(Ver 1.2)  This is now Part 4 of a series of studies about the reality of angels found in the Bible.   We have covered a lot of information that is not going to be repeated, so if you have not read these lessons from the beginning, I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1”.  I personally believe that you cannot discuss the subject of angels and ignore the one angel that has caused God and man the majority of their problems.  Today I want to study and discuss the angel Lucifer as being one of the  created chief beings within the angelic class of creation of God.  I believe that when we study the subject of angels without studying about Satan, we miss out on understanding an opposing force to God and that which is good.  Many of the angels mentioned in the Bible are good and do many positive things for God and us.  However, there is a counter force to this good in the world and this is very important to understand.  I have actually already mentioned Satan in my last blog.  You might recall that God sent Gabriel to give Daniel a message and the Bible tells us that the Prince of Persia withstood him for 3 weeks until finally Michael came and helped.  The Prince of Persia was a symbolic reference to Satan.   The Bible reveals much about this spiritual being and it would take a long series of lessons to include everything but, we should still learn as much as we can about him, so today will be your introduction to him.  We will begin our study looking at some potentially controversial scriptures found in Ezekiel.  These are potentially controversial in the fact that they again do not name Satan directly.  This is one of the techniques that God uses to conceal information in the Bible and that is to call one person by many different names, titles, descriptions and symbols so that you do not know directly who he is talking about.  However these words written in Ezekiel are clearly about someone who is not a human, so most knowledgeable Bible scholars agree these verses are references to the unnamed spiritual being Satan.  We will start reading with verse 12 of Ezekiel 28:

Eze 28:12  Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.

I’ll start with the word “lamentation” first.  This is a very interesting word in that it has an implied meaning of a musical dirge that is usually sung at someone’s funeral.   It usually involves much “wailing” and “sorrow” for the loss of this individual being sung about.  It would appear to me that God is prophesying the impending demise of someone who as I said I believe is Satan.  The prophet is told that this lamentation is concerning the “king of Tyrus”, but clearly reading ahead it cannot be anyone that is natural or human.  Tyrus occurs 22 times in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos and Zechariah and that is too many verses to look at them all, so we will not go through all of these verses in this lesson.  The next statement is the beginning of the prophesy against this individual and it informs us of some of his past qualities and achievements.  It starts very interestingly with the words “thou sealest up the sum”.  This is a mathematical accomplishment that has negative connotations surrounding it.  It clearly implies that this individual has brought to an end something of increasing value, count or a numerical total; whatever this is of something not directly named.  In our past studies we had discovered that the number of the angels in heaven were said to be innumerable, but yet they are numbered with an end in Revelation 12 when God tells us that 1/3 of them have fallen to the earth with Satan.  This is what I believe that this is saying to us, I believe that Satan has done something that has caused an end to anymore angels being created.  Remember angels were called the sons of God in Job and Genesis and this implies that they are all a part of God’s spiritual family in heaven.  We should know that any family on the earth continues to grow and increases in total number as along as the family continues to marry and have children.  Is this a reference to what God has done with His spiritual family?  All of this is mostly just my opinion on the interpretations of this information and other scriptures that I have found in the Bible that we have not looked at yet, so you do not have to buy into what I just said at all.

The next statement in this verse is not very good information for us if this is describing Satan.  God says that whoever this is, was “full of the wisdom” of God.  To be full of wisdom is a goal that I am attempting to achieve as a disciple of Christ.  In fact it should be one of the utmost goals of any Christian to obtain first knowledge, then understanding and finally the wisdom of God.  Wisdom is always the ability to make right decisions based upon your knowledge and understanding.  So if this is Satan, I wonder what happened to change the good qualities that God put in him to the evil qualities that we see today.   What this also tells me is that Satan is not stupid.  He might have made some foolish choices, but God already had taught him a significant amount of spiritual knowledge before he sinned.  Do not underestimate the cunning craftiness of this angel.  He has been around much longer than you have and has much more experience at deceiving people than you have at resisting deception.  Let’s go to the next verse in Ezekiel to continue:

Eze 28:13  Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.

