Stories of the Bible, Podcast 11, “The Fall Pt 10.”

Stories of the Bible, Podcast 11, “The Fall Pt 10.”

Without Satan and Christ, we could never become as the Gods knowing good and evil. Becoming as the Gods is at the core of it all. To his followers, Satan is a God. To his followers Christ is a God. We choose which God we serve, and we will be rewarded by the God we serve. Christ offers us eternal life with Him. Satan offers us eternal captivity with him. If we follow Christ, we will become like Christ. If we follow Satan we will become like Satan. If we follow Christ we will gain exaltation and eternal life with him, being free forever. If we follow Satan, we will be his slaves forever, ever bound by the chains of hell. That is all he has to offer.

Why is Satan necessary? The very laws of the universe require opposition in all things, or everything would stay the same. It would be an imitation of death, going neither forward nor backward. Adam and Eve were not happy in the Garden of Eden because they didn’t know what happiness was. They didn’t know what happiness was because they didn’t know what sorrow was. Someone coined the phrase ‘ignorant bliss.’ That is a stagnant state.

If Lucifer had not entered into the Garden of Eden, they never would have known that they had a choice. Lucifer would have done more damage to the plan of salvation and exaltation by staying out of the Garden of Eden. It was Lucifer who introduced the choice, and they took it. God could not tempt man, or he would cease to be God. But God knew that for Adam and Eve to become like him, they had to choose for themselves. The only reason God allows Satan in this world is to give us agency. Satan is necessary to agency. There is nothing in this world more paradoxical than Christianity.

God is God only because he lives the law of justice perfectly. Christ is our Savior only because he never gave in to the temptations of Satan. Even on earth he obeyed the Father in everything and lived the law of Justice perfectly.  Christ died to satisfy the law of justice and bring us back into the presence of God. And that was the plan from the beginning. God knew that Adam would fall; therefore, he provided a savior for Adam and Eve and all of their posterity. When they fell they suffered both a spiritual death, being cut off from the presence of God, and temporal death, the spirit being cut off from the body. Christ, having satisfied the demands of the law of justice, overcame both spiritual death and temporal death, thus giving us a choice whether or not to return to live with God.

Death was essential. Adam and Eve were the only ones who had immortal bodies. To have children, they had to fall. They had to eat the forbidden fruit. They had to become mortal, and all the rest of God’s children were foreordained to come through the seed of Adam and Eve. In other words, unlike Adam and Eve, we are all born into a fallen world. We were immortal spirits just like Adam and Eve, but we have never known what it is like to have an immortal physical body. 

As with Adam and Eve, it was our choice to come to earth. While in heaven, we chose to fight with Michael against Lucifer and his angels. Michael fought on the side of Christ. He was an archangel, a four-star general. Even in Heaven, by joining Michael’s army, we chose the side of Christ. Lucifer has always been anti-Christ. He wanted Christ’s position, but the Father chose Christ rather than Lucifer because Lucifer would have taken away our agency. We also chose to come to a fallen world and gain a mortal body, knowing that we would have to die to escape this earth. Why? Because we wanted to be as the gods knowing good and evil. We wanted total agency.