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The War in Heaven _ What Actually Happened When Lucifer Fought God · truthunedited

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  Speaker 1: There was a war in heaven. It happened before the
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  Speaker 1: first human being ever drew breath, before Eden, before time
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  Speaker 1: as we understand it. God did not fight it. He
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  Speaker 1: didn't need to. The being at the center of this war,
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  Speaker 1: the one who started it, the one who lost it,
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  Speaker 1: the one who has been judged and sentenced, is still here,
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  Speaker 1: still active, still operating in this world right now. which
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  Speaker 1: raises the only question that matters. If the war is over,
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  Speaker 1: if the verdict has already been rendered, why are we
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  Speaker 1: still living inside the consequences? Today we are going to
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  Speaker 1: answer a question most people have never stopped to ask.
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  Speaker 1: Not what happened when Lucifer fell, but what really happened
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  Speaker 1: inside him. What moved in a being who stood closer
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  Speaker 1: to God than any other creature in existence and made
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  Speaker 1: him desire the very throne of his Creator. Why did
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  Speaker 1: he not simply remain what he was, like Michael, like Gabriel,
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  Speaker 1: like every other angel who stood in the presence of
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  Speaker 1: God and stayed? And by the time this video is over,
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  Speaker 1: you will understand this story completely. Before the rebellion, there
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  Speaker 1: was a structure, a cosmic government, a heaven that had
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  Speaker 1: never known conflict, division, or disorder. the most powerful beings
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  Speaker 1: in existence operate in perfect alignment with the One who
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  Speaker 1: made them. And at the center of that structure, one being,
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  Speaker 1: the most extraordinary creature God had ever made, standing at
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  Speaker 1: the threshold between the presence of God and the created order,
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  Speaker 1: closer to the immediate reality of God than any other
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  Speaker 1: created being in existence. The Hebrew word is Sod, the
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  Speaker 1: Divine Assembly. the heavenly council, not a monarchy with passive subjects,
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  Speaker 1: a structured cosmic government with ranked officials, assigned domains, and
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  Speaker 1: delegated authority. Michael Heiser demonstrated in The Unseen Realm that
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  Speaker 1: the God of the Bible presides over a council of
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  Speaker 1: genuinely supernatural beings, entirely subordinate to YHWH, not rivals, not equals.
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  Speaker 1: officials with rank, with function, with commission. Deuteronomy 32, verse 8,
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  Speaker 1: preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls, records that after Babel,
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  Speaker 1: God assigned the nations to lesser divine beings, the Bene Elohim,
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  Speaker 1: while claiming Israel as his own portion. This is not mythology.
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  Speaker 1: This is the biblical text's own architecture of cosmic governance.
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  Speaker 1: Into this structure, place one being above all the others.
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  Speaker 1: not God, never God's equal, but the highest ranking created
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  Speaker 1: official in the entire cosmic government. And the description the
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  Speaker 1: biblical text gives of this being is unlike anything written
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  Speaker 1: about any other creature in all of scripture. Ezekiel chapter
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  Speaker 1: 28 verses 12 through 19. On the surface, the prophet
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  Speaker 1: addresses the king of Tyre, but understand something essential about
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  Speaker 1: how Hebrew prophets wrote. When they aimed their oracles at
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  Speaker 1: the great empires of the ancient world, Babylon, Tyre, Egypt,
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  Speaker 1: they were rarely writing only about the human king on
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  Speaker 1: the throne. The prophet's vision pierced through the earthly monarch
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  Speaker 1: and landed on the spiritual intelligence operating behind him. The
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  Speaker 1: cosmic force animating the king from behind. So when Ezekiel
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  Speaker 1: addresses the king of Tyre, his vision passes through the
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  Speaker 1: king and lands on the being whose corruption the king's
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  Speaker 1: pride perfectly reflected. And what the vision sees when it
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  Speaker 1: lands there changes everything. Four phrases exceed anything applicable to
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  Speaker 1: any human king. You were in Eden, the garden of God.