Now we get to some more revealing controversial statements and why people do not believe that this is a human being that is being prophesied about.  This individual is said to have been in Eden the garden of God.  Since we are literally hundreds or even thousands of years after the time of Adam when this is written, that is why most Bible scholars agree that this is not about a man that is alive at the time of Ezekiel.  But, I also want to point out a very subtle difference in this verse.  In Genesis 2 and 3 the place where God placed Adam was called the “Garden of Eden” and never “Eden the Garden of God”.  Am I being too picky or is God trying to tell us something else new.  You see I do not believe that God forgot the name that He gave it in Genesis, so this must be a different place.  Obviously both are reported to be gardens and both are named “Eden” but what we must understand is whose responsibility and control is over each garden mentioned.   Eden the Garden of God clearly means God had control over this garden, but now if we go back to Genesis 1 and read what do we find?  We must realize that Adam according to Genesis 1 was given control of the earth, the authority to rule the earth (Gen 1:28) and the responsibility to guard and protect it from invaders (Gen 2:15) and thus the earth was no longer a Garden of God’s responsibility.  Adam now held responsibility over the earth and Eden; do you understand why I bring this up?  I believe that God had a garden that Satan walked in and ruled long before the one that God gave to Adam.  If you know anything about the Bible you know that earth was made as a pattern for things that already existed in heaven.  You can see this in Hebrews and Galatians and other places.  So I believe that “Eden the Garden of God” is not the “Garden of Eden” where Adam was said to be.  Now again the “serpent” or Satan did show up in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve but this verse in Ezekiel does not say that there was any man present when Satan was there originally.  It must be different gardens.

I could go through and say many other things about this verse, for instance this individual has a covering of 9 precious stones.  There is a fascinating parallel given to us by God of the earthly Israel’s High Priest’s breastplate that also was covered with precious stones.  In fact these 9 stones that covered Satan are an exact match for 9 of the 12 stones found on the High Priest’s covering (Exo 28:17).  Did you notice what I just said?  You see I believe that this verse in Ezekiel reveals to us that Satan was a High Priest for God in heaven before he came to the earth.  Are these stones and coverings an amazing coincidence or is there some hidden information that God is revealing to us about Satan.  You see if you do an analysis of the High Priest’s breast plate you can see that they had 4 rows of three stones each.  Each row consisted of a different set of stones and each stone was different from all of the others.  We are told that these 12 stones on the High Priest’s covering were engraved with the names of 12 tribes of Israel.  But, if you cross off the stones found on Satan’s covering from the stones found on the High Priest’s breastplate you find that Row 3 is missing completely.  That is definitely not an accident, it is impossible mathematically for this to be a coincidence.  What does it all mean?  That is another really good question to try to figure out.  You see you can conclude that Satan lost three things that Israel had or Israel was given three things that Satan didn’t have.  Either way you come up with the same results.  However, I just don’t have the time to even try to talk about that in this blog nor do I know all of the answers to that question so I’ll definitely be moving on today.

Finally this verse ends with some important new information about Satan and all angels.  Satan was a created being.  This word created is the exact same word found in Genesis 1:1 where God says “In the beginning God created, the heaven and the earth”.  In general terms this is also the exact same Hebrew word used to describe God’s man Adam.  This same Hebrew Word is used to describe the origination of both individuals so we can clearly assume a connection between them.  In Genesis 5:1-2 Adam is said to be “created” just as Satan was said to be “created” in Ezekiel 28:13.  However, I do not know if they were created in the same way and I definitely do not believe that they were created at the same time.   You see God tells us very specifically that Adam’s body was formed from the dust of the ground.  This was definitely from the existing earth and I believe that God created this dust a long time before He created Adam.  If you do not understand this, you should read some of my other blogs on the subject of “The World that Was” mentioned in 2 Peter 3:6.  After Adam’s body is formed then comes his wife, Eve.  However, she was also not created from something new since her body came from that which already existed, the body of Adam.  So Adam and Eve were not a new creation.   So it could be different than Satan?  We do not know this for sure, but I’m just trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together and that is what I have concluded so far.  You also have to understand that the body of Lucifer is a spiritual immortal body and not a natural body that dies like Adam’s.  So they are clearly very different at the same time as being very similar to each other.   What I see in this information is that God says there could be a difference between Satan and Adam.  Satan was definitely a created being but it does not tell us when he was created, or how he was created and where his body originated from.  All we know for sure right now is that Adam was a being made from that which already existed and his body was clearly modeled after the preexisting angels in heaven as we have discovered in our previous studies on this subject.   However, both Satan and Adam are called sons of God and both are therefore made in the image and the likeness of God.  That may not go over very big with some people, I know.  It must be important to note the way God created Adam or He would not have included this information in the Bible.  Couldn’t God have said “Man Be” and then God see a man appear?  So why does God take existing dust and form the man’s body from it and then breath into his nostrils to give him life?  Then I want to ask you this about Adam, why did God create a new son Adam and give him a wife named Eve, if he already had a family of angels in heaven?   Believe it or not this was a pattern for what God was going to do in the spiritual realm with Jesus.  You see God tells us the law of marriage in Genesis 2, that a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and they two shall become one flesh.  If Adam is the son that cleaves to his wife, then God was his Father that he left to be joined to his wife!  This means that Adam would leave his Father’s house and be married to a wife (a woman) who would be the mother of the entire new natural human family on the earth not a part of God’s family in heven.  What is God doing?  God is establishing a new family outside of His current existing family in heaven.  This is very important to know and understand from a Bible perspective of what Jesus has also accomplished.  I guess I will stop there and let you do more research or read some of my other blogs on this subject.

