The Choice Between Opposites :: By Rick Segoine

Just like there is a living God and an actual Satan, and just like there are angels and there are demons, there is heaven and there is hell.

There are human beings who believe in all of these things and other human beings who believe in none of these things.

Some believe in the supernatural, and some are in denial of the supernatural. Others, perhaps, are drifting aimlessly through life like a rudderless ship and unable to decide.

Personally, I have had enough experiences with the supernatural that it would be entirely dishonest to deny such things. That is why this article is based on belief in the supernatural combined with belief that the Holy Bible truly is the literal Word of God, and thus it comes from the perspective of a biblical worldview (2 Timothy 3:16).

God is living. He is a living God. He has always been living, and He has always been God. He was this way long before any human being ever gave it a thought one way or the other.

He still is living, and He still is God and always will be, forever and for all eternity, no matter whether human beings believe it or not.

God is perfect, and He is Almighty, and He is Holy. He is just, and He is merciful, and with Him, nothing is impossible. And He declares the end from the beginning.

In Isaiah 45:5, God says this: “I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no other God beside me: I girded you though you have not known me.” Then, in Isaiah 46:10, in the NIV Bible, God says, “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand and I will do all that I please.’” In the NLT bible, God says it like this: “Only I can tell the future before it even happens. Everything I plan will come to pass, for I do whatever I wish.” Isaiah 55:8-9 reveals this: “’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’”

As a created being, I stop to ask, why wouldn’t it be that way?

Adam was formed from the dust, and I am genetically descended from Him; how could my ways and thoughts be as high as He who not only created me but spoke the entire universe and all life into existence?

Before God created humans or the world we live in, He created angels in the heavenlies. Job 38:4-7 records a conversation between God and Job, and God asked Job, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation… and all the angels shouted for joy?” The angels were created in the spirit realms of heaven before there was even a physical earthly realm. They were created to do God’s will and help Him carry out His work. The word angel means “agent” or “messenger.” In Psalm 103:20, David writes, “Praise the Lord, you His angels, you mighty ones who do His bidding, who obey His word.”

Lucifer was created to be the prince of angels and the bearer of light known as the Morning Star. God created Lucifer to embody perfection and wisdom and beauty. Those things, however, were not good enough for Lucifer, for his desire was to sit in the highest place reserved for God and be like God. He wanted to be God (Isaiah 14:12-17).

Lucifer wanted to replace Almighty God, who had created him, with himself. It was like the analogy of the pot of clay who said to the master potter, Take a backseat, mister Master Potter, because you have created a specimen greater than yourself. I’ll be giving the orders now.

Lucifer apparently saw himself as “all that” and the “cat’s meow,” as well as every other descriptive cliché describing a highly inflated ego filled with and overflowing with blinding pride.

Completely ludicrous as well as ridiculously delusional, you might say. Why yes, yes it was.

Since God created the universe and the angels and the humans and is able to declare the end from the beginning, He must have known that Lucifer would do what he did.

We have to remember that God’s ways are not our ways and that this is His creation, and He can do as He pleases with His creation. It is also good to keep in mind God’s character of pure holiness and incomprehensible supernatural power.

After the earth was created as a place where humans could live, God created the first humans, and He gave them exactly what He had given the angels. It was and still is a thing called free will.

Obviously, the angels have free will because about one-third of them chose to rebel against God, their creator, along with Lucifer. That means two-thirds of the angels chose of their own free will to continue loving God and doing the will of God.

Because God told Job that “All” of the angels rejoiced when God laid the foundations of the earth, that would mean that the fall of Lucifer happened somewhere between the time when “All angels rejoiced” and the time that he, Lucifer, in the form of a snake, tempted Eve with the first recorded lie.

We do know that Lucifer fell, and a third of the angels followed him (Revelation 12:9).

We also know that Lucifer came down from heaven to earth, and in the form of a serpent, successfully tempted Adam and Eve.

It was then that he began his reign of rebellion, destruction, and leading humans astray on planet Earth. Paul referred to him as the “prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2).

For those humans who do not believe there is a fallen angel named Lucifer, who is also known as Satan, here are some things said about the subject by Jesus and His disciples and apostles.

“Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” (1 John 3:8)

Speaking to the Pharisees, Jesus said, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in Him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

James 4:7 says, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

In 1 Peter 5:8-9 are these words, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

“And I saw an angel coming down out of Heaven, having the keys to the Abyss, and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years” (Revelation 20:1-6).

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:11-16).

Lucifer/Satan is not a red guy with horns, a pointy beard, and a pitchfork. He is a fallen angel, a spirit being.

Hell was prepared by God for Lucifer and his demonic followers.

Heaven is reserved for the followers of the Creator, the Holy God of Israel. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God, our Heavenly Father, who spoke the universe and the earth and all life upon the earth into existence through His Son.

The Lord our God saw the end from the beginning and knew the role that Lucifer the devil and the fallen angels who became demons would play in testing the free will of humans. God knows that the flesh is weak and that pride can be gripping and hideously strong. God also knew that the highway to Hell would be wide and that, sadly, many would choose that road.

Our Heavenly Father also knows that whoever rejects the devil and his wicked ways, and instead turns to and trusts in Him, and of their own free will because they love Him, loves Him with a love that is real.

Free will choice is a major deciding factor between that highway to Hell and the road to Heaven. Dreamers dreaming that there are no such places have no power to change that.

All angels and humans were endowed with the free will to choose between good and evil and thus their eternal destination.

Each individual will either choose to yield to the temptations of the devil and follow him to eternal separation from God and into the Lake of Fire, or choose to turn to Jesus the Son of God, accept the wonderful free gift of salvation, receive the strength from the Holy Spirit to persevere, and spend eternity with our Creator, all of the good angels, and all of our fellow believers.

