All Or Nothing

Revelation 12:7-11 (NKJV) And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought,

but they did not prevail,

nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer.

So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven,

“Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.

And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death."

Revelation 12:12 (NKJV) "Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath,

because he knows that he has a short time.”

The Lord is Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Omniscient.

There's no doubt in my mind that the Lord knew before He created everything that some of His angels would turn on Him and that one day, satan would seduce man to fight against the Lord.

The Lord God knew in advance that He would have to send His Son to die for the sin of man and to redeem man.

Now many will say "If He knew that this would happen, then why would He bother to do it?"

Many wouldn't even entertain the thought of creating angels, watch them fight it out in heaven amongst themselves, then create man. Watch satan deceive man and then have to straighten the mess out.

It makes God look less than God right?

Not at all. The angels, at one time had a free will and the rebellious angels sided with an angel that wanted to be like God.

Isaiah 14:12-15 (NKJV)

“How you are fallen from heaven,

O Lucifer, son of the morning!

How you are cut down to the ground,

You who weakened the nations!

For you have said in your heart:

I will ascend into heaven,

I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;

I will also sit on the mount of the congregation

On the farthest sides of the north;

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,

I will be like the Most High.’

Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,

To the lowest depths of the Pit."

And then in Ezekiel 28:11-15 (NKJV)

Moreover the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre, and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD:

“You were 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:

The sardius, topaz, and diamond,

Beryl, onyx, and jasper,

Sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold.

The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes

Was prepared for you on the day you were created.

“You were the anointed cherub who covers;

I established you;

You were on the holy mountain of God;

You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones.

You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created,

Till iniquity was found in you."

Ezekiel 28:16-17 (NKJV)

“By the abundance of your trading

You became filled with violence within,

And you sinned;

Therefore I cast you as a profane thing

Out of the mountain of God;

And I destroyed you, O covering cherub,

From the midst of the fiery stones.

“Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty;

You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor;

I cast you to the ground,

I laid you before kings,

That they might gaze at you."

Lucifer and the angels were given a free will and all they had to do was leave it alone.

But no!

satan can't be God and satan can't beat God.

The Lord told the seventy these words.

Luke 10:18 (NKJV) "And He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

Evidently this was a reference to Revelation 12:7-9.

You see, with the ability to choose freely, it comes with determined discipline to not do something that the Lord said not to do. So the fault isn't with the Creator. The fault is in those who He created that choose to do what they know is against the will of God.

And that's why we're in the mess that we're in today.

And the way evil man sees it, God is at fault. This is a lie from satan.

For man has said, "God made me this way" so the fault is with God.

Isaiah 29:15-16 (NKJV)

"Woe to those who seek deep to hide their counsel far from the LORD,

And their works are in the dark;

They say, “Who sees us?” and, “Who knows us?”

Surely you have things turned around!

Shall the potter be esteemed as the clay;

For shall the thing made say of him who made it,

“He did not make me”?

Or shall the thing formed say of him who formed it,

“He has no understanding”?

Every choice we make. Every decision that we make is not God's choice or decision. It's man.

That's why every sinner wants to blame God but think about it.

How can you blame God for a decision to eat fish? You're the one that made the choice to eat fish. God created you and He created the fish. He gives you a free will to choose between fish and chicken. You chose fish.

The Lord gave Adam a free will.

Genesis 2:15-17 (NKJV) "Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

The Lord God gives you all of the trees in the Garden except one.

You mean to tell me that out of, let's say, hundreds of trees that have great perfect fruit on it, I can have it, but I can't have the only tree called "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?"

Of course it would be intriguing to have that tree but the stipulation is "In the day that you eat of that tree you shall surely die."

So instinctively, Adam was aware of the consequences.

Permission. Commandment. Blessing. Penalty.

Remember also that the Tree of Life was there too.

The Tree of Life, if eaten, it would give a person life forever in the condition of sin. And it's safe to say that after Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that if they ate from the Tree of Life, they would remain alive forever in the condition of sin and that would be serious trouble.

They would be like the angels, living in an unredeemable fallen condition. The other advantage/disadvantage is that angels are not disembodied spirits. Why? They never had a body to begin with. Man, on the other hand, was given a body.

And the body of man is redeemable, in the sense that the Lord would be able to raise it from the dead and give it an eternal body just like the Lord when He was raised from the dead.

Angels are eternal beings and they can't be raised from the dead or redeemed.

Genesis 3:22-24 (NKJV)

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—

therefore the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.

So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life."

So it leads us to the point of the title of this blog.

All or nothing.

satan bet the house that he could beat God.

He sold his evil quest to be like God to the angels they believed him. As soon as the war broke out in heaven and they were cast out of heaven by the angels of God led by Michael and Gabriel, they knew that their fate was sealed.

Matthew 25:41 (NKJV)

“Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels:

But is there another set of angelic beings reserved in darkness to be judged?

2 Peter 2:4 (NKJV) "For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment..."

And very few say that these angels reserved under darkness are the giants (nephilim) from Genesis 6:4. The jury is definitely out on this.

The word "giant" is h5303. נְפִיל nep̱îyl; or נְפִל nphil; from 5307; properly, a feller, i.e. a bully or tyrant: — giant.

AV (3) - giant 3;

giants, the Nephilim.

Notice the Greek word used for "hell."

g5020. ταρταρόω tartaroō; from Τάρταρος Tartaros (the deepest abyss of Hades); to incarcerate in eternal torment: — cast down to hell.

AV (1) - cast down to hell 1;

the name of the subterranean region, doleful and dark, regarded by the ancient Greeks as the abode of the wicked dead, where they suffer punishment for their evil deeds; it answers to Gehenna of the Jews to thrust down to Tartarus, to hold captive in Tartarus."

A similar reference is found in Jude 1:6 (NKJV)

"And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day..."

The word "judgment" is the Greek word "krisis" which is where we get the word "crisis" from.

According to one reference, scholars make a distinction between Gehenna and Tartarus. Gehenna is the place for departed condemned humans and Tartarus is the place of condemned angels. Which is reasonable because Jude's reference says "reserved in everlasting chains UNDER darkness..."

If you've been placed under something, then that means that there's something above you.

The punishment for angels is greater than the punishment for humans for sin. Nonetheless, it should make us terrified that man will be punished for sin nonetheless.

So it's all or nothing and the reward for all that work to dethrone God, you get nothing but punishment out of this.