How, why, and when did Satan fall from heaven?

Ezekiel 28:12-15 has long been held to refer to Satan. The description, though primarily of the king of Tyrus, goes far beyond that of any human being, and in its opening sentences fits only Satan himself, the author of all his pride and corruption. He is addressed by God as “the anointed cherub that covers,” every precious stone being his covering. A stone is a receiver and reflecter of light, the various coloured gems giving an idea of how full this reflection was, for he was perfect in his ways since he was created till iniquity was found in him.

Overweening pride was his ruin (compare 1 Timothy 3:6), and “the pride of life” is his chief instrument in enslaving men’s minds. He fell, and carried with him a huge following of angelic beings, corrupted by him and partners in this rebellion, before the creation of man. His first sin was seeking to get out of a creature’s place and become as God. On these lines he provoked our first parents. “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” was the tempting bait. “Fall down and worship me” revealed the consuming ambition of his heart, as he urged his daring and impious claim upon the Son of God Himself (Matt. 4:9).

According to this scripture, two important things were to be observed in regard to those who desired the office of a bishop; that is, of an overseer of a local assembly; and two dangers are pointed out as the consequence of neglect of these qualifications. A bishop, among other things, must not be "a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil." The word rendered condemnation is rather the ground, charge, or matter of accusation, on which condemnation is passed. (See Luke 23:40; Luke 24:20, etc.) This passage therefore gives a remarkable insight into the cause of the devil's fall. He was puffed up with pride, either tempted on the side of the position he occupied, or on that of his own beauty and excellency (see Ezekiel 28:11-17); and, on this account, judgment was passed upon him. The same danger, as the Spirit of God warns us, might beset a "novice" if he obtained office in the assembly. He might be lifted up with pride, and fall as the devil had fallen. The second thing is that the "bishop" "must have a good report of them which are without, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil." Here the meaning is quite different. If one who occupied the place of rule in the assembly did not possess a good report of those that were without, he would soon incur reproach, not so much for the name of Christ as for his bad repute; and Satan would not be slow to come in and use this as a snare wherewith to entangle his feet: How often have both these dangers been realized in the Church of God! The lesson is, that we should never, under any pretext whatever, depart from these plain and positive instructions of God's word. E. D.

He is not the author of it: the devil is, he sins from the beginning (1 John 3:8). There was no sinner before him. Set in the most exalted position in which creature was ever set, his pride rose up in rebellion against the One who had made him, and who in goodness gave him that exalted place. We have him addressed by the prophet under the figure of the king of Tyrus (Ezek. 28), and he is told, “Thou wast perfect in thy ways, from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.” Sin began to exist in the thought of that anointed cherub. There the inky river whose foul waters found their way into the garden of Eden, and from thence have filled the world with violence, corruption, sorrow, death, and woe, is traced to its source. How many ages have run their courses since this terrific being brought sin into God’s fair creation Scripture does not say, but the earth seems to bear upon its granite ribs many a scar of past conflict, and violence seems to have been for ages rampant in the lower order of creation, as it is today; but whether this was due to the influence of sin’s primogenitor, or whether it was not, we cannot tell. We do know that he was the first transgressor, and that to this day he remains the same evil, lawless, God-hating being he ever was, and that all who have fallen under his baleful influence remain in their fallen condition unchanged—all except man, who has become the subject of grace, and from whose race God makes a selection, recreating the objects of His choice, that they may be vessels of His praise. The rest remain in their natural rebellious condition, the enemies of God and of His Christ and of the gospel of His grace.

So we find a little answering to this, that our Lord alludes to Satan's fall from heaven in the gospel of Luke; and I notice it because some have thence supposed that Satan had been expelled from the heavens long ago. It is in Rev. 10, when the disciples return to the Lord, full of joy because the devils even were subject to them. The answer is that He "beheld Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven." Now a person might set the words in the evangelist against the fall of Satan that is described in the Apocalypse as still future. But evidently this would be a misuse of scripture. We may always rest assured that the Bible agrees with itself. It is ignorance and unbelief to set one part of God's word against another. To an unbiassed mind, I think it is certain that the fall of Satan in the prophecy is described as a prospective event, which is to take place three years and a half (however that may be taken) before the destruction of the beast and the binding of Satan himself. Consequently it is a fall that in St. John's time at least was yet future. The immediate effect was to be a dreadful persecution against the woman and her seed. Again, I have endeavoured to set forth a variety of considerations, from which it is clear to me that before this event the church must have been taken to heaven. Such the reader will remember has been the uniform deduction I have drawn all through our former chapters (Rev. 4-6); so that the fall of Satan, intimated here, must be an event subsequent to the removal of the glorified saints to heaven. What then does the Lord Jesus Christ mean when He says, "I beheld Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven?" When He sees and hears the effects of the disciples' service in His name, then the vision of Satan's catastrophe passes before His eyes, and the full consequences of His power are hailed in the then earnest of it. He looks on to the final crisis and the downfall of the Evil One, when the disciples announced so notable a sample of "the powers of the world to come." It was the first great blow struck by men at Satan's power; and therefore He anticipates the end from the beginning, and, so to speak, in a sort of musing, contemplative vision, He beheld the adversary fall from the highest scene of his usurpation.

