The Great Repair Job: God's Promise of Restoration for a Broken World

The Great

REPAIR Job

God’s Promise of Restoration for a Broken World

ANNE PUNTON

The Great Repair Job

Copyright © 2020 by Anne Punton

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-2381-0 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-2380-3 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-2382-7 (eBook)

Table of Contents

Foreword

Synopsis

Prologue

SECTION ONE

THE SEMINAL COVENANT

In the Beginning

The Other Than

Plan of Campaign

Brave New World

Consequences for Satan the Serpent

Consequences for Adam, Eve and the World

SECTION TWO

THE NOACHIDE COVENANT

Outside of Eden

The Cain Line

The Seth Line

Noah’s Ark

Ripe for Germination

Foundation for the Future

Securing the Seed

SECTION THREE

THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT

Man after God’s Heart

From Haran to Canaan

The Covenant Ratified

Waiting

Isaac and Ishmael

Jacob and Esau

The Four Matriarchs

Twelve Tribes

SECTION FOUR

THE MOSAIC COVENANT

Spotlight on Moses

Theophany

A Constitution

The Tabernacle

Laws and Institutions

Sanctions

The Song of Moses

Stepping into Canaan

Anarchy or Monarchy?

SECTION FIVE

THE DAVIDIC COVENANT

Intimations of Royalty

The Covenant with David

Kingdom Come! Kingdom Go!

The Strand’s Elusive Ladies

Exile

Time to Go Home

Back Home—but How?

SECTION SIX

THE JEREMAIC COVENANT

Meet the Prophets

The Covenant Conveyed to Jeremiah

Jeremaic Covenant—and Don’t Forget Ezekiel

The Messianic Hope

Meet the Servant

Servant Songs 2 to 5

The Suffering and the Splendour

Looking Ahead

Where’s the Church?

SECTION SEVEN

THE NEW COVENANT

A Dubious Beginning

A Pagan Christmas

Old View, New Vision

Teaching and Doctrine

Reactions and Complications

A Damaging Polemic

A Kingdom Concept

The Plan and the Participants

SECTION EIGHT

A COVENANT FOR LAST DAYS

End Times

The Rise and Fall of Nations

Heaven’s Eye View

The Grip of Evil

The Day of the Lord

Millennium World

All Things New

Time to Eternity (Dan 9:24, Rev 20:11 to 22:5)

The Lamb upon the Throne

Crowning Epilogue

Acknowledgements

The Authors

Foreword

The Bible continues to be the bestselling book in the world and there are probably as many opinions about it as there are sales. So right from the outset, I want to clarify my approach. I am aware of other methods of interpretation—word for word literalism, allegorical and metaphorical explanations, redactionist approaches regarding authorship, and many others—and I have an element of sympathy for some of them. I am also aware of those who merge a scientific or analytical approach in order to answer the challenge of sceptics, such as the works of Emmanuel Velikovsky, and the thesis of Dr. Wiseman regarding the creation process.

While I see strengths and weaknesses in all the classic approaches, I have chosen to follow the text as much as possible according to the grammatical construction and historical context while, hopefully, not coming across as an intransigent fundamentalist. The reason for this approach is that it holds together the theme of covenant in a logical sequence and also provides consistency; that is, it avoids the dangers of jumping from one hermeneutical method to another. In addition, I have occasionally allowed my imagination to roam more freely in ways that will probably not sit well with any of the classical traditions, but which add colour and humour, and I hope a level of understanding, to age-old stories that may at times seem a little drab.

Above all, my aim is to remain faithful to my Lord and Saviour and to His amazing covenant in which I put my trust.

Anne Punton

Synopsis

The central theme of this book is that we live in a broken world, but trusting in God’s promises, in the fullness of days the whole of creation will be eternally renewed and the brokenness will be repaired.

This is a monumental work on the subject of God’s unfailing covenant as portrayed from the opening words of the Bible to its final benediction. It is a big book, with around 134,000 words, divided into eight main sections: the Seminal, Noachide, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, Jeremaic, New and Eternal Covenants. Those section headings say a lot. The first six provide a detailed analysis of God’s relationship to humanity as seen through the whole of the Old Testament. The last two sections deal with the fulfilment of the Old Testament Covenant in the life of Jesus, the emerging church age and future events.