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  Speaker 1: No historical king of Tyre ever stood in the primordial
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  Speaker 1: garden of Genesis 2. The text describes an origin the
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  Speaker 1: king never had. you were an anointed guardian cherub. The
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  Speaker 1: Hebrew cherub always refers to a heavenly being, never to
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  Speaker 1: a human. Cherubim guard sacred space. Genesis chapter 3. Exodus
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  Speaker 1: chapter 25. Daniel Block of Wheaton College acknowledges this phrase
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  Speaker 1: as the most difficult in the entire passage for any
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  Speaker 1: purely human interpretation. You were blameless from the day you
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  Speaker 1: were created. The root bara, The same verb used in
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  Speaker 1: Genesis chapter 1, verse 1. Bereshit bara Elohim. In the
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  Speaker 1: entire Hebrew Bible, bara is used exclusively for divine creative acts.
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  Speaker 1: Human beings are born. God baras. This being was called
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  Speaker 1: into existence by the same category of creative act that
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  Speaker 1: produced the heavens and the earth. Before he ever made
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  Speaker 1: a choice, before pride found its foothold, he was made
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  Speaker 1: as close to perfect. as a creature can be. You
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  Speaker 1: were on the holy mountain of God, the Harmod, the
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  Speaker 1: Mount of Assembly, language used identically in Isaiah chapter 14
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  Speaker 1: verse 13 for God's heavenly throne, the divine council chamber itself.
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  Speaker 1: Now add one more detail. The Hebrew word Sakak, the
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  Speaker 1: anointed cherub who covers, who overshadows, The same root used
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  Speaker 1: in Exodus chapter 25 to describe the cherubim spreading their
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  Speaker 1: wings over the Ark of the Covenant, overshadowing the mercy seat,
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  Speaker 1: the precise location where God told Moses he would meet
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  Speaker 1: with his people. He was not stationed at the margins
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  Speaker 1: of heaven. He was the guardian of the threshold itself.
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  Speaker 1: He knew the presence of God the way a flame
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  Speaker 1: knows fire, not as a concept. as the only environment
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  Speaker 1: it had ever existed inside. That is what he had.
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  Speaker 1: That is what he was about to choose against. Something
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  Speaker 1: moved inside him, not ignorance, not deception from outside. A will,
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  Speaker 1: the most extraordinary created will in existence, turning away from
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  Speaker 1: the only thing it had ever known. What came out
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  Speaker 1: of that turning is recorded in Isaiah chapter 14, verses
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  Speaker 1: 13 and 14. Five declarations, not a speech delivered in
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  Speaker 1: a throne room. The sound of something breaking from the inside.
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  Speaker 1: I will ascend to heaven. Not spatial ambition, jurisdictional ambition,
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  Speaker 1: the refusal to accept an assigned position. The first movement
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  Speaker 1: of pride is never the grasping for more. It is
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  Speaker 1: the rejection of what you already are. The one thing
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  Speaker 1: his position required, submission had become the one thing he
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  Speaker 1: could no longer tolerate. Above the stars of God, I
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  Speaker 1: will set my throne on high. The stars of God
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  Speaker 1: in Hebrew cosmology are the divine beings, the bene Elohim,
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  Speaker 1: the members of the council. This is the moment pride
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  Speaker 1: becomes tyranny, not merely exceeding his own position, but dominating
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  Speaker 1: every other being in theirs, from guardian to to dictator
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  Speaker 1: in one statement. I will sit on the mount of
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  Speaker 1: assembly in the far reaches of the north, the har mode,
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  Speaker 1: the divine council chamber, the place where God presides, the
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  Speaker 1: claim not to superiority, but to the presidency itself, to
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  Speaker 1: sit in the chair that belongs to the one who
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  Speaker 1: barad him into existence. I will ascend above the heights
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  Speaker 1: of the clouds. Clouds in Hebrew poetry are the medium
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  Speaker 1: of divine theophany, the pillar of cloud in Exodus chapter 13,
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  Speaker 1: the cloud on Sinai, the cloud that filled the temple.
