Miscellaneous Missionary

One more thing needs to be considered before I enter the days of creation. It consists of the ideas surrounding the angelic realm: what happened and when. The title today sums up the truth. In Christian thought, a wide variety of ideas exist. Many of the most prominent teachers believe that God Created the angels, and Satan fell, all before verse two of Genesis. Most others believe that this happened before verse three. Some other theories exist, but not in the mainstream. Genesis says nothing about this. In fact, if we were to read chapters one and two of Genesis in isolation, we would know nothing of these thing whatsoever. These ideas come from a detailed study of several passages throughout the Bible.

What we do know is that Satan was created along with the other angels. We also know that Satan rebelled against God and was cast out of heaven. Most of the other chronology is educated guessing. I have my own theory that God created the angels somewhere between day two and early on day three, and that Satan fell on day eight. This too is just theory. I believe it to be well reasoned and accurate, but I fall short of teaching it because it seems to me to be beyond the intention of the passage and definately beyond the clearly revealed facts.

I guess that is my main point. I think that it is interesting to examine the issue, but God left this issue a little less well revealed intentionally. I have heard tragic sermons and expositions of this issue that drew deep principles about the nature of God and our relationship with Him. I call them tragic, because they have misappropriated their emphasis as they read God's Word. In other words, they missed the point. If God left it a little ambiguous, I believe He did it on purpose. We are not sinning by being curious, but we are sinning by extrapolating something beyond its intention.

The bottom line has two keys: "If the plain sense of Scripture makes sense, seek no other sense" (author unknown). When it does not make sense, we can look for answers by comparing Scripture with Scripture, but educated guesses need to be identified for what they are and we need to be willing to say "I don't know" (Arnie Johnson).