Eze 28:14  Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.

Now we are beginning to see some more information about Satan that is very important to understand.   Anointed comes from a Hebrew root word that means to smear with oil.  David was anointed king this way by Samuel.   But this word here means to “spread like wings” and it is the only time this word occurs in the whole Bible.  However, it is still important to see that Satan is said to be “anointed” of God.  This is a direct comparison to Jesus who was also said to be “anointed” of God with the Holy Ghost and power in Acts 10:38.  So now we have Satan being compared to Jesus the Messiah.  This is a clear Satan and Jesus connection.  You probably do not fully understand the concept of being anointed by God.  God anoints people in the earth to perform specific tasks like to pastor a church.  What this represents is a special divine ability to perform the duties being assigned to them.   So we learn from this verse that angels can also be anointed by God to do specific jobs and assignments.  An anointing can involve supernatural ability and even the power or divine knowledge or wisdom to do what you do not fully understand how to do.  This says a lot about Satan and his abilities.

Then Satan is called a “cherub” and this is a very unique name for a class of special angelic beings.  Not every angel falls into this class so we are beginning to see some new truths about angels.  The angels that appeared in Sodom to get Lot out I do not believe were cherubs.  Also, in the previous lesson we learned that Gabriel and Michael were described as “Chief” angels.  This just means they were a much higher rank than the others that were under them.  This word for cherub only occurs in around 66 verses in the O.T.   The first time it occurs is in Genesis 3 and God places a “cherub” and a flaming sword outside the Garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life.   Apparently someone wanted to take forcibly from this tree and live forever so God placed an angelic guard of the class of Satan’s ability to protect it.  It was obviously not Adam that God was guarding this way from and you can read my other blogs and find out why I can say that.  I believe that Satan was after this tree and God was guarding the “way” to the tree to keep him from partaking of it.

So what is a “cherub”?  That is another million dollar question for the day.  From what I can tell from reading these 66 verses in the Bible, a cherub is a type of angel which has “wings”, but this could also be symbolism for an anointing of God for a specific job or purpose.  God told Moses to make the golden Ark of the Covenant with two winged cherubs on the top with the mercy seat of God in between them.  This is clearly a natural pattern of something that we should know concerning spiritual things.  These are all symbolic representations of spiritual realities.

Exo 25:18  And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat.

In Psalm 99:1 it says God sits between the Cherubim.  The Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant was made by God’s instructions and described to us in Exodus which was recorded by Moses.  These patterns reveal to us information about angels and God’s relationship with Satan before he sinned.  I believe that God’s throne in heaven was between two anointed cherubs and one of these use to be Lucifer.  Now Jesus is at the right hand of the Father and to me that means Jesus has taken Lucifer’s old place of authority and power.  Again that is my opinion on stuff that I’ve read from the Bible.