Rev. 12:8. — “He prevailed not, nor was their place found any more in the Heaven.” The dragon personally suffered an ignominious defeat, while the whole company of sinful angelic intelligences is for ever banished from “the Heaven.” On the return of the seventy disciples from their mission they tell their Lord, and that with joy, how “even the devils (demons) are subject to us through Thy Name.” That, however, was but the germ of full and final victory over the enemy and his power, and this the Lord prophetically announced when He immediately added, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from Heaven” (Luke 10:17-18). Whatever the resistance offered to his expulsion from Heaven, his downfall will be effected completely and instantaneously like a flash of lightning. From the day that pride and lofty ambition entered his heart, for then he sinned, he has not only a place in Heaven, where he unceasingly accuses God’s saints, but He traverses the earth as well on his mission of mischief. He is the leader of the demon host, and of every form and kind of sinful, spiritual agency. The devil is a real person, not an influence, but a living spiritual being. The vision before us has its actual fulfilment in the midst of the prophetic week — about the close of the first half. The treaty made between the Roman prince and the restored nation, or “the many,” i.e., the mass of the people, is respected, and its terms observed for the half of the stipulated period of seven years (Dan. 9:27). But instigated by Satan, the Roman prince breaks the covenant in “the midst of the week.” The scene before us is preparatory to it, and, in fact, accounts for the last uprising of evil, civil and religious, on the earth. Cast down from Heaven, Satan takes possession of the doomed scene, and exerts his untiring energy in the ruin and destruction of all then standing for God. The war in Heaven results in the victory of Michael and his associated angels. The dragon and his angels are cast down, never to regain a heavenly position. Then Satan turns his baffled rage against the woman, or what represents her before God in testimony, i.e., the Jewish remnant on the earth. The Tribulation (which in its range covers the whole prophetic area, but in its worst and severest forms of suffering especially affects Palestine) lasts the exactly defined period of 1260 days. We consider it clear, therefore, that the expulsion of Satan from Heaven and his downfall to the earth is on the eve of the Tribulation, and is really the procuring cause of it.

But John 8:44 supposes neither the measureless depths of eternity nor the commencement of creation, when vast periods preceded the time of man's earth. It means in time, though before man was formed. "From the beginning" is pointedly distinct from "in the beginning" either in its highest applications to the being of the Word or in its use to convey the entrance of creative energy. The devil was not always, but an angel that, inflated or lifted up with pride, fell. He had no standing in the truth and became a murderer as well as a liar, its father (cf. 1 Tim. 3). Thenceforward (ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς, from a beginning of this dark and baneful kind) he was a murderer. His hatred was against man, and especially in enmity to God against Him Who deigned to become man for God's glory and to deliver man. See also 1 John 3. Clearly it is impossible to make ap arches mean from all eternity, which would deny the devil to be a creature and simply that God made him originally a devil, instead of his being an angel like others that kept not their own original state.

There is ample light as to the origin and entrance of evil into this world, and with that we have been dealing. Scripture also indicates that it was through pride that sin found a place originally with the devil (1 Tim. 3:6), and under the title "King of Tyre" we appear to get a description of Satan's original glory and irremediable fall in Ezekiel 28:11-19. But as to why God, knowing all that would ultimately be involved, ever created Satan or man, and why He permitted evil to ever invade any part of His fair creation, Scripture is silent, and we know nothing.

Isa. 14:12. The king of Babylon is intended here, the final holder of the power which was first vested in the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. It is the last head of the beast (Rev. 17), for the context supposes that his destruction is contemporaneous with the deliverance and blessing of Israel. The scene is of course future in any full sense. For styling Satan "Lucifer" there is, probably, no ground, save the fancy of poets, or the misinterpretations of the Fathers.

Secondly, Jude brings forward the angels which kept not their first estate. The reference is not to the fall of Satan and his angels, for, as we well know, they are not at present in chains but are allowed to wander to and fro on this earth. This is a second fall of angels, presumably referred to in Gen. 6. The secret of Satan's fall was pride, by which he sought to exalt himself to the throne of God. The secret of this second fall of angels was lust, by which they left their own habitation and kept not their first estate (Jude 6).

Many have seen in all this account a greater prince depicted than the king of Tyre, and we cannot refuse such application of prophecies which have their most obvious fulfilment near at hand; but this is only the pledge and anticipation of that final one which is always the great thing with God, while man is prone to lose sight of it in what is nearer and therefore larger to his eyes. In all this part of Ezekiel, the judgment at hand by Nebuchadnezzar has indeed a special place; but there are, nevertheless, many intimations in various places, both of final judgment and of final blessing. Here, where the glory of the world has been spread out so before our eyes, it seems fully in place that there should be seen a real prince of it, and in this way some of the things here speak with more fulness than in their first application: thus the fall, by self-occupation and the pride begotten by it — for it was in this way that he who was created an upright and glorious being became an apostate and a devil. The cherub character given him would be more difficult, spite of the common thoughts about angelic cherubs, if we were to take Ezekiel alone. But Daniel reveals the principalities of the earth as angelic, and as having a place in this way from which even their fall has not yet removed them. Thus it is, as the apostle tells us, "with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places" that we are in conflict still, and the book of Revelation shows this just at the time when Satan is cast down from heaven (Rev. 12). In Job also we are made to realize the cherub place he has. In his accusation of Job, which is all upon the ground of righteousness, as detecting what is false and unreal, he is, as it were, professedly covering the throne of God. And while in Ezekiel the human and other forms of the cherub seem to leave no place for the angelic, yet they in no wise conflict, with this, the thought itself of the cherub requiring naturally, as one would say, the angel also as the highest natural creature of God to supplement it. Thus also we may realize the application of what is said of Eden here, though it be gone from the earth, and the stones of fire. What to an angel must be the riches of the earth, which man, prodigal as he is, so little cares to estimate, while he is so busy squandering them! After all, we may well conceive here the great king of Tyre, whose judgment abides a future time, when he too shall be cast out of the mount of God and come to that end which, in the patience of God, so long has tarried.