] tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven [angels] and threw them to the earth.”

These passages describe the angelic conflict, in which Satan and one third of the angels rebel against God and the elect angels (the two-thirds of the angels that did not follow Satan). Satan’s rejection of God’s love and total arrogance demanded that the righteousness and justice of God judge Satan as guilty of the charges against him. Furthermore, God sentenced Satan and his followers to an eternal lake of fire as punishment. The fact that Satan has been judged and condemned but the punishment has not been carried out, implies that Satan appealed the finding of the Supreme Court of Heaven. Satan’s appeal was probably something simple but brilliant. For example, he could have argued, “How can you claim to be a God of love and yet condemn one of your creatures to an eternal lake of fire just because they wanted to be like You? Furthermore, you created me with free will, and yet, judge me for my use of the free will You gave me.” Of course, God would have to respond to this judicial challenge, and He did by the creation of man. God created a creature with the same free will as Satan, and who was perfect/sinless from the hand of God, yet inferior in power and intellect to Satan, in order to prove that an inferior creature to Satan with the same free will can and will appreciate and respond with positive volition to the love of God. Thus, the creation of man has the purpose to prove that Satan’s appeal of his sentence is without merit. Satan’s immediate response to the creation of man is to motivate the man in the Garden of Eden to reject the love of God in favor of obedience to the leading of his sinful wife. In response, God promises to forgive fallen man and save him (and her) from the sentence to the lake of fire. Man responds to this promise from God. Another implication at this point is another objection by Satan that this one case proves nothing. Therefore, man must multiply on the earth to match and replace the number of fallen angels. Human history is the bringing forth of evidence before that Supreme Court of Heaven. This is described and demonstrated in Job 1:6-9, “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. The Lord said to Satan, ‘From where do you come?’ Then Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.’ The Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.’ Then Satan answered the Lord, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing?’”

Several statements, concepts, and words in Scripture point to a trial, a guilty verdict, a condemnation, an incarceration, a parole, a further crime, and a final execution. Some examples include:

One of the titles of our Lord is ‘advocate,’ which is used in the sense of a defense attorney, “And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;” The devil's name (in the Hebrew, HA SATAN) means an attorney who slanders but gets away with it because of some legal loophole. The Hebrew word SATAN means a slanderer as well as an adversary. In the Greek, his name was translated DIABOLOS, which means exactly the same thing: an adversary, an attorney in opposition in law, or a slanderer.

The concept of parole is seen in the fact that Satan is sent to prison in the jail named “the Abyss” for a thousand years, and then paroled.

Every human that believes in Christ testifies to the truth and belief in the love of God. Every human unbeliever testifies for Satan against God.

Satan is called before the Supreme Court of Heaven to give testimony as exemplified in Job 1:6ff.

The result of the prehistoric angelic conflict was a great trial, in which Satan and all fallen angels were condemned to the eternal lake of fire, Mt 25:41, “...depart from Me you who have been condemned into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.”

The actual blasphemous appeal of Satan is unknown to us, but the fact that an appeal was filed with God is deduced from the lapse of time between the sentence of fallen angels (Mt 25:41) in eternity past and the execution of that sentence at the termination of human history (Rev 20:10, “And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone…”). The very fact that the sentence has not been carried out, and that Rev 20:10 reveals the sentence will be carried out at the end of human history, justifies our conclusion.

Consequences of the fall and sinfulness of man.

Man is created by God to prove that an inferior creature to Satan can and will love and obey God as the only person worthy of worship. Satan has to destroy or discredit this evidence God has put forth. Satan does all he can to corrupt true humanity. Therefore, Satan attacks the free will of man by making him choose between his wife and man’s Savior, the Son of God. Man chooses for his wife with many consequences:

Man creates his own sin nature, which motivates him/her to use their free will to oppose the will of God, just as Satan has done.

Man’s sin nature corrupts the perfect genetics in man that God created, which results in disease, sickness, illness, etc. God is not the origin of physical defects; He is the origin of all healing. Man and Satan create all the physical defects in a person. We have only ourselves or Satan and his demons to blame.

In order to discredit the evidence of man choosing for God, Satan attempts to destroy all humans on earth. Satan does this by the cohabitation of fallen angels with the daughters of men (Gen 6). This results in the creation of half-angel/half-human creatures called ‘the Nephilim’ (Gen 6). These are not pure human creatures, but hybrids, which are designed by Satan to prevent the advent of Jesus. (These creatures are known in history as the Greek and Roman ‘gods’.) Therefore, it is necessary for God to wipe out the entire corrupt human race (with the exception of Noah and his family) in the great universal flood. God destroys Satan’s false witnesses and saves the genetic line of Christ as His true witness to the love of God.

God creates a chosen people from the line of believers that testify to their faith and trust in the love of God to save them from sharing Satan’s punishment in the eternal lake of fire. This line of believers comes down from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, Solomon (and others) to the Son of Man—the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Jesus is the ‘Last Adam’, the perfect, sinless man, Who will bring the ultimate testimony of man’s true love for God against Satan and the fallen angels. God proves the worthiness of this testimony by raising Jesus from the dead in a resurrection body that is incapable of sinning. This same body with eternal life is given to any and every person that believes in the love of God for their salvation from the lake of fire.

Future Evidence of the Ongoing Appeal and Proof of Satan’s guilt.

The angelic conflict against God is ongoing, as evidenced by the fact that Satan and his demons are still operational on earth. This can be seen by the many stories describing their activity in the New Testament Gospels. We also are told about their activity when the Holy Spirit is taken out of the way during the Tribulation. This allows Satan to have free and total operational control of the earth during the seven-year Tribulation (Rev 6-19). Rev 12:7, “And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him…and they [believers] overcame him [Satan] because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony.” This is testimony before the Supreme Court of Heaven in Satan’s appeal trial.

After Satan’s defeat at the end of the Tribulation, he and his demon forces are imprisoned in a compartment of Hades called the Abyss, Rev 20:1-3, “Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding the key of the Abyss and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he threw him into the Abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed; after these things he must be released for a short time.” Satan has to serve a thousand-year prison sentence. Following this he is paroled by God. But instead of appreciating his continuing demonstration of the love and forgiveness of God, Satan revolts again against God, Rev 20:7-10, “When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison, and will come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together for the war; the number of them is like the sand of the seashore. And they came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”

Conclusion

We have been given a temporary life by God, in order to testify against Satan and the fallen angels. Our testimony is that we believe that God loves us so much, that He sent His Son to live a real, perfect, sinless human life on earth as a true human being, which qualified Him to be the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, and gives us eternal life with Him forever. We have a non-meritorious act of faith alone in Christ alone, which proves that Satan is a liar and richly deserves eternity in the lake of fire. Human history is the testimony against Satan and ultimate proof of God’s total love for His creatures. This is why Jn 3:16 is the greatest statement in the word of God:

 	[the Greek font is sgkclass.ttf or SGkClassic.ttf]

“For God unconditionally loved the world so much, with the result that He gave His uniquely-born Son, in order that every one who believes in Him might not perish, but might have eternal life.” (my translation)

Billy J. Puryear, Jr. MDiv

Jan 5, 2025

New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (Eph 4:4–6). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.

The Greek word is PARACLĒTOS, which many Old Latin Bible manuscripts translate using the Latin word advocatus, which describes the role of the ‘patronus’ in legal proceedings. But the technical meaning ‘lawyer’, ‘attorney’ is rare. (BDAG, p. 766)