Nobody's a fan of the big red guy downstairs — but few folks understand exactly what his relationship with heaven was really like. Like it or not, it's time to give the devil his due.
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00:00Nobody's a fan of the big red guy downstairs, but you folks understand exactly what his
00:05relationship with Heaven was really like. Like it or not, it's time to give the devil
00:10his due.
00:11Oh, please, please, please, please!
00:14If you ask the average person about the war in Heaven, their mind may well jump to the
00:19story of Satan's fall. It's a story told in John Milton's Paradise Lost, one of a disgraced
00:24angel who turned against God's plan and was cast out from Heaven. But that tale never
00:29appears in the Bible like that.
00:31There are a handful of verses in the Old Testament that have been interpreted as telling the
00:35fall of Satan, which many Christians believe took place at the beginning of time.
00:40Now I can die happy!
00:43But modern scholarship tends to see them as speaking about enemy kings of Israel and Judea.
00:47They could always have a double meaning, but none of these verses are explicitly undeniably
00:52about the devil and his war with God.
00:54The one book in the Bible that does deal with the war in Heaven isn't concerned with Satan's
00:58fall before the existence of the world. It's concerned with apocalyptic visions nestled
01:03within a work of literature about earthly affairs, our old friend the Book of Revelation.
01:08Specifically, Revelation describes a battle between the archangel Michael and a great
01:12dragon, specifically called out as, quote, that old serpent called the Devil and Satan,
01:17which deceiveth the whole world.
01:19The author writes that the devil and his followers were cast down into the earth, opening the
01:23way for salvation.
01:25No, no! If you move, I will have no one to bother, who will be worthy of my scams!
01:33The Book of Revelation, contrary to popular belief, is not a prophecy about the end of
01:37the world. It's a work of apocalyptic literature, a bleak and heavily symbolic genre within
01:42Judaism that took a grim view of earthly affairs while looking forward to God's ultimate deliverance.
01:48In that context, the war in Heaven described by the author John isn't a literal vision
01:52of a war to come. It's a colorful and fantastical analogy for the struggles the early Christians
01:57faced living under the Roman Empire. In other words, you can look at Revelation more as
02:01an allegory.
02:03Milton's Paradise Lost certainly seemed to draw on Revelation when it cast Satan as a
02:07once-proud and mighty archangel who couldn't abide God's command to follow Jesus. Therefore,
02:11quote, he resolved with all his legions to dislodge and leave unworshipped unobeyed the
02:16throne supreme.
02:18The Battle of Revelation has also been interpreted as a parallel to Satan's fall. Jesus himself
02:24says in Luke 10 that he saw Satan's descent, and in the Mormon Church, it's explicitly
02:29taught that Satan rebelled out of jealousy and was cast down along with all his followers.
02:34Whether a war in Heaven happened at the beginning of time, is destined to happen at the end,
02:37or exists only as an apocalyptic allegory, one might question how it could happen at
02:42all. Except in the former case, scenarios for a war in Heaven would require that Satan
02:47be able to reach it. If he was cast out, how would that be possible?
02:51But it's never explicitly said in the Bible that the devil was banished from Heaven. In
02:56some translations, which name various figures in the Old Testament to Satan, he seems able
03:00to come and go anywhere he'd like, and even goes on errands passed down by God himself.
03:06Within the New Testament, he has sufficient freedom of movement to tempt Jesus. And in
03:10some notions of Christian cosmology, there are actually three Heavens, so Satan may well
03:14have been cast down from one while retaining access to the lower realms.
03:18Of course, some of this theology supposes that those figures from the Old Testament
03:22really are the devil. Satan, from the Hebrew ha-satan, literally translates as adversary.
03:28These characters may be better thought of as angels playing devil's advocates or acting
03:32as messengers.
03:33We're flat out of time. Stay tuned!