Anne Punton makes good use of her knowledge of Hebrew and her personal experience of living in Israel and working for the Anglican CMJ society (Churches Ministry among Jewish People), as well as a lifetime of committed Christian service. She writes with serious passion and a rich vocabulary, but often catches us with snippets of humour. She deals with hard facts mixed with unusual insights that challenge us to reconsider many of the ideas that we may have taken for granted, and never shies away from the difficult questions that critics have levelled. Of particular interest is the way she deals with the historical evidence for the accuracy of the Old Testament, difficulties raised by many of the unsavoury characters and incidents throughout those turbulent centuries, in tracing the genealogical lines of Jesus, the relationship between Jew and Gentile throughout the ages, and the place of the church in relation to the covenant process.

In contrast to the serious academic tone of the book, Anne occasionally lapses into almost childlike playlets such as the conversations between God and Satan. But these are deceptive. Behind the imaginative humour, the message of the conflict between good and evil comes through loud and clear.

THE GREAT REPAIR JOB

Prologue

A Book about Covenant

The Bible is a book about covenant. Before ever we read its pages, the titles Old Testament and New Testament make declaration of this, although we may not immediately realise it. Nowadays, we mostly understand the word testament in its legal sense of a last will and testament. It can, however, refer to a formal statement of intent between two parties which we might otherwise call a pact, an agreement, a treaty, or even a covenant. This is why some modern translations of the Bible prefer to use the words old and new covenant rather than testament.

Unfortunately, the words old and new can be misleading. They suggest that there are two covenants: one that came first and became obsolete, which was replaced by one which was newer and better. Despite the words old and new this is not so. There is one covenant and only one.

Like a silver thread, the covenant story runs through the whole Bible. If at times it is obscured by tales of love and war and acts of derring-do, it still carries on, hidden but unbroken, below the surface of the narrative. Genealogical lists, psalms of praise or odes of lament, pages of aphorism and worldly wisdom, history—heroic or perfidious, biography or prophecy, it makes no difference. The interlacing thread holds firm and binds the disparate elements of the record together.

Seen from this perspective, the words old and new take on a different connotation. They refer to earlier and later stages in the one process of an expanding covenant revelation. Never do they imply obsolescence or replacement. This covenant is a single expanding unity, a growing living entity.

Making of a Covenant

Covenants, treaties, leagues, concordats, pacts, agreements—all are everyday occurrences between groups and individuals. We usually assume that the parties concerned stand on an equal footing and are free agents in a friendly relationship with each other. They are jointly negotiating terms that will be mutually beneficial. Each side has something that the other wants and each is prepared to take on appropriate obligations in return for the desired benefits. There are exceptions. The most obvious is when a victorious king makes a treaty with a conquered nation and insists upon surrender terms to his own advantage with scant regard for the welfare of the other side.

The Bible covenant between God and humankind is similar to amicable human agreements but in one major respect the analogy breaks down and is more akin to a treaty between the victor and the vanquished. In every way the initiative comes from God. He chooses the opposite party to the agreement who is weaker and inferior. He makes the statement of intent and dictates the terms. Beyond that the similarity ceases, for everything about God’s covenant is kindly in purpose and for the good of the other side. Even if some of the terms seem a little strange and their raison d’être hard to fathom, they are not unduly onerous and never are they arbitrary or disadvantageous. If they are faithfully honoured, they can only lead to good.

From the Bible and other sources we are familiar with some of the ancient rituals of covenant making. Each side made a statement of identity before declaring the terms of the contract in the presence of witnesses. They ratified their agreements with an oath and a sacrifice. The oath was more than just a promise to stand by their commitment. In it they invoked curses upon themselves for any failure in observance. The wording of the oath appears variously in the Bible and not always in the act of making a covenant. With minor variation it says May God do such and such to me and even more also if I do not … . In the incident with Nabal, David said May God do this to David and more if I leave one male alive who belongs to Nabal.¹ In a superstitious age the oath was taken very seriously. The genuine fear of its curses coming into play greatly minimised the likelihood of either side falling short on their obligations.