The day will come when even death and Hades will be tossed into the Lake of Fire (Revelation 20:14).

Lucifer and the fallen angels who became demons, the antichrist and the false prophet, and all humans who rejected the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and instead chose to trust in the lies of Lucifer, will be there. A maximum-security prison designed to contain every kind of evil, as well as every type of creature that embraces evil.

At the end of the millennium and the one last short rebellion, Lucifer/Satan will be finally tossed into the Lake of Fire. From that place, no wickedness or wicked creatures will ever be able to escape. Evil will never be allowed to contaminate any part of God’s Creation ever again (Revelation 20:7-10).

The Creation belongs to God, and this is the plan He has revealed.

Because the road to destruction is wide and many shall travel on it according to Jesus, and because the road to heaven is narrow and few will travel upon it, according to Jesus in Matthew 7:13-14, it appears that something similar to a role reversal is playing out from the time when a third of the angels rebelled and were cast out of heaven.

It seems as if the fallen humans who choose salvation and want to spend Eternity with God, the ones who believe in Him and love to praise Him and to serve Him, will replace the ungrateful angels who chose to rebel against God.

And the humans who reject God’s gracious offer of redemption will join with Lucifer and the rebellious fallen angels (demons), where they will no longer have a choice but instead will be eternally separated from God in that place where the punishment will fit the crime and true justice will prevail.

Some redeemed humans will receive eternal bodies like the resurrected body of Jesus at the time of the Rapture. The saints who are martyred during the Tribulation will receive their resurrected bodies at the end of the Tribulation when Jesus returns. At the end of the last day of God’s “Week of Creation,” all who have chosen Jesus during the millennium will receive their resurrected bodies.

All resurrected redeemed humans will join with all of the angels who have always remained loyal, and they will spend Eternity with them and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as one big beautiful family in the New Heaven and New Earth that Our Holy God has promised to create.

God will keep every precious promise He has made.

When Jesus returns at His Second Coming, He will, with a Word, wipe out the armies of the devil at the last battle – the Battle of Armageddon. At that time, the antichrist and his false prophet will be thrown into the lake of fire, and Satan will be bound with a great chain and deported to the Abyss. Jesus will then began ruling from Jerusalem with a rod of iron as the King of Kings and Lords of Lords. There will be those who survived the Tribulation in the flesh, who will still have to choose of their own free will whether to love the King of Kings or to reject Him. The offspring of those survivors will also have to choose (Revelation 2:27).

That is why Lucifer/Satan will be unchained for a short time near the end of the millennium, to test the loyalties of the final chapter of humans still in fleshly bodies (Revelation 20:7).

On a personal note, it is astonishing that there are angels or humans who do not love God. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are so amazingly beautiful and wonderful in every possible way.

Alas, we know that it is Lucifer, the wicked one, who has blinded eyes and filled minds with all manner of false belief systems.

So many people have purposefully been led astray throughout history and right up to the present, to the point of fulfilling Isaiah’s warning of seeing evil as good and good as evil, and to the point where our Glorious Beautiful Creator of Life is unrecognizable to them. Yet those led astray have allowed it to happen by believing Satan’s lies and rejecting God’s truth. When it is all said and done, everyone with a sound mind, or at least everyone who at least at some point had a sound mind, will have exercised their free will to choose between good and evil (Isaiah 5:20).

They who have been led astray, like their father and mentor Lucifer, become prideful, arrogant, hollow, and ungrateful. Despising goodness and loving evil.

Rejecting the truth and anyone who speaks and represents the truth, they mock and slander, they yell and scream, and they call anyone who disagrees with them haters, while it is they themselves who are seething with hatred. They do not seem to realize or have any awareness at all of the absurd level of hypocrisy they have descended into.

Lucifer and his demons, as well as the many humans that have been deceived, blinded though they may be, have chosen of their own free will to travel in the wrong direction.

This is a terribly sad thing, but on the other hand, our Heavenly Father’s plan to have an Amazing Eternity devoid of evil is a most wonderful thing (1 Corinthians 2:9):

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has conceived, the things God has prepared for those who love Him.”

All who have chosen to be part of our Heavenly Father’s plan of redemption and salvation have chosen wisely.

Although the time for choosing is rapidly running out due to the nearness of the Rapture, there is still time to turn to Jesus and be spared from the wrath of God that is coming upon this world. The prophetic Word of God and the signs He has given us reveal that He is about to dismantle the oppressive evil that has gained a stranglehold on the nations in a last-ditch attempt to abolish all God-given rights and freedoms – a last Luciferic power play to usurp the Creator and attempt to sit in His place.

The Lucifer-loving Globalist elitist minions of the World Economic Forum do not even attempt to hide their blasphemies and abominable plans to alter and/or replace everything God has created, including humans.

It is what Lucifer has wanted from the time of the first angel rebellion, and Lucifer has never wavered in his demonic quest despite his knowledge of prophecy. Knowing that he is prophesied to fail has not and will not deter him from trying. However, in the end, he will fail, and all those who side with him will fail right alongside him.

The Seven-year Tribulation period will be a time of the supernatural to the point where no one will be able to deny it. The Book of Revelation reveals a plethora of supernatural events that will take place.

Revelation 3:10 gives these words of encouragement to all who have chosen Jesus as their Lord and Savior. “Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth.”

If you have not already done so, choose this very day to invite Jesus into your heart and into your life.

Turn to Romans 10:9-10 where the Apostle Paul shares these words:

“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.”

Shalom in the name of Yeshua Ha Mashiach. Jesus the Messiah.

Rick Segoine

The post The Choice Between Opposites :: By Rick Segoine appeared first on Rapture Ready.