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  Speaker 1: To ascend above the clouds is the claim to transcend
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  Speaker 1: the very medium through which God reveals himself to creation,
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  Speaker 1: the declaration that he is bound by nothing, not even
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  Speaker 1: the boundaries God built into the cosmos itself. I will
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  Speaker 1: make myself like the Most High, Elyon, the specific divine
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  Speaker 1: title for God as Supreme Sovereign. And the verb Adama
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  Speaker 1: from Dhamma does not mean to resemble. It means to
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  Speaker 1: achieve ontological equivalence, not to be like God in some
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  Speaker 1: partial way, to be God, to replace the Creator entirely.
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  Speaker 1: Five steps, each one a door closing behind him. reject commission,
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  Speaker 1: dominate peers, claim the throne, transcend creation, become God. John
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  Speaker 1: Calvin wrote that the prophet does not mean these words
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  Speaker 1: were spoken aloud, but that this is what the being
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  Speaker 1: aimed at. Five declarations of a will in the act
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  Speaker 1: of destroying itself. Now hold those five declarations next to
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  Speaker 1: Philippians chapter 2, verses 6 through 8. Though he was
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  Speaker 1: in the form of God... He did not count equality
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  Speaker 1: with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself,
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  Speaker 1: taking the form of a servant, being born in the
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  Speaker 1: likeness of men, and being found in human form, he
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  Speaker 1: humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
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  Speaker 1: five steps downward the exact inversion I will make myself
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  Speaker 1: like the most high answered by the one who being
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  Speaker 1: God laid it aside I will ascend above the clouds
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  Speaker 1: answered by the one who entered the limitations of flesh
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  Speaker 1: and bone I will sit on the mount of assembly,
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  Speaker 1: answered by the one who washed the feet of fishermen.
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  Speaker 1: I will set my throne above the stars of God,
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  Speaker 1: answered by the one who took a position below the angels.
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  Speaker 1: I will ascend to heaven, answered by the one who
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  Speaker 1: came down from it. Five steps up, leading to destruction.
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  Speaker 1: Five steps down, leading to the name above every name.
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  Speaker 1: That mirror will bloom fully at the cross. Remember it,
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  Speaker 1: because what the five declarations produced next was a war.
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  Speaker 1: Revelation chapter 12, verse 4, records something that most treatments
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  Speaker 1: of this passage move past in a single sentence. The
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  Speaker 1: dragon's tail swept a third of the stars of heaven,
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  Speaker 1: a third of all the stars of heaven. In Hebrew
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  Speaker 1: cosmological language, the stars of heaven are the divine beings,
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  Speaker 1: the bene elohim, the members of the council, billions of
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  Speaker 1: created beings, each more powerful than any human who has
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  Speaker 1: ever lived, looked at the argument the guardian of the
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  Speaker 1: threshold had made. They weighed it. They considered it. And
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  Speaker 1: they chose his side. This was not a small skirmish.
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  Speaker 1: This was not a minor disturbance in a distant corner
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  Speaker 1: of the cosmos. This was heaven, the place of perfect order,
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  Speaker 1: the seat of divine governance. the home of beings who
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  Speaker 1: had known nothing but the direct presence of God, dividing
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  Speaker 1: in half. A civil war in the courts of eternity.
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  Speaker 1: The first conflict in the history of existence, breaking out
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  Speaker 1: inside the one place where conflict had never existed before.
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  Speaker 1: And on the other side of that line, Michael, not
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  Speaker 1: introduced with a biography, not explained with theology, simply placed
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  Speaker 1: in the scenes, facing what no created being had ever
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  Speaker 1: faced before. The commander of God's forces, the angel whose
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  Speaker 1: very name, Machiel, meaning who is like God, was a
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  Speaker 1: permanent living refutation of the claim that had started the war.
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  Speaker 1: Every time that name was spoken in heaven, the foundation
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  Speaker 1: of the rebellion was challenged. Revelation chapter 12 verses 7
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  Speaker 1: through 9. War broke out in heaven. Michael and his
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  Speaker 1: angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his
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  Speaker 1: angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and
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  Speaker 1: there was no longer any place for them in heaven.
