The Restoration of All Things

Satan - Part 1 - The purpose of Evil

So it appears the question has come up and so I will rephrase the question and begin to answer it in this post.

In the end, what happens to Satan and the angels?

Right off the top I want to state that Satan and the angels do not require redemption in the same way that humans do. They were not part of the original sin of Adam. Therefore, they do not get “saved” in the same manner of speaking. I also want to state that there are several passages in the old testament that many teachers claim are talking about Satan. I am not convinced of the validity of those teachings. I’m stating this now, because it may come up later.

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Isa 45:5  I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me:
Isa 45:6  That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else.
Isa 45:7  I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Note: Some of your translations will change this word evil to calamity.  Shame on them!  This is the word ra.  It straight up means evil.  It is the same word used in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and it is the same word translated hundreds of times as evil - but once again, translators who don't want a God who creates evil, change the Word of God according to their theology.  Little by little they change our image of who God is.

Satan is a creation of God. Evil is a creation of God. In a restoration mindset, we do not take away any authority from God. He is the beginning and the final word on every subject. He is the Alpha and the Omega. This is hard for many to hear, but He causes earthquakes, hurricanes, and accidents. God brought down the twin towers.

Many like to soften this with the statement, “God allowed it to happen, but did not actually do it.” In the end, this statement is meaningless. It sounds nice and seems like we are letting God off the hook, but it actually makes matters worse in my mind. It creates an image of a God who is so weak that He can’t, or or so uncaring that He doesn’t stop things from happening, but rather just stands by and watches.  Others may find that god worthy of praise.  I do not. I worship the One True God - who is 100% in control of everything. And He has no trouble accepting responsibility for it all.

God has desire and God has a plan. There are times when these two do not line up. But they will, in the end. The only difference between God’s desire and His plan - is timing. Consider in our own life.  We have a desire to have money.  Our plan is to get a job.  Though it would be nice for money to just appear, we must do something we do not desire in order to bring about that which we do desire.  Eventually, our desire to have money and our plan to have money line up.

He never desires harm to come to His creation. But this is the only way to bring about the removal of their sin. This is the only way of bringing His creation to life. We may never understand all the nuances and ramifications, but we see the pattern clearly - God brings about evil in order to save us. Even His death on the cross was an ultimate evil - the sacrifice of the innocent for the redemption of the guilty. Thank God for that evil - literally - Thank Him! I have said often that we need to submit to His judgement - and even in this forum others have challenged that and said, His judgement is something we don't want.  But No!  Without His judgements - without Evil - we would never see a finished Restoration and everyone would die.

God works through agents to accomplish His plan:
Sometimes what must occur is evil and God uses His agents to accomplish this. For instance, an army conquering a nation. A virus killing individuals.

Of course we are familiar with Job and His encounter with Satan after God granted Satan limited authority. Evil was wrought upon Job by the authority of God. We also see that God can send lying spirits:

1Ki 22:20  And the LORD said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramothgilead? And one said on this manner, and another said on that manner.
1Ki 22:21  And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the LORD, and said, I will persuade him.
1Ki 22:22  And the LORD said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and do so.
1Ki 22:23  Now therefore, behold, the LORD hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the LORD hath spoken evil concerning thee.

There are many other examples of the Lord sending plagues and enemies and calamity on countries and individuals.

So foremost in our mind, we need to understand that God may have agents do His work - both good and evil. But He is still the One giving the instructions and the authority to do so. Why? What is the purpose of evil? Is evil and sin the same thing? Are we saying God sins? Absolutely not! [SK makes spitting sound]

What we perceive to be life is actually death on another plane or dimension. What we perceive to be the act of dying is actually birth on another plane.
Think of our life as we know it as a state of death. Compare our life on this earth to the life of a child in the womb. That child has not yet been born, but they are not really dead either. However, the only way for that child to “come into life” is to exit life as they know it. They must give up the support system they have come to depend on – the food (body), the blood (soul), the air (liquid) (spirit) and “die” to that life. As a testimony to this, there are three "tubes" in the umbilical cord that attaches a baby to life, that is, the baby’s mother. The newborn must come out through the birthing canal into “real” life.