I want to skip forward in Ezekiel 28:14 to the part that God speaks about Satan being in the Holy Mountain of God.  We should be smart enough to know that this is not an earthly mountain.  God did come down to Moses on Mt Sinai and God called this mountain holy at the time but, Satan was never there.  No this holy mountain is Mt Zion in heaven and this is the spiritual covenant mountain of God.  When God speaks about Mt Zion, He says many things.  For example, “I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a precious corner stone” (Isa 28:16).  So we know that Zion has had a new building project started on it from scratch by the Lord Jesus Christ.  This represents a “New Covenant” and it eliminates the old covenants with everyone else.

Let’s continue looking at Ezekiel 28:14 and how God describes Satan to us.  God told us he was an anointed cherub and then said that his job or assignment was to “cover”.  This Hebrew word means to cover as a protector or as a guard.  It can also mean a fenced in hedge of protection.  It can also mean to entwine as in join together.  These are all amazing definitions.  They imply a covenant relationship and that is very important to know.  I definitely believe from the information that I have seen in the Bible that God was in covenant with the angels of Heaven, including Satan.  In fact if you read Galatians 4 very carefully you will see that God reveals information about heaven that calls this city God’s wife as a type or pattern of Sarah as being Abraham’s wife.   She is called the freewoman in this analogy.  The Heavenly Jerusalem is what this city is called in Hebrews.  In Galatians 4 it is called the Jerusalem that is above.  This is the real spiritual city of angels and it is inferred to be a wife of God the Father.  If you understand covenants you know that God was in covenant with the natural nation of Israel and the earthly city of Jerusalem.  This earthly city Jerusalem is called the “bond woman” and is the type of Hagar and Abraham who had a slave child.  Angels were of the city of the “Free Woman” called Heavenly Jerusalem.  Galatians 4 tells us that God had two wives and that these were two covenants.

Eze 28:15  Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.

This is the last verse in Ezekiel that I am going to touch on today.  Since I am running a little long I will make these last parts brief.  You can clearly see that Satan was not created as Satan.  The original angel Lucifer was perfect in all of his ways.  That means he did things the right way, he made the right choices, said the right things and walked upright before God.  But, God says “sin” was found in him and that is the root of God’s problem with Lucifer.  How do you end a spiritual family covenant relationship with a spiritual being in a Godly and legal way that does not cause God to become as equally as sinful?   Do you understand the wisdom of God?  God is so much smarter than us that He came up with a plan that would solve our sin problem and His covenant problem simultaneously with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His Son.  I’ll end this blog with this last thought about Satan:

Isa 6:2  Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.

Here in this verse found in Isaiah we see a new word describing what appears to be an angelic being.  This is also a winged creature that clearly flies using their wings.  It is not clear that this is describing Satan unless you look up the definition of the Hebrew Word “seraphim” in Strong’s.  This word is many times translated as “fiery serpent” and that to me describes Satan very well.  We clearly know from Genesis and Revelation that Satan is the “serpent” so we have an association to a new titled reference for this spiritual being.  A fiery serpent is a great symbolic representation for Satan.

So we have learned enough for one lesson about angels, and probably more than some can accept.  I will briefly review some of the high points:

Satan:

1. Was a created being (Eze 28:13)
2. Not created with evil in him (Eze 28:15)
3. Was found with iniquity in him (Eze 28:15)
4. Was in covenant with God the Father (Gen 2-3, Gal 4)
5. Was anointed by God for specific purposes (Eze 28:14)
6. Was in a class of angels called “Cherubs” (Eze 28:14)
7. Was also described as a “Seraphim”; winged fiery serpent (Isa 6:2)
8. Was a Priest unto God (Eze 28:13).
9. Was called Lucifer a son of the early light (Isa 14:12)
10. Named Lucifer means “Bright Morning Star”  (Isa 14:12)

These are just a very few things that we picked up from today and the previous lesson about Satan.  If you want to you can go and take a look at my list of Names, Titles, Descriptions and Types for Satan found in the Bible.  I know I said a lot of things and some of them are hard to accept because I cannot fully cover every related subject in a single blog.  You do not know everything that I know and I cannot teach you everything that I know in one blog so just keep reading and I’ll try to do a better job at filling in the gaps that I’m sure you feel that I have not covered fully.  If you have specific questions I would also appreciate hearing about them.   Maybe this way if I hear where I am the weakest I can address those areas first.  God Bless!

If you would like to continue reading this series you can go to “Part 5“.