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  Speaker 1: The Greek phrase, He was not strong enough, not a
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  Speaker 1: close fight, not a near thing. There was no moment
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  Speaker 1: in this war when the outcome was uncertain. No pause
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  Speaker 1: in heaven's courts, wondering which side would prevail. because this
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  Speaker 1: was not two equal forces colliding. This was a created being,
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  Speaker 1: however extraordinary, fighting against the delegated authority of the Creator Himself.
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  Speaker 1: The outcome was never in question. Only the execution was,
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  Speaker 1: and then, ebleth. He was thrown, passive voice, deliberate. He
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  Speaker 1: did not fall. He did not retreat in defeat. He
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  Speaker 1: was hurled, like a disruptive defendant ejected from a courtroom
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  Speaker 1: that no longer had a place for him. Someone else
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  Speaker 1: threw him. Michael was the instrument. God was the force
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  Speaker 1: behind the throw. And Scripture, in a single verse, stacks
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  Speaker 1: four identifying titles for the expelled being, as if to
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  Speaker 1: make absolutely certain there is no ambiguity about who was removed.
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  Speaker 1: The Great Dragon, the Ancient Serpent, the Devil, and Satan.
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  Speaker 1: Four names, one eviction, and every being who had sided
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  Speaker 1: with the prosecution cast out alongside the prosecutor. The entire
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  Speaker 1: staff fired in a single act of divine enforcement. Heaven,
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  Speaker 1: for the first time since the rebellion began, was without him.
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  Speaker 1: A silence settled, and then the silence broke. Because the
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  Speaker 1: war did not end with the expulsion, it relocated. the
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  Speaker 1: being who had just been removed from the highest chamber
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  Speaker 1: of existence was now somewhere else entirely. He was in
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  Speaker 1: a garden. The same intelligence that had just been expelled
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  Speaker 1: from the presence of God walked into a garden. Every
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  Speaker 1: human being who has ever read Genesis chapter 3 has
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  Speaker 1: read what happened next as a new story, a separate event,
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  Speaker 1: a different chapter in a different book. It is not.
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  Speaker 1: The serpent's first words, did God really say, are not
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  Speaker 1: a question about fruit. They are the same challenge made
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  Speaker 1: in heaven before time began. The same invitation to question
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  Speaker 1: the reliability of God's word. The same argument that his
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  Speaker 1: authority is not worthy of unconditional allegiance. You will not
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  Speaker 1: surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it,
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  Speaker 1: your eyes will be opened. and you will be like God.
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  Speaker 1: Like God, Adama. The fifth declaration now offered to humanity.
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  Speaker 1: The same temptation that destroyed the guardian of the threshold
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  Speaker 1: extended to the creatures made in the image of the
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  Speaker 1: one he had tried to replace, and this time it worked.
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  Speaker 1: The accuser now possessed something he did not have before
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  Speaker 1: the garden, a legal record, Every human transgression documented. Every
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  Speaker 1: broken covenant filed. The prosecution's first exhibit. The conflict did
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  Speaker 1: not end when he fell. It expanded into every human
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  Speaker 1: life that would ever be lived. Now go further. Above
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  Speaker 1: Job's household, invisible and inaudible to everyone living inside it,
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  Speaker 1: the divine council has assembled. And the accuser has walked in.
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  Speaker 1: He still has standings. He still has access. The Hasatan,
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  Speaker 1: the accuser, the prosecutor. The definite article in the Hebrew
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  Speaker 1: makes this clear. Not a personal name, a title, a
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  Speaker 1: court function. In Hebrew grammar, personal proper names never take
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  Speaker 1: the definite article. You would not say the David or
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  Speaker 1: the Moses. The article signals a role, not a personal identity.
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  Speaker 1: He walks in because he is authorized to be there.
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  Speaker 1: And God, remarkably, initiates the conversation. Have you considered my
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  Speaker 1: servant Job? There is no one on earth like him.