Sacrifice was also a major part of the ceremonial. Its importance is reflected in the Hebrew terminology for covenant making. In Hebrew you literally cut a covenant. This refers to the fact that after it was killed, the sacrificial victim was cut in half and the pieces placed apart. For a bird, the cutting was only partial but the wings were spread open on either side.² The two parties then walked backwards and forwards from one piece to the other to signify that they were uniting in a newly forged and sacred bond.

Exactly how and how much ceremonial was observed depended on the importance of the circumstances. There was often an exchange of gifts or the performance of some transaction to provide a tangible sign as a constant reminder of the new agreement. In big affairs, a written record of the terms was made. For lesser matters, a declaration before witnesses sufficed. A communal meal usually concluded the pact, in which the sacrificed animal was eaten.

The concordat of peace between Jacob and Laban when Jacob left Haran is an excellent example of what happened.³ Without going into the story details, note how the different elements come together. Laban states the parties (you and I) and dictates his terms. Jacob agrees with an oath sworn by the God of his father and grandfather, Isaac and Abraham. He erects a standing stone and a cairn to act as both witness and a reminding sign of his pledge. Jacob then offers the sacrifice, and he and Laban and the people with them eat a farewell meal of fellowship together.

It will help to keep all of the above in mind when we go on to examine the subject of covenant within the Bible because aspects of it emerge all the time. For example, circumcision was a tangible sign of the covenant with Abraham. The written terms of a broader contract were given to Moses. The ceremonial meal was central to the new covenant in the body and blood of Jesus.

Six Words Say It All

God’s covenant statement is repeated variously throughout the Bible,⁴ but its basic intent is expressed in six short words: I your God, you my people. Though not what many of us might have expected, these words are at the heart of the covenant story. Their intent was determined before time began and will endure even when time slips back into eternity. It is, however, the revelation of all that is implied within these six words that forms the silver covenant thread running through scripture.

After the events of the Fall in the first chapters of Genesis, Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden. Now Eden was more than just a beautiful garden. In type, it was also an expression of the intimate relationship that existed between God and the first man and woman. As a result of the Fall, that bond was severed and the closeness of the fellowship was broken. Sadly, the consequences were passed down to Adam and Eve’s descendants, which meant that any possibility of such a close intimacy between God and the whole of the human race thereafter was destroyed. This is not to say that no intimacy could exist. Obviously, it did. The Bible records many instances of fellowship between God and men and women, but it was marred and on a different lower plain from the Eden experience.

In its simplest form the covenant is the promise of a full renewal of the broken bond. In other words, God says of the whole human race that a time will come once more when I will be their God and they will be my people. The problem was, that because of all that was involved in the tragedy of the Fall, absolute fulfilment of this promise could be neither easy nor immediate. Not only would revelation of what the covenant means be progressive, but so too would the process of implementing it. The way back to Eden is assured but it is long and hard.

Stages of Revelation and Implementation

No sooner did the Fall occur than a veiled promise of restoration was given. At that same moment, the course of expanding covenant revelation and implementation was underway. It started in nothing more than seminal form when God said to the serpent, who was Satan in disguise, that concerning the offspring of the woman, It will crush your head and you will strike its heel.⁵ Here is the first hint that God intends to do something about what has happened. He offers no clue about what He will do other than the inference that it will be drastic and violent. Crushing and striking are not gentle words. Only in the light of later scripture do we see the Calvary significance of this reference for what it is.

Many centuries passed before this seminal covenant moved into its next major stage involving Noah and his ark in what is called the Noachide Covenant. The big thing about this covenant with Noah is that it declares God’s good will to the whole human race. It does not apply solely to one particular person, family or nation. Its scope is universal. This fact must never be forgotten. In later stages the covenant will narrow down and appear to be limited to one man and line, Abraham and his descendants. This has to happen in order to achieve the main goal, but whatever the means to the end, the covenant aim is to embrace the whole of humankind.

If the first covenant revelation after the Fall is no more than seminal seed then the Noachide Covenant is like an act of fertilisation, the germination, which gets everything going. Suddenly the conditions were right for growth, although more than centuries had to pass before even so much as an embryonic form could become discernible.

The covenant with Abraham is the covenant in embryo. It narrows the process down to the one specific genetic line through which the whole covenant will be fulfilled. The details given to Abraham were brief. No way could he imagine all that they foretold or how they would come to fruition. And yet, just as a developing embryo gives indication of what is to come, so too did Abraham’s revelation offer the pattern or summary of how the covenant was to develop in the future.

