Did GOD create the Devil? Well, we know he did not create himself! And he did not"just happen"! The reason some have held the view that Satan was originally an angel is because it seems to relieve God of the responsibility of evil and sin in the world.
How COULD an all-wise and holy God create an evil Devil? Our reply to that is another question: If God, all-wise and all-knowing, created a being and designed within this being the inherent ability and potential to become evil - a will capable of rebelling against Him, and if in His omniscience He knew beforehand that this creature would become evil, is God then any LESS responsible for the Devil? If we say God created a good being and did not know he would become evil, then the Devil got a step ahead of God! If the Devil could do something back there which God did not know he would do, or did not plan for him to do, THEN HOW CAN WE BE SURE HE MIGHT NOT PULL A FAST ONE ON GOD AGAIN! Ah, beloved, such religous reasoning is an affront to the majesty of the Most High God! Is it any less thinkable that God would create an evil one than just to create one with the God-given ability to become evil? In either case, there is absolutely no way to absolve GOD from the Devil!
That "all things are of God" is declared over and over again in the Bible. Did not the Lord say to Pharaoh, that wicked man of rebellion against all that was of God, "Even for this same purpose have I RAISED YOU UP, that I might show My power in you, and that My name might be declared throughout all the earth?" (Rom. 9:17). The infinite wisdom of God's mind cannot be ascertained by our carnal little heads of ours. God is in all things, and is responsible for all things, including all the so-called evil things as well as good things. Is it not a fearful thing to say that evil is of God? There is nothing fearful about this view unless the TRUTH be fearful! I would not be surprised if some of the compatriots of the prophet Amos may have thought he was speaking blasphemy when by the Holy Spirit he said, "Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be EVIL in a city, and THE LORD HAS NOT DONE IT?" (Amos 3:6)
There are untold millions ot Christians who do not like to believe that A-L-L T-H-I-N-G-S A-R-E O-F G-O-D - including evil. They much prefer to believe, as many have taught them, that in the beginning God made everything "perfect," then one of the "perfect" angels "made himself" into the Devil and the Devil came in and wrecked the work of God's hands and so degraded God's beautiful and perfect creation that the Lord Almighty Himself was hard to put to the test to discover some way to restore the creation from the clutches of the Devil and after six long and tortuous milleniums of conflict and struggle, contest and effort the battle still rages on year after year and generation after generation, the Devil out-foxing God at times, and God getting the upper hand eventually.
Why, oh why can men not believe the simple, unvarnished Word of God? Ah, we have God's own Word for it - His positive statement that HE CREATES EVIL. "That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, THAT THERE IS NONE BESIDE ME. I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and CREATE EVIL. I THE LORD DO ALL OF THESE THINGS" (Isa. 45:7). God creates evil! It cannot be! But here it is in the Word. "We must explain it somehow," the fundamentalist says, "surely it cannot mean that God creates evil, sin, sinners, devils, or wrongdoing - it must mean that He creates physical evil - famines, pestilences, hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, floods, calamities, judgments, etc. which God sends upon mankind as punishment for their wickedness." Not so! The word here for "evil" is the Hebrew word "ra" which is used throughout the Old Testament to denote wickedness, sin and wrongdoing. In some five hundred passages it is so used!
For example, in Gen. 6:5 we read, "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of his heart was only evil (ra) continually." Again, "And the Lord's anger was kindled against Israel, and He made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation that had done evil (ra) in the sight of the Lord, was consumed" (Num. 32:13). In Ps. 34:13-15 we are admonished, "Keep your tongue from evil (ra), and your lips from speaking guile. Depart from evil (ra), and do good ... the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears are open unto their cry. The very same word in the original is also rendered "wicked" and "wickedness" more than a hundred times. So God declares, "I must form the light and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things!" Why should puny man attempt to shield the Almighty from the responsibility He Himself has taken? If He says He creates peace, then believe Him. If He says He creates evil, then believe that, too. Do you remember how they brought the blind man to Jesus, and as the poor fellow stood there, the disciples said to Jesus, "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?" Jesus replied, "Neither has this man sinned, not his parents: BUT THAT THE WORKS OF GOD SHOULD BE MADE MANIFEST IN HIM" (Jn. 9:2-3). So through the evil of blindness the glory of God was manifested in the end!
MAN says that the serpent in the Garden was one of these, long slender reptiles that have backbones and ribs and scales on the outside of their bodies. Numerous pictures have been painted of the snake dangling from the limb of a tree, conversing with Mother Eve. In the book of Revelation we have a truth given by revelation to the apostle John wherein is revealed a most important fact concerning Satan and the serpent. This truth is stated twice in the book. Two is the number of WITNESS, thus has God given a clear and unmistakable WITNESS concerning the identity of the serpent. Hear, now, the Word of the Lord! "And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceives the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him ... and I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years" (Rev. 12:9; 20:1-2).
Here Satan is called "that old serpent." The word "old" is from the Greek word "archaios" which means ORIGINAL or PRIMEVAL. "Primeval" means FROM THE FIRST AGE OR AGES: PRIMITIVE. "Archaios" is from the Greek word "arche" which means A COMMENCEMENT OR BEGINNING. Furthermore, "arche" is an abstraction of the Greek word "archomai" which means TO COMMENCE IN ORDER OF TIME. Putting this all together can we not see that Satan is that OLD serpent, that ANCIENT serpent, that ORIGINAL serpent, that PRIMEVAL serpent, the serpent of THE FIRST AGE, from the BEGINNING, who existed as a serpent right FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF TIME!
Phillip's translation reads, "Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven with the key of the pit and a huge chain in his hand. He seized the dragon, the SERPENT OF ANCIENT DAYS, who IS both the Devil and Satan ..." Another version states, "And he seized the dragon, the ORIGINAL SERPENT, WHO IS the Devil and Satan ..." The Amplified Bible says, "And he gripped and overpowered the dragon, that OLD SERPENT OF PRIMEVAL TIMES, WHO IS the Devil and Satan ..."
God is THE CAUSE of all that is. It all exists with the one purpose of showing forth His glory. Every object in nature and every creature in the universe has its only reason of existence in this - that the wondrous goodness and wisdom and power of God may shine out through it. God is the end and aim of all things, because He is their beginning and origin. All must fulfill His will because all came from Him and exist only through Him.