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  Speaker 1: God raises the name. The accuser takes the brief. Does
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  Speaker 1: Job fear God for nothing? You have put a hedge
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  Speaker 1: around him and his household. But stretch out your hand
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  Speaker 1: and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse
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  Speaker 1: you to your face. This is not a temptation. This
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  Speaker 1: is a legal motion, and the question at the center
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  Speaker 1: of it is the oldest question in the history of creation.
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  Speaker 1: Does anyone worship God for who he is, or only
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  Speaker 1: for what he gives? Job does not know he is evidence.
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  Speaker 1: He only knows that in a single day the messengers
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  Speaker 1: arrive one after another, and by the end of that
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  Speaker 1: day there is nothing left, the livestock gone. THE SERVANTS GONE.
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  Speaker 1: AND THEN, THE WORST SENTENCE IN THE BOOK, YOUR SONS
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  Speaker 1: AND DAUGHTERS WERE EATING AND DRINKING WINE IN THEIR OLDEST
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  Speaker 1: BROTHER'S HOUSE, WHEN A MIGHTY WIND SWEPT IN FROM THE
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  Speaker 1: DESERT AND STRUCK THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE HOUSE. IT
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  Speaker 1: COLLAPSED ON THEM, AND THEY ARE DEAD. JOB TEARS HIS ROBE,
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  Speaker 1: HE SHAVES HIS HEAD, HE FALLS TO THE GROUND, AND
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  Speaker 1: HE WORSHIPS. THE ACCUSER'S MOTION WAS DENIED, NOT BY ARGUMENT,
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  Speaker 1: but by a man on the ground in the ruins
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  Speaker 1: of his life, saying, The Lord gave, and the Lord
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  Speaker 1: has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
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  Speaker 1: Now go further still. Forty days, no food. The Son
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  Speaker 1: of God alone in the wilderness, and then the same
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  Speaker 1: face from the garden. The same intelligence, the same argument,
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  Speaker 1: dressed now in the language of an offer. I will
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  Speaker 1: give you all their authority and splendor, for it has
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  Speaker 1: been given to me, and I can give it to
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  Speaker 1: anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will
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  Speaker 1: all be yours. Stop here, because this sentence, Luke chapter 4,
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  Speaker 1: verse 6, is one of the most theologically loaded lines
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  Speaker 1: in the entire Synoptic Gospels. The accuser claims the authority
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  Speaker 1: over the kingdoms of the world has been delivered to him,
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  Speaker 1: and Jesus does not dispute the claim. that silence is
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  Speaker 1: not an oversight. The Deuteronomy 32 framework, nations assigned to
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  Speaker 1: lesser divine beings after Babel, and the transfer of human
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  Speaker 1: dominion through the events of Genesis 3, gave the accuser
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  Speaker 1: a legitimate, if corrupted, authority that the Son of God
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  Speaker 1: acknowledged by saying nothing. The offer was real. The shortcut
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  Speaker 1: was genuine. Take the kingdoms without the cross. Win the
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  Speaker 1: war without the cost. Jesus refused. Three times. Each time,
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  Speaker 1: with the word of God, each time without argument, without counter-negotiation,
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  Speaker 1: without engaging the offer on its own terms. When the
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  Speaker 1: accuser left, Luke records he departed until an opportune time.
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  Speaker 1: He was not done. He was looking for a better moment.
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  Speaker 1: That moment would come, but it would not go the
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  Speaker 1: way he expected, because what was coming next was not
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  Speaker 1: another battle in the war. It was the verdict. Act 5.
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  Speaker 1: The Verdict. John chapter 12, verse 31. Greeks, Gentiles from
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  Speaker 1: outside the covenant, come to see Jesus. And in response
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  Speaker 1: to their arrival, the first sign that the nations are
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  Speaker 1: beginning to turn toward him, Jesus speaks. Now is the
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  Speaker 1: judgment of this world. Now will the ruler of this
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  Speaker 1: world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted
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  Speaker 1: up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.
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  Speaker 1: The Greek word, archon, ruling official, magistrate, prince. The title
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  Speaker 1: Jesus uses for the accuser three times in the Gospel
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  Speaker 1: of John, each time in direct relation to the cross.