Now, during this lifetime we are in our womb experience. If we resist the move toward “real” life, we will die in our mother’s womb, a miscarriage. However, to us, this womb experience is all that we know, and all our instincts and ambitions serve to drive us to continue in this life and avoid death at all costs. Something needs to push us toward death. In the case of a newborn baby, the mother's contractions serve this purpose. In our adult "womb life," that purpose is served by evil.

Evil, as a noun, is the entity or process that pushes us toward death/birth. As we experience evil we are terrified because it pushes toward death. So from the perspective of this dimension – evil is a bad thing. However, it is necessary in order to be born into life. For without our death (birth) we cannot live. If it were not for evil we would resist death, and as a result, never experience true life.

Notice what happened when Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. First Adam was admonished:

“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen 2:17).

Why then put the tree there? Because we were supposed to eat from it so that we could die!

Then the result:

And the LORD God said, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: ...” (Gen 3:22).

Why did God realize that the first thing Adam and Eve would want to do after being aware of good and evil was to partake of the tree of life? Because now they knew evil and that evil would move them toward death, just as God told them it would. What they didn’t know was that they needed to be moved toward death in order to enter into true life, and that is why God created evil in the first place.

Some would tell you that God placed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden in order to give man the free choice to cause his own sin, but that is ridiculous. Why? Because if we were supposed to have free will, then why did God take us out of the garden after we ate the first tree? He stopped our “free will” from eating of the tree of life. He allowed our “free will” to eat of the first tree. If He had not wanted us to eat of that tree, we would not have eaten of it.

That is why He planted the tree where we would be tempted and then sent the devil to tempt us – so that we would fail and evil would begin its work of bringing creation to death, so that it could be birthed into true life.

Evil is death and the things that induce death. Not just physical death, but all forms of death.

Sin is the violation of God’s character. When someone sins, evil is the result. However, evil can be executed without it being sin. For example, a soldier in a war is committing evil, but in most cases he is doing it without sin. In most cases, the war in the first place is the result of sin, but even a righteous war (like the ones God commanded) is evil. A virus is committing evil, but it is not committing sin.

Once God has written His law on our hearts we will no longer commit sin. Eventually God will be champion over all, and all will be all in all, and at that point evil will have served its purpose, and that is why the last enemy is death. Once death is no more, evil has no more function because all will have been brought through death into life.

When all the hurricanes and wildfires were happening the pastor at my church did a really good sermon regarding this. He actually last minute changed what he was going to do the service about and covered this topic. He gave a great message and his focus was God is in control of everything.

I've always understood that God is sovereign over all creation because He is God. Plain and simple. I've always been perplexed about Satan, why Satan was created, and why fallen angels. Eventually from reading about the other created beings in heaven had a specific purpose, I realized Satan and the fallen angels also were created for an intended purpose.

What you've said Sk makes so much sense, and agrees with scripture as Jesus tells us:

Matthew 16:24-25
24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
25 For whosoever will save his life [this life] shall lose it [death in the womb]: and whosoever will lose his life [accept death] for my sake [accepting Jesus] shall find it [the 'real' life].

Even in terms of how God's kingdom works is opposite from how we perceive it as the first will be last, and the last first. 

Truly profound... 

Amen! Very good questions and observations. I agree with your analysis and conclusion.

There is a fine balance between "free will" and "ultimate liability".  For me, this is one of those proofs of God while also proof that Restoration is required.

Luk 12:48 But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

No one has as much as God has.  It all belongs to Him.  God knew, according to His law, that He had ultimate liability.  So He fulfilled the penalty and paid the ultimate price.  But He also knew that each of man's decisions where their decision to make.  They had "free will" within that small scope that God allowed.  And they made a choice for which they are accountable.  Men are accountable, but God is responsible. God has already accepted and paid for His part.  These men are still accountable for theirs.  Fortunately, the blood of Christ will cover their accountability until such a time as Christ completely removes their sin.