The embryo came to birth and infancy in the Mosaic Covenant as a new nation emerged from Abraham’s descendants. Throughout this nation’s infancy and childhood, layer upon layer of detail was added to the scanty information received by Abraham. Apart from describing the historical events relating to the nation of Israel’s birth and early growth, the Mosaic Covenant gives a long and meticulous record of how God wanted His covenant people to behave and live.

Once settled in Canaan, the nation of Israel began to develop in two different directions. Its domestic, political and dynastic life relates best to matters concerning the Davidic Covenant, whereas its religious and spiritual life fits most aptly into the Jeremaic Covenant. These two directions which run concurrently bring the covenant into childhood and adolescence when the young nation went through teenage times of rebelliousness and experimentation and failed to learn from its mistake. New horizons opened to its gaze chiefly through the ministry of the prophets, a coming of age. Above all, a messianic strand began to develop. Nothing was definite but indications were there of the concept of a future golden age ushered in by an enigmatic personage especially anointed by God for the task.

With Jesus, the covenant reaches maturity. Some might feel that this is where it reaches its apogee of fulfilment. Is not the great work of reconciliation between God and man the very height of what the covenant promised to achieve? True. But there is more. During the Church Age, which started in the New Testament and continues to the present day, the covenant still has a role to play. It lives, slowly growing in maturity and into grand old age, the fullness of years. What the end will be we cannot completely know, but neither are we left in total ignorance.

Both the Old Testament prophets and Jesus suggest that the world will end in a series of cataclysmic events. At the same time they indubitably point beyond the cataclysms to something bigger and better ahead. The book of Revelation endorses this in graphic detail. Although much of what it foretells is couched in type and symbol, and is not easy to interpret, its basic message is clear. As time draws to its close, the struggle between God and Satan will intensify to a terrible climax. All hell will mobilise, but God is still on the throne and Satan will not prevail. In the end of Revelation, the apostle John sees the creation of a new heaven and a new earth. Evil is banished and righteousness holds sway. A new Jerusalem descends from the new heaven and a voice declares:

Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.⁶

The tears and suffering and sin of the curse of the Fall are gone never to return. Eden is restored.

¹1Sam. 25:22 ²Lev.1:17 ³Gen.31:44-54 ⁴Ex. 6:7, Joel 2:26-27, Zech.13:9b, Rev. 21:7 ⁵Gen. 3:15 ⁶Rev. 21:3 New International Version

SECTION ONE

SEED

THE SEMINAL COVENANT

CHAPTER 1

In the Beginning

In the beginning, God made our world and it went wrong. In an earlier beginning, God made an earlier world and it went wrong. Further back we cannot go, although that is not to say that there is no further back to go. For us, however, only these two worlds matter as we examine certain mysteries concerning their creation and the way in which they impinge upon each other.

MYSTERIES OF HEAVEN AND EARTH

All that we know with any certainty about any beginning is summarised in the first ten words of the Bible: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

We must take as read and with no comment the first mystery of God Himself, who is declared to be the Creator and great First Cause. Without understanding this mystery, I accept it for what it is and this is not the place to discuss either creationism or the origins and person of God.

Reading in English, the rest of this statement seems straightforward enough. It takes a grammatical anomaly in the Hebrew original to alert us to a second mystery. The very first Hebrew word is bereshit. This single word is translated as in the beginning but that is not entirely accurate. In Hebrew it is in what is known as the construct case. It literally says, in the beginning of and then is followed by the statement that God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning of what? We are not told. The Hebrew form of the word definitely implies that the creative process was launched at the start of something but no qualifying word follows to explain. We can but conjecture.

Was there a primal, elemental beginning for everything when God undertook to fashion our world as His initial starting project? Was there a point in the vastness of unending infinity when God measured off a finite span and called it time? Did the creation of our world mark the beginning of this span, and will the dissolution of our world mark the end of the span and the close of time? Was the universe as we know it already in existence but devoid of life, and did the creation of heaven and earth simply mean the start of a chain of events whereby God took one of the planets and made it habitable and able to support life?