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  Speaker 1: Chapter 12, Chapter 14, Chapter 16. Three references, each one
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  Speaker 1: closer to Golgotha, and the word translated cast out, ekblethesetai,
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  Speaker 1: is the identical verb used throughout the Gospels for casting
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  Speaker 1: out demons. Every exorcism Jesus performed during his ministry was
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  Speaker 1: a preview, a foretaste of what was coming. The cross
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  Speaker 1: is the ultimate exorcism, the cosmic usurper expelled by the
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  Speaker 1: same word of authority that expelled every lesser spirit. Golgotha,
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  Speaker 1: the chirographon, the handwriting of requirements, the legal record of
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  Speaker 1: human sin, nailed to the wood with him. Colossians chapter
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  Speaker 1: 2 verse 14. Every transgression ever committed, every broken covenant
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  Speaker 1: ever recorded, every charge the accuser had ever filed, every
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  Speaker 1: exhibit in the prosecution's case canceled, marked paid in full,
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  Speaker 1: the accuser's entire case file destroyed, and then the resurrection.
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  Speaker 1: Colossians chapter 2 verse 15. The Greek word a pectus saminos,
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  Speaker 1: a compound verb, apo, completely, and ectio, to strip off,
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  Speaker 1: used in the middle voice, meaning the subject acts upon
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  Speaker 1: something closely related to himself. In the resurrection, Christ stripped
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  Speaker 1: from himself the hostile powers that had clung to him
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  Speaker 1: through the legal record of human sin, the way a
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  Speaker 1: soldier strips a defeated enemy of his armor, publicly, completely, irreversibly. J.B. Lightfoot,
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  Speaker 1: whose 1875 commentary on Colossians remains a landmark of Greek scholarship,
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  Speaker 1: argued the middle voice is decisive. The powers were not
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  Speaker 1: merely defeated. They were stripped, exposed, publicly humiliated. And then
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  Speaker 1: Paul reaches for the Roman triumph, the triambiusas, the victorious
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  Speaker 1: general leading his defeated enemies in chains through the streets
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  Speaker 1: of Rome. the whole city watching. The prisoners humiliated before
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  Speaker 1: every eye. The audience of the first century had seen
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  Speaker 1: Rome's apparent defeat of Jesus. A man executed as a criminal,
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  Speaker 1: hung between two thieves, buried in a borrowed tomb. Paul
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  Speaker 1: tells them they saw it wrong. Caesar paraded his prisoners.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Christ paraded his. The one who appeared to be Rome's
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: defeated prisoner was in the invisible reality above the visible event,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: leading the defeated cosmic powers in chains through the courts
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: of heaven itself. The war was not won by superior force.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: It was won by a verdict that left the prosecution
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: with nothing left to say. The debt was paid. The
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: case was dismissed. The accuser reached into his files and
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: found them empty. Now read Revelation chapter 12 verse 10.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: with everything you have just seen. Now have come the
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: day and night, has been hurled down. The Greek word
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: here for accuser, kategor, and the history of this single
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: word is the history of the war itself in miniature.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: In classical Greek, the word was kategoros, a standard legal
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: term for a prosecutor. But the word traveled. It crossed
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: from Greek into the legal vocabulary of first-century rabbinic Judaism,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: absorbed as a courtroom loanword, kategor, used in discussions of
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: the divine tribunal. And then John, writing Revelation in Greek,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: reaches into that rabbinic courtroom vocabulary and brings the word back.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: not the classical Greek spelling, the Hebraized version, the version
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: that had already traveled through the Jewish legal tradition and
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: returned carrying the full weight of everything that tradition understood
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: about the divine court. In one word, John is connecting
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: every thread. The prosecutor of Job, chapter 1. The accuser
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: of Zechariah, chapter 3. The archon of John, chapter 12.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: the hostile powers of Colossians chapter 2. All of them
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: carried in one word that had traveled through the centuries,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: appearing now in Revelation 12 for the last time. Because
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: after this, the court is closed, the prosecution rests, not
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: because it was overpowered, because the blood of the Lamb
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: made every charge legally inadmissible. The testimony of believers proclaimed
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: what the cross accomplished. And those who loved not their lives,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: even unto death, rendered the accuser's ultimate weapon, the fear
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: of death, completely powerless. The accuser ran out of evidence,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: and the word that had carried his title through sixteen
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: centuries has nothing left to prosecute. Act 6, the interval
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: and the question that is yours. Revelation chapter 20 verse
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: 10 is the final line of this story, but it
