Spiritual Rebellion – A Trilogy

A More Complex Problem

So far on the blog we’ve looked at the corruption of humanity and how “The Fall” is not a helpful concept. According to the Common Story, the whole Problem is sin. And as I’ve argued, it is presented more as a problem that we have sin than that we do sin. But the real Story is actually way more dynamic than the Common Story presents, and the “Problem” part of the Story is much more involved.

To understand the Problem effectively we need to understand God’s original plan. The Common Story says that God’s plan was all about having “relationship” with humanity. But as I’ve touched on previously, although “relationship” is an implicit part of the equation, it’s far from the full picture.

I would briefly summarise God’s original plan as being his World Project: a good world created by God and developed, cultivated and stewarded with him, and on his behalf, by his “image bearers” – his human family.

The real Problem is not just a breakdown in relationship, but a corruption of God’s good world. And sin, which leads humanity into more and more corruption, is only part of the Problem. As I’ve said before, the Problem part of the story isn’t fully established in Genesis chapter 3, but all the way to chapter 11. Previously I’ve only discussed up to Genesis 6, because really that’s as far as we can go just looking at humanity.

But to really understand the Problem, what went wrong, we need to look at another important part of the equation: Spiritual beings.

Spiritual Rebellion Is Key To The Story

The whole Bible gives heaps of scope to the significance of spiritual opposition in the Story. It is more apparent to us in the New Testament, but some of our filters obscure it in the Old Testament. Unfortunately, the Common Story doesn’t give much room to the spiritual struggle that is at play. It’s peripheral at best, barely getting a mention among the story of Jesus dying for our sins. Yet it is actually way more significant than most of us realise.

One of the major reasons for the neglect, I think, is that the storyline involving spiritual beings seems too mythological – too similar to things that we might find in Greek or Norse mythology. In our post- enlightenment mode of thinking we react against it. That’s a big mistake. If we want to really know the Story and read the Bible faithfully, we need to let it tell us the Story and not filter out what makes us uncomfortable.

For this section I’ll be drawing heavily on the work of Dr Michael Heiser, particularly his books The Unseen Realm and Reversing Hermon. The Bible Project have also done some extensive work on this stuff recently, covered in several podcast episodes and a series of videos.

Tim Mackie, lead Bible scholar of the Bible Project, says openly that it’s a topic that has always made him uncomfortable. But a couple of years ago he had the very strong conviction that he couldn’t claim to be a serious biblical scholar while blatantly ignoring what is a strong thread in scripture, just because it made him uncomfortable. I hope you will take on that challenge too.

I’m not going to cover anywhere near the scope of this topic that those guys have, simply because it’s quite comprehensive and they’ve already covered it well. I would suggest diving into the resources that I’ve mentioned if you want more comprehensive coverage. What I’m going to do is just give a summary of the main points with particular regard to how it all fits in the Story.

The Proud Rebel

Pretty much every Christian has at least some understanding of the “dark side” of the spiritual realm, the team that is in opposition to God. We know that God and his angels are on the good side, and the devil (Satan) and his demons are on the other side.

But how did this division come about?

We know that Satan and demons are all “fallen angels”, they were once loyal to God but rebelled and were kicked out of heaven. The most popular understanding is that somewhere before the completion of creation there was a rebellion in heaven by Satan, who wanted to usurp God’s throne and be in charge himself. It was his pride that got him kicked out.

The main scriptural passage that this idea is taken from is Ezekiel’s prophecy against the king of Tyre in Ezekial 28, which many scholars believe contains clear reference to Satan, though he’s not mentioned by name. It says:

“You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty…” (v12)
“You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you…” (v15)
“Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor.
So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings.” (v17)

Another verse that speaks about Satan’s downfall due to pride is in a passage about requirements for eldership. In 1 Timothy 3:16 it says, “He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgement as the devil.”

What was the devils big mistake? Pride. Conceit.

Another old Testament passage that is commonly thought of as referring to Satan is in Isaiah chapter 14. Again this is part of a prophecy against a human ruler but uses the portrait of a heavenly rebel to make a case. It’s essentially saying, “You’re behaving like this ancient spiritual rebel, influenced by him, and your fate will be the same!”