The questions are reasonable but unanswerable—unanswerable that is, apart from one hint of an idea which springs from the words, heaven and earth. This provides the third mystery. Generally, we take these words to mean that God created the earth and the sky above it. In English we often refer to the sky as the heavens, especially in poetic language. At the same time we also use the word heaven to represent that ethereal place somewhere up there and beyond where God and the angels live and where we hope to go when we die. The same happens with the Hebrew shamayim. It might mean the sky and its celestial bodies or heaven, the abode of God. Could it be, therefore, that at the beginning of God’s first spate of creativity (and there may be later ones which we know nothing about), He first created the place we call heaven, followed by the place we call earth, as opposed to creating only one world with its earth and sky?

We belong to earth and we do not need to know a host of details about that other place, heaven, and its origins, but because there are links between the two places we cannot be left in complete ignorance. At first it is enough to know that these two places both exist and that they were created by God. From then on, the first chapters of Genesis concentrate on explaining the earth story. So, we learn about our world and the life within it. We meet Adam and Eve, the progenitors of the human race. We join them in a garden called Eden where they lived and had responsibility for its upkeep and the welfare of the animals within it. On the face of it there is no mention of any previously created world or other existence apart from this one word, heaven, or shamayim, which as we have seen, is open to interpretation. And yet extra-sensory experiences which many people have infer that there are dimensions around us that we do not understand but that we commonly take for granted.

OTHER THAN BUT NOT BEYOND

Although the world of the Genesis creation story is by no means alien to many people, much of what is described is undoubtedly above and beyond our human grasp and normal earth-world existence. But not everything is beyond. First, there is this being called God whose existence is taken for granted and who suddenly appears and starts making things. Who is He and where does He come from? Human logic, at least, would suggest that He does not just materialise like a puff of smoke. Surely, He must come from somewhere, and from a somewhere that had, therefore, to have preceded the world that He set about creating. If He came from somewhere to start on creating the world, where did He go to rest when the job was finished? Where did He come from when He came down in the cool of the evening to talk to Adam and Eve? Obviously, He did this regularly, for Adam and Eve recognised the signs of His arrival and, after the Fall, were ashamed and hid. Clearly, He did not live in the garden alongside them.

Second, as the Genesis story unfolds, there are two trees with symbolic names. One is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The other is the Tree of Life.¹ Within their names is embodied an intangible concept of morality and mortality, a world of ideas which seem to predate the new world of our first parents and which were equally outside of their experience in those early days.

Then there is Satan, a personage about whom nothing was at first known, who sidles on to the scene with guile and subtlety. Part of that subtlety is that at first sight he appears to be one of the beasts of the garden, who happens to be cleverer and more discerning than the rest. This is the serpent.² Only as the story unfolds do we begin to suspect that Satan, alias the serpent, is a character in his own right who is hiding his true identity. Why did Satan need to hide his proper identity and pretend to be a snake? Was it because Adam and Eve knew their environment and would instantly have recognised an outsider and been warned that something was wrong? If Satan was an outsider and not part of Adam and Eve’s world, where did he come from and what were his origins?

Fourth, come the cherubim, who guarded the entrance to Eden after Adam and Eve were expelled.³ There is neither likelihood nor indication that they were among the original inhabitants of the garden. The impression, rather, is that they were called in from some other source in order to deal with a crisis in the new world.

Although not part of the creation story, there is one other early passage in Genesis that backs up the thought that a place which we call heaven came into being before our world. It tells of the sons of God coming down to consort sexually with the daughters of men.⁴ Who were these sons of God and where did they come down from?

Make of all these things what you will; the hints are there of states and beings that predate our world and are outside of it whilst yet having a measure of contact with it. There is also more than a hint that some of these things are not good. Fortunately, these meagre facts are not all there is to go on. There is information in the rest of scripture. Although it is never found in one comprehensive narrative it can be culled in bits and pieces from all over the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. When everything comes together it shows how large a part is played in our universe by the things and beings that are other than and independent of our human experience, and yet by no means entirely beyond.