What kind of God could use a man, such as Pharaoh by hardening Pharaoh's heart and preventing Him from repenting just so that God could be glorified?  And then have that man tormented in Hell forever?  What other hearts has He hardened?  Did He harden the hearts of Mohammed Atta and the others?  Could they have been on the verge of not going forward with their plan?  And then God did not allow them that option?  We cannot say.  But we do know that God's plan was worked that day.

We did see God glorified on earth in Egypt as He accomplished the freedom of His people (through the destruction of another people).  But have we ever stopped to consider that although God's work was glorious - the true glory of God will be shown when God brings Pharaoh's heart in line with His and Pharaoh and Moses sit side by side at the table of our Lord?  Now that will be a celebration!  That will testify to who God truly is.

Satan - Part 2 - Final Destiny

Part 1 of this series was to guide our perspective of why God created evil. There is a another nuance to this that I want to add. Evil serves another purpose as well. Any positive attribute or character quality requires overcoming evil at some point.

It is no challenge to love our perfect friends. A bit harder to love our difficult friends. Very hard to love our distant enemies. And nearly impossible to love those that are actively and physically persecuting us. And yet, we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. The same applies to other character qualities - or fruit of the Spirit. Can we really understand forgiveness if we have nothing to forgive? Do we comprehend mercy when none have done wrong? I could go on right down the list, but hopefully the point is becoming clear. If we are to learn to judge properly and put on the full character of Christ. Then we must do it by experiencing, and overcoming evil. We have the phrase “a necessary evil”, the truth is - all evil is necessary.

Also, let me also ask you this: If God was to truly judge us - would any say afterward that His judgements were true and unbiased if there was no opposing counsel? Satan is the accuser, the Holy Spirit is our defender. God does everything righteously so that all can see the wisdom of His plan when it is completed.

Eph 3:8  To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ,
Eph 3:9  and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things;
Eph 3:10  so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.
Eph 3:11  This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord,
Eph 3:12  in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him.


Romans 12 is a passage that discusses how our Christian walk should look - but it is mentioned in light of Romans 1-11 - which lays out the plan of salvation for all. After all this and Paul’s wonderful break down in awe of God at the end of chapter 11, Paul starts Chapter 12 with this:

Rom 12:1  I beseech you therefore[because of everything I just said about what God has done and will do], brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
Rom 12:2  And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Because of what God has done and because of His mercy, what is left for us? We present our selves a sacrifice - this is our reasonable service and this begins our Pentecost experience of transformation.

and he ends the chapter with this:

Rom 12:21  Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

Feel free to read the chapter and see it starts with surrender as a sacrifice (sacrifices are dead) and ends with overcoming evil.

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There is a false teaching and understanding among Christians that Satan was created sinless and then sinned. And even though it may not be taught by every church, the result of this is the accompanying thought pattern that since Satan sinned, God has been working to get creation back to where it was before he sinned. As Christians, we can almost start to think that God is on a detour in His creation plan. We all know God will win in the end. But first He has to take care of some wicked business. This is bad theology and leads to many errant ideas about what God will do and who God is.

The truth is: Satan was created evil and is serving the exact purpose he is supposed to serve and he is doing it under the instructions and authority of God. Satan was not created good and then became evil.

Joh 8:44  Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
1Jn 3:8  He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.

Satan was not an angel of light who became dark. Satan was evil and of the darkness from the beginning and has convinced everyone that he was an angel of light. Now some of you are going to point to a couple old testament passages that the church has taught are talking about Satan. But I do not believe those passages are talking about Satan.

2Co 11:14  No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

He isn’t and has never been an angel of light - but instead pretends to be a angel of light, and even pretends he used to be an angel of light that fell into darkness. Nope! Don’t buy that lie. He has never been an angel of light.

God is not on some, “Oops, I gotta fix creation” mission. This was all part of the plan! Much of Christianity teaches that the creation of God turned into a monster. But to make matters worse, they then teach that this monster, Satan, will actually win more then the creator himself. Whether though endless torment, or annihilation (which includes the teaching of conditional immortality - a doctrine that tries to hide its true revolting nature behind fancy terminology), Satan ends up with more of the souls of creation than God Himself.