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: has not happened yet. The accuser has been expelled from
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: the divine court. He has lost his legal standing before God.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: The verdict has been rendered at the cross. But Ephesians
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: chapter 6 verse 12 tells us, We do not wrestle
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: against flesh and blood. We wrestle against principalities, against powers,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: against the rulers of darkness of this age, against spiritual
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: forces of evil in the heavenly places. Language drawn directly
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: from the divine counsel tradition. referring to spiritual authorities still
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: in contested operation in the present age. Richard Bauckham, one
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: of the most respected New Testament scholars of the 20th century,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: argues that Revelation deliberately holds this tension. The decisive defeat
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: occurred at the cross. The final complete removal is still future,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: already and not yet. The verdict is in. The sentence
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: is being served. The execution is coming. This is the
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: interval between D-Day and V-Day, between the cross and Revelation 20,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: verse 10, between the rendering of the verdict and the
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: carrying out of the sentence. And every human being alive
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: today is living inside that interval. The outcome is not
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: in question. The timing is not yet complete. And inside
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: that interval, there is a voice, not always loud, not
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: always dramatic, Sometimes it is the quietest thing in the room.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: It arrives at three in the morning when the darkness
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: is complete and your worst decisions are playing on a
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: loop inside your mind. It arrives in the moment you
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: try to pray and something internal says, Why would God
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: hear you after what you did? It does not feel
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: like an enemy. It feels like your own thoughts. It
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: feels like honest self-assessment. Your conscience convicts you and leads
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: you toward repentance. This voice accuses you and leads you
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: toward despair. They are not the same thing. It does
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: not want you to repent. It wants you to stay
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: in the guilt. It wants you to believe the guilt
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: is permanent, that it defines you, that your case is different.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: That is not conviction. That is prosecution. And the prosecutor
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: was disbarred at a cross. 2,000 years ago, before the
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: charge was ever filed against you, the case was not
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: overturned on appeal. It was dismissed because the court was
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: handed a receipt. The debt had already been paid. in
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: full by someone else. Romans 8.33 Who shall bring any
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. The
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: accuser reaches into his files. He finds them empty, every
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: exhibit cancelled, every piece of evidence covered by a payment
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: his records cannot account for. Here is what the war
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: in heaven ultimately reveals. The question raised in the highest
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: chamber of heaven, can a created being, given full knowledge
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: of God, still choose against him, was never only Lucifer's question.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: It has never been only his question. It is the
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: question Job answered from an ash heap. With his children gone,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: his health destroyed, his friends turned against him, choosing to say,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: I know that my Redeemer lives. It is the question
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: the disciples answered when the demons submitted in Jesus' name,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: and Jesus told them, Do not rejoice in the power.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Rejoice that your names are written in heaven. It is
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: the question the martyrs of Revelation chapter 12 answered when
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: they loved not their lives even unto death. And it
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: is the question every human being answers, not once, but continuously,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: with every choice made in the knowledge of who God
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: is and what He has done. The war did not
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: stay in heaven. It came to a garden, to an
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: ash heap, to a wilderness where the Son of God
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: was offered everything without a cross, to a hill outside
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Jerusalem where the answer was given, at the cost of everything.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: And it is here now, in this moment the battlefield
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: was never a location in the cosmos it was always
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: consciousness itself it was always the space between knowing who
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: God is and choosing whether to trust him for it
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Lucifer had that knowledge more completely than any being ever
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: created and he chose against it the question is what
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: will you do with yours if this investigation changed how
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: you read the biblical text please leave a like and subscribe.
• 31:58
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• 32:02
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• 32:07
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• 32:10
  Speaker 1: to the greatest mystery of all. Why did God create
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Lucifer if he already knew the rebellion was coming?