¹Gen. 2:9; ² Gen. 3:1; ³Gen. 3:24; ⁴Gen. 6:1-4;

CHAPTER 2

The Other Than

Much of what we know about that place which is other than, and independent of human experience, is connected with angels. It is clear from the Bible that angels exist. Christianity has deduced, backed up by ancient Jewish traditions, that they are created beings who appeared on the scene before our world began. Exactly how long before, we have no idea, but sometime in the annals of eternity, God made a complete hierarchy of beings who move in what to us are unimagined realms of spiritual existence. These are the angels who inhabit the place we loosely call heaven.

ANGELS IN GENERAL

In Hebrew, angels are called melakhim, which means agents or messengers. The word comes from a root denoting work. This implies that angels are God’s servants who obey and carry out His will. What their duties are in their own world is hard to guess. Numerous Bible stories describe their activities as God’s emissaries in our world. The Bible calls them ministering spirits whose work is service, sent to help those who will be the heirs of salvation.¹ It is also interesting to note that their activities are not confined to the pages of the Bible. Numerous Christians down the ages have recorded supernatural instances of appearance and aid at times of crisis which they unhesitatingly attribute to angel presence.

Some angels appear to carry greater responsibility than others. They are called archangels. Jewish tradition says that there are seven who actually stand in the presence of God himself. Two are named in the Bible, Michael² and Gabriel.³ A third, Raphael, is mentioned in the book of Tobit in the Apocrypha. There may even be different species of angels. Ezekiel had visions of bizarre four-winged creatures called cherubim.⁴ The title is a transliteration of the Hebrew original whose root means that which is near, which grasps, surrounds and holds close. By a logical association of ideas, this root also gives rise to common nouns like relatives, neighbours and even cauliflower and cabbage. The cherubim were apparently so called because they were close to God and somehow surrounded Him and held His glory in their midst.

There were also the seraphim, who had six wings, and who are so called from a word whose root means both burning and noble. It is a Burning One who lifts, with impunity, a blazing brand from the altar in the Temple and touches Isaiah’s lips in the symbolic gesture of burning away the impurity of sin.⁵ The seraphim, too, were close to God. Only a fiery creation can stand alongside a God who is Himself described as a consuming fire.⁶

Note here, that the cherubim, at least, were composite beings. Each possessed four bodies, each with wings, hands, feet and faces. The four faces of each pointed in different directions and looked like a man, an eagle, a lion and a bull. In view of this, is it too far-fetched to ask if some earth animals are partly modelled on some of heaven’s created forms? Alternatively, could it be that human beings, attempting to describe a being beyond their understanding, used life forms that they knew well as a sort of simile for an appearance beyond their vocabulary?

ONE ANGEL IN PARTICULAR

One of the angels at the highest echelon of power was Helel, the Shining One, called variously the Day Star, Son of the Morning, and Lucifer. The Bible references to Helel are found in Isaiah⁷ and Ezekiel.⁸ In context they are part of a declamation against the kings of Babylon and Tyre respectively but, as so often happens in the prophetic books, something that starts in down-to-earth, contemporary terms suddenly takes on a symbolic significance. In this case and without warning, the two kings become types of Helel, the Shining One.

We learn how he was one of the earliest beings to be formed, of his magnificence and how he enjoyed the closest proximity to God. In Hebrew he is described as the anointed one who covers, and the guardian cherub. What does this mean? All we can say is that in contemplating the function of covering fulfilled by the Shining One, two couplets from a hymn by Walter Chalmers Smith (1824-1908) come to mind.

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,

In light inaccessible hid from our eyes.

And

All laud we would render, O help us to see

’Tis only the splendour of light hideth Thee.

The Shining One was anointed, which means that he was specially picked out and chosen for his task. What a wonderful being he was! He was perfect in every way until … so the story goes, iniquity was found in him. And how? He grew proud of his own beauty and glory and wanted more. He became envious of the One who created him and lusted after His power. In essence he said Why should I not ascend higher and become even greater? There was but one higher height left to scale. I will be equal to God. Why stop there? Why should not I, the great Helel, Lucifer, the Shining Son of the Morning, rise above God and become the Most High God myself?

Almost certainly, his power was such that he felt he had a realistic chance of usurping his Creator’s place. He insinuated ideas of rebellion into other angel hearts. The end result was war in heaven. Lucifer, with the angels who chose to support him, fought with God and the angels who elected to stay loyal to God. Whatever form the warfare took it must have been a terrible struggle. None of the parallel traditions of cosmic conflict, preserved in myth and legend in so many cultures throughout the world, portrays it otherwise.