Imagine that - God managed to create a being that was more powerful than Himself. When are we all going to really learn to Know the Creator? When are we really going to understand the victory accomplished by Jesus? It makes me sick what we have done in His name and to His name. It is then this weak, pathetic, god that we try to sell to our friends and neighbors. We write books about the gospel and pamphlets about getting saved and send missionaries to the field and all of them are accusing God of endlessly tormenting or annihilating most of His creation because Satan was just too powerful.

Sick! What a depraved teaching. And God allows us to wallow in the depth of that degradation. Come out of it! Know Him for the first time in your life! Really Know WHO Jesus is! He is not going to lose one person! NOT ONE!

When we look at the final destiny of Satan, we must come at it from the perspective that Satan was created for the express purpose that he has been executing since he was created. Satan is doing the will of God according to the plan of God.

Let’s take a look at this:

1Ki 22:19  And he said, Hear thou therefore the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left.
1Ki 22:20  And the LORD said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramothgilead? And one said on this manner, and another said on that manner.
1Ki 22:21  And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the LORD, and said, I will persuade him.
1Ki 22:22  And the LORD said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and do so.
1Ki 22:23  Now therefore, behold, the LORD hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the LORD hath spoken evil concerning thee.

What is the final destiny of that spirit? God asked the host of heaven who would persuade Ahab to battle to his death. And the hosts came up with suggestions and then one stepped forward and said, I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of his prophets. God was like - yeah, do that!

Now, this lying spirit? What happens to him? Does he go to endless fires? Does he go to chains of darkness? I doubt it. There is no indication that God was unhappy with what this spirit did. There is no talk of his destruction, etc. I think it is safe to assume that spirit continued to be part of the heavenly hosts.

According to our perspective - that spirit did evil. But from God’s perspective, that spirit fulfilled God’s plan.

So, now we come to Satan. The evil he works he does under the instruction and authority of God, but what happens to him in the end.

Rev 20:10  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[to the ages of the ages].
Rev 20:14  Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.
Rev 20:15  And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Rev 14:9  Then another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, "If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand,
Rev 14:10  he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.
Rev 14:11  "And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever[to the ages of the ages]; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name."

From this we can see that death, hades, the devil, the beast, the false prophet, those that worshipped the beast and took the mark, and anyone who name was not found in the book of life is thrown into the lake of fire. It does not mention Satan’s “angels” in this passage.

I have not gone through my understanding of The Revelation with this group of readers, but this might be a moment I need to give a bit of a clue as to my thinking. There are many symbols in The Revelation. We accept them as symbols without questioning. We don’t actually think a beast with 7 heads and 10 horns is going to come out of the sea, we don’t think a sword will really be sticking out of Jesus’ mouth when He returns. I could go on and on, but as it turns out, almost all of the book is symbolic and we are ok with that, but when it comes to the lake of fire - that we decide is exactly literal. Why? Because, once again, we don’t know God and we have been brainwashed by our doctrines and so hell, fire, torture, burn - that part is real because that is who we believe God is.

The fire and lake are just as symbolic as everything else in this book. We have talked quite a bit about the fire, so I’m not going to repeat myself here. But just think of the imagery of what we are even talking about -

Thrones are set up, books are set out, and then heaven and earth flee - because there is no place for them? That isn’t literal, since the throne is in heaven, so it means something else otherwise we'd all be watching the throne flee away with heaven.  And then, death and hades are thrown into the lake. Wait, how can that even be possible. Death isn’t an entity that can be picked up and moved. It is a state of being. Hades? The grave? And for you who insist that Hades is the destination of the damned, then that place itself is now thrown into the lake so, then what happens to your hell?

No, this is symbolic. When something is thrown into the lake of fire, it becomes under the fiery law. This law will purify and mold until such a time as only that which is pure is left. It is not actual fire that burns.

This thread has been teaching that the lake of fire is a process that is administered by the Lamb and His saints. That through the process of this “fire” through the ages that all will come to oneness with God and that at the end of the ages, at the Age of Ages - at the final Jubilee - all debt will be erased and all will go free. I happen to believe that by this time, all will have come to that truth and the Jubilee will be a formality of the law, but the bible doesn’t tell us either way. So that is the fate of the humans. The question remains, what about death, hades, the beast, the false prophet, and Satan.

