Sword & Trowel 2018: Issue 2 The five ‘I wills’ boast au-
tonomy and equality with God: Satan will function without God. And as Satan turned from allegiance, sub- mission and obedience to God, through that turning, all the reverse-values or anti-values or opposite values and standards sprang into being. They came into existence as the result of the turn from God to autonomy, and they are expressed in these verses, which describe Satan’s fall as effec- tively as that of the king of Babylon. Originally there was only light, morally, but by turning from the source of moral light and authority, darkness came about. Contrasting, antagonistic, opposing actions, desires, objectives, ‘principles’, and a demonic domain of sin and darkness, anti-morality, and negation of everything that is good and true became the environment of the devil and his angels. Pride, unbelief, lust and the lie
Adapted from one of a seven-part Bible study series preached at the Tabernacle in April-June 2017: ‘The Dissolving of Doubts’, a phrase taken from Daniel 5.12 meaning the untangling of knots. Other studies in the series addressed Assurance, Doubts about God, Doubts about the Bible, and Doubts about the Doctrines of Grace.
my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’ His wisdom is too high and too deep for us. There are matters that defy adequate human explanation. In 2 Thessalonians 2 the apostle Paul
refers to iniquity and evil as ‘the mystery of iniquity’. It is not possible to view Satan’s operational plan, and it is not possible on earth to know all the reasons why God allowed the Fall.
‘We see through a glass, darkly’ In 1 Corinthians 13.12 Paul writes
brought down first Satan, and then Adam and Eve when man in re- sponse to Satan’s temptation wanted to be like God. As our first parents turned to disobedience, the anti- values sprang into being in man’s world – disorder, pride, lust, hatred, deceit, violence, self-love, self-seeking and self-service. None of these things were in the world before. Satan had found them, but they were not in the world until Adam and Eve fell. Why did God permit it? First, we need to condition our minds with some cautions. Isaiah 55.8-9 tells us, ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways
– ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.’ There is a time coming when we will have the intellect and spiritual- ity to be shown even more than we are taught by the Scriptures now. We shall know as much as God desires us to know, and we shall be capable of absorbing the information. 2 Corinthians 5.6-8 reads – ‘There-
fore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (for we walk by faith, not by sight:) we are confident, I say, and
Why Did God Allow Sin and the Fall? page 31
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