God won, but at cost. From then on Lucifer became Satan, HaSatan in Hebrew, or The Satan. It means The Adversary. He and his followers were cast out of Heaven into an empty limbo of chaos, which seems to be all that there was outside of heaven. Sadly, however, nothing could be the same again. They left behind them the taint of evil in holy places. Said Eliphaz of Teman to Job, referring to the abode of angels, … and the heavens themselves are not in His [God’s] eyes, clean.⁹

EVIL AT LARGE

It is worth making a brief aside here to point out that it was Lucifer who not only brought evil into heavenly realms but who actually brought evil to birth. Note well, this evil was not of God’s making. It was Lucifer’s. With the gift of free will and self-determination, which angels appear to have as well as humans, he could have quelled his envy. Instead, he nurtured it and succumbed to it. Even if the possibility for evil is sourced in God through His gifts of free will and self-determination, evil only came to birth when Satan deliberately chose to use these gifts wrongly. We rightly say that God is the first cause of everything, and this includes the concept of the possibility of evil, but it is Satan who takes the concept and brings it to life.

With Satan and his minions banished, and order restored, it is a puzzle to know why God went on from His first act of Creation (the heavens) and embarked on His second (the earth). We can only accept that an all wise God knew exactly what He was doing. Did the reason have something to do with Satan? Banished the Adversary may have been, but he was still at large. He remained a mighty enemy who must not be underestimated. Sooner or later he would surely make a second bid for supremacy. God could not allow him to roam free, uncontrolled and indefinitely.

So why not totally annihilate him and deal with him that way? Simple solution! But was it possible? If mankind, who, we are told, is made a little lower than the angels,¹⁰ is created with an undying spirit, is it not reasonable to assume that angels, too, are created in the same way? In that sense, Satan is immortal.

God is perfect truth and righteous and He is always true to His nature. When He gave His gifts of free will, self-determination and undying spirit to men and angels, He imposed upon Himself a measure of self-limitation. To be true to His nature He must not interfere in these areas. He could but He will not. To do so would be to betray Himself.

If, therefore, Satan cannot be annihilated, or forcibly controlled against his will, some other means of rendering him powerless once and for all must be found. Is this, perhaps, where our world comes in? Does our world, in some unfathomable way, have a role to play in God’s fight against Satan? If so, the whys and wherefores of God’s reasoning are beyond our grasping, but we can trust Him to know best in determining His strategy against the enemy. Does this then imply that we and our world are nothing but pawns in God’s hands to achieve His purposes? Far from it! If we exercise our gift of free will aright, can we not rather be co-warriors with Him in the struggle? He alone will deal the wound that signals the end to Satan, and He alone will deliver the final coup de grace that brings his evil machinations to a close when the Devil … will be thrown into the lake of fire.¹¹ Until then God chooses to need our support and we can choose to give it.

¹Heb. 1:14; ²Dan. 10:13, 12:1; ³Dan. 8:16, 9:21; Lk. 1:18, 26; ⁴Ez. 1:10; ⁵Isa. 6:1-7; ⁶Deut. 4:24 ⁷Isa. 14:11-15; ⁸Ezek. 28:11-16; ⁹Job 15:15; ¹⁰Ps. 8:5; Luke 20:36; ¹¹Rev. 20:10;

CHAPTER 3

Plan of Campaign

No sooner do we read in Genesis that God’s new world is up and running than we also read about it going wrong—an event which we call the Fall. The cause of the damage is infiltration by Satan, this being who has caused so much havoc in his own world and who now enters ours with malevolent intent. What brought him into our world and how did he get there? The last we heard of him he was banished in limbo. The problem was that far from being the end of hostilities, banishment was only the end of the first round. Now, in the second round, God produces His offensive. What follows is no heavy doctrinal thesis about the Fall and God’s plan of salvation, but a more imaginative approach. This is risky, for whenever one deals with the profound in lighter ways there is the danger of distortion and over simplification. My views follow mainstream Christian lines. I hope my touches of drama and humour will only serve to clarify and never to trivialise the truth. Imagine, way back in the hidden past, a conversation between the two protagonists.

IMAGINARY CONVERSATION