First, we need to understand that this beast and false prophet are simply the earthly kingdoms (as controlled by Mystery Babylon) - I demonstrated that in the kingdom of God thread. They are not some end times antichrist and false prophet that deceive everyone for seven years. You will need to read the Kingdom of God thread for a better understanding of this. So, those kingdoms are not “coming out of the fire” there is nothing left of them, they are purely conceptual at this point. Most of them have come and gone already. The kingdoms of man will become the kingdom of Christ which will be the demise of the remaining.

Death and hades are also concepts, not entities. The concept of a grave and of death are meaningless when nobody dies anymore and so those concepts fade into nothing there is nothing of these concepts to come back out of the fire.

This leave us with Satan and maybe the angels, even though there is no passage that says the angels are in the lake of fire.

We know that we will judge angels. The lake of fire is judgment and it will be administered by the saints - so, we are judging the world and the angels and the lake of fire is the mechanism of that judgement.

Do we also judge Satan? Is satan an angel? There is nothing in scripture to tell us he is. He is said to have come to present himself along with the sons of God in the book of Job. This does not make it clear if Satan is a son of God or just happened to be there along with the sons of God.

Job 2:1  Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD.
Job 2:2  And the LORD said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
Job 2:3  And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.

Just as a side note - notice what God says here - Satan moved God against Job - to destroy Job without cause.
All the Christians say, NO!  Satan did this to Job.  But God takes responsibility and says that God did the action.  Because Satan, is but a tool of God.  When you see God in this way, you begin to understand that by His law - He MUST save all.


So we can conclude very little.

1. We do not know if we will judge Satan, because we do not know if he is an angel. He appears more as a spirit then an angel.
2. We also know that we will judge angels but we don’t know if we will judge every angel or just some angels.
3. We know Satan is placed in the lake of fire, and that the duration of the lake of fire is to the Ages of the Ages. By definition, this is not endless, because the Ages of the Ages will come to an end - we do not know what happens after that other than all things being reconciled into God.
4. We do know that every being under earth, in the earth, and in heaven will praise God. So at that point, either Satan is no more, or he is praising God.

The bottom line - much to our surprise - the bible does not tell us the final state of Satan.

 - One could argue that the purification process found nothing left after the purification and therefore Satan ceased to exist.
 - One could argue that, having served his purpose perfectly, but evil no longer being necessary, Satan is transformed into good.

But neither of these positions could be proven from scripture and so in the end, each person must decide for themselves what they believe.

I am ok with the ambiguity. But I lean toward the second and the reason is - I don’t feel that God will loose anything of his Creation. Nothing.

So, one might ask, why did I take two posts to say, “We don’t know.”

Because, I wanted you all to have the background on the point of evil and the purpose of Satan. I also wanted you to see that our current thoughts of what and who Satan is are not as clear from scripture as we may have been led to assume. This way, perhaps you too can be comfortable with the uncertainty of not knowing this answer.

But also, and more importantly, I wanted to highlight that even Satan is at the under God's authority and that GOD TAKES CREDIT FOR THE WORKS OF SATAN.  Perhaps this will allow us to so see, how weak our traditional doctrines make God out to be.

Restoration restores our image of God to His rightful place. 

SK has presented his viewpoint about Satan. There are many teachings about Satan, but the question is who is the real McCoy?

In the view of Restoration, can Satan be restored by God? Of course! What can God not do?

However, the origins are not clear about Satan, but he is our current enemy in the spiritual war we fight day in and day out.

How God's plan will truly play out with Satan will not be revealed until the mystery of God is complete as stated in Revelation 10:7.

Personally in my opinion is that all I need to know right now is that Satan and his kingdom is my enemy, and Christ is my victory. How the cards fall is up to God because it's His plan and not ours.

I have gone back to this video many times over the years in pondering the question of evil. It is a hard reality to be sure. I think Ravi argues a good point here. It's only about 6 minutes long and worth your time if this is something you wrestle with like I do.