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Q: Why did God send Lucifer down to earth to live and rule amongst his beloved creations?
A: I don’t think we can say that God truly sent the devil — also known as Lucifer, or later as Satan — down to earth in quite the way your question envisions. While the devil was cast out of God’s direct presence in heaven, this did not happen because God actively wanted Satan to have sway over his creatures.
We can read a poetic description of Lucifer being forced out of heaven in the Book of Revelation:
“Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it” (Rv 12:7-9).
In St. Luke’s Gospel, it seems that Jesus himself makes a brief and somewhat mysterious reference to this same event when he says to his disciples: “…I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky” (Luke 10:18).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church fills in some of the more technical details of how to understand this bit of celestial pre-history, noting that “the Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing. Scripture speaksof a sin of these angels. This ‘fall’ consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign” (CCC 391-392).
Continued below.
A: I don’t think we can say that God truly sent the devil — also known as Lucifer, or later as Satan — down to earth in quite the way your question envisions. While the devil was cast out of God’s direct presence in heaven, this did not happen because God actively wanted Satan to have sway over his creatures.
We can read a poetic description of Lucifer being forced out of heaven in the Book of Revelation:
“Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it” (Rv 12:7-9).
In St. Luke’s Gospel, it seems that Jesus himself makes a brief and somewhat mysterious reference to this same event when he says to his disciples: “…I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky” (Luke 10:18).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church fills in some of the more technical details of how to understand this bit of celestial pre-history, noting that “the Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing. Scripture speaksof a sin of these angels. This ‘fall’ consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign” (CCC 391-392).
Continued below.
Why did God send Lucifer down to earth?
Explore why God didn't "send" Lucifer to rule Earth, but how his fall resulted from rejecting God and the implications of Satan's reign.