The section of the passage that points to Satan’s story is from verse 12-15. It describes someone who is so arrogant they want to raise their throne above the stars (heavenly beings) and above the throne of God. So again, pride, conceit and arrogance are all part of the portrait we get of Satan.

Forming Team Satan

But what about all the demons that have joined Team Satan, how did that come about?

Well in Revelation 12 we have a story about a war in heaven between Satan and “his angels” and Michael and his angels. In this story Satan appears as a dragon who uses his tail to sweep “a third of the stars out of the sky.” This is where we get the idea that one third of all the angels in heaven defected and joined Team Satan. Then there’s a war, and Team Satan loses. They get kicked out of heaven and “hurled to the earth.”

If we put these pictures together we can come up with a little story about the formation of Team Satan:

We have a high ranking angel who becomes conceited and decides he’d like to take God’s place as ruler of heaven. He does some good recruiting and manages to get a third of all the angels in heaven to back him in his political campaign. They attempt a coup, but lose, and all get kicked out. The assumption that accompanies this story is that this all happened before the creation of humanity, so when we come to Genesis 3 and Satan (although not named as such in the passage) appears to Eve, we think he’s already an established bad guy.

This is a fair summary of the story I’ve held for most of my Christian life. There’s not a lot in scripture that discusses the origin of Satan and his demons, and the little bit that we have seems to give this picture.

Or so I thought.

But there’s a lot more to this story of the emergence of Team Satan, and it takes a much more prominent place in the larger Story than most of us realise.

Satany Snickets A Series Of Unfortunate Events

First of all, one of the most significant shifts we need to make is in both the number and the timing of developments. There wasn’t just one act of spiritual rebellion, but at least three separate ones that all led to the combined hostile activity of Team Satan. And importantly, all of these events happened after the creation of humanity, not before.

This timing is significant, because a key part of each of these stories is that they’re not just acts of rebellion against God, they’re acts of the corrupting of humanity.

Let’s have a quick look at the war in heaven mentioned in Revelation 12.

For some reason a lot of us have somehow had the idea that this took place before humans were on the scene. But it doesn’t take much of a look to realise that that idea doesn’t make sense. Because before the dragon appears with his angels, the scene starts with a woman about to give birth. A human woman. The dragon wants to kill the child as soon as it is born, but the child is snatched away. Then the war happens.

It doesn’t take much to see, if you read the whole chapter, that this whole scene is set around the birth of Jesus.

A pre-Edenic rebellion? Doesn’t look like it. So where is there evidence in the Bible to support a spiritual rebellion prior to the events of Genesis 3? Actually, there is none. It’s one of those ideas that seems to have developed through tradition, but turns out to have no biblical support.

Michael Heiser says:

The New Testament is silent on the origin of demons. There is no passage that describes a primeval rebellion before Eden where angels fell from grace and became demons. Revelation 12:7-17, a passage often referenced for such an idea, clearly situates the battle described there as following the birth of the messiah (Rev 12:5) and in association with the messianic birth.

Michael Heiser – The Unseen Realm, p 325

Ok, so if Revelation 12 isn’t an origin story of Satan and demonic forces, where, when and how did Team Satan originate?

I’ve mentioned that there are at least 3 acts of spiritual rebellion that lead to the formation of Team Satan. And all of them are tied to events of human rebellion and corruption. The first one is easier to see – when Satan deceived Adam & Eve in the garden of Eden. The other two are much less apparent to modern Western readers, but as we will see, are actually essential to the entire storyline of the Bible.

Sound like an exaggeration? It’s not.

The second event is attached to the flood in Genesis 6, and the third is attached to the story of the tower of Babel in Genesis 11. These 3 events lay the foundation for the Problem in the Story. This is crucial to understand, because once we understand what the Problem is we can better understand what God’s Solution is. And the better we understand the Solution, what God is doing to restore his world, the better we can participate in it.

Next post we’ll look at the first act of spiritual rebellion, going back again to the Garden of Eden in Genesis chapter 3, and the role of the first rebel in the big Story.