MYSTERY OF EVIL

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There have been serious consequences to man’s loss of innocence.   But it isn’t the loss of innocence in itself that undermines us and becomes a stumbling block to our faith, love and obedience to God. It’s the sins we commit, arising from that loss of innocence. This article explores the loss of innocence in the heavenlies — Lucifer and fallen angels. And on earth, in the lives of noble men and women as well as biblical patriarchs, the bad decisions that followed and the tragic consequences.  The return to innocence seems like a misnomer in the age of television and social media. I’m a realist. And so, I’m going to interpret Christ’s words in the context of today’s realities I had a revelation a few days ago, and I’ve been haunted by ever since. The Lord seemed to be giving me a sense of what really happened in Heaven when Lucifer fell, to better understand Creation and God’s workings. As I recounted in the previous video on the Mystery of Evil, Lucifer was the most magnificent being ever created. He was beautiful beyond words -the most dazzling and powerful of all immortals. When God creates someone immortal and that person fails to please him, he doesn’t just switch them on the fly to mortal because God cannot go back on his word. The bible says Heaven and Earth will pass away, but God’s Word is Eternal. Similarly, God made us mortal, though made in the image of God, but Christ, the Son of God, through his death on the cross for mankind, changed all that. He has defeated death for us so we can have life eternal like the angels and like Christ himself. One goes from mortality to immortality if one accepts the price paid by the very Son of God and changes their life accordingly. In God’s granting free will, belief and attitude are everything even in Heaven where one third of the angels made a bad decision to follow Lucifer. The bible reads in Ezekiel 28 Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying,  12 "Son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre, and say to him, 'Thus says the Lord God: "You were the seal of perfection, Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.  13 You were in Eden, the garden of God; Every precious stone was your covering: The sardius, topaz, and diamond, Beryl, onyx, and jasper, Sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes Was prepared for you on the day you were created.  14 "You were the anointed cherub who covers; I established you; You were on the holy mountain of God; You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones.  15 You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, Till iniquity was found in you.  16 "By the abundance of your trading You became filled with violence within. And you sinned; Therefore, I cast you as a profane thing Out of the mountain of God; And I destroyed you, O covering cherub, From the midst of the fiery stones.  17 "Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor; I cast you to the ground, I laid you before kings, That they might gaze at you.  18 "You defiled your sanctuaries By the multitude of your iniquities, By the iniquity of your trading; Therefore, I brought fire from your midst; It devoured you, And I turned you to ashes upon the earth In the sight of all who saw you.  19 All who knew you among the peoples are astonished at you; You have become a horror, And shall be no more forever." ' "  20 It seems at some point, Lucifer had beheld the Godhead and wondered why he didn’t have same status as Christ the Son of God. Then he became filled with envy for that same position. In his mind, he was wondering, “What’s he got that I don’t.Why haven’t they granted me the same glory and status, to be as God, because I too was born of God ... Look at me - the magnificence—the power—the songs that I sing and the music I play.” He was so envious he started eyeing and conniving for that ‘God’ status. He had lost his innocence and crossed over to evil. The bible says evil was found in him. At that point God the father had to expel him from Heaven. But he was so dominant that a third of the angels went along with him. See Genesis 1:31  Sometime after the creation, and most certainly after the sixth day when everything was declared “very good” (Genesis 1:31), Lucifer rebelled and was cast out of Heaven. “How you have fallen from Heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!” (Isaiah 14:12). Jesus said, “I saw Lucifer fall like lightning from Heaven” (Luke 10:18), and in the book of the Revelation Lucifer is seen as “a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth” in Revelation 9:1 That conflict between Lucifer and Christ , with Lucifer vying for equal status continued all the way to the last temptations of Christ, where Lucifer dared Christ to prove He really was the Son of God, even as he asserts his dominion over the world to which he was cast In the final temptation, Lucifer takes Jesus to a high place, which the book of Matthew explicitly identifies as a very high mountain, where all the kingdoms of the world can be seen. Lucifer has the hubris to say, "All these things I will give you if you fall down and do an act of worship to me." Jesus replies "Get away, Satan! It is written: 'You shall worship the Lord your God and only Him shall you serve.'"[46] (referencing Deuteronomy 6:13 and 10:20).  Since Lucifer is referred to as a star which fell or was cast down to earth, and Revelation 12:4 says a third of the stars were cast out with him, then the conclusion is that the stars in Revelation 12 refer to fallen angels, fully one third of the Heavenly host. If the one-third number is in fact accurate, what assurance that is! Two thirds of the angels are still on God’s side, and for followers of Christ, they are on our side as well. Now here on earth., another story was simmering about the loss of innocence. It is the story of Adam and Eve. Genesis 3:3 reads: 3 Now the serpent was craftier than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” 4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 3 Now the serpent was craftier than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” 4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so, they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” 10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so, I hid.” 11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” 12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” 14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” 16 To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” 17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” 20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. 21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. Loss of innocence kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden of Eden.   Today’s kids are losing their innocence like there’s no tomorrow, rebelling against their parents, causing them to get kicked out of loving homes, even as they continue to debase themselves . When a little kid says I’m straight or gay, is that a good thing? No! Not in the sight of the Lord, because it betrays a loss of innocence. I imagine the question(s) that would follow from the Lord might be, “Who told you so?” or, "Why are you ashamed of yourself? or, "What have you done that makes you feel ashamed of yourself?" (just as he did Adam and Eve with the fig leaves when He asked them how they knew they were naked. Loss of innocence is exactly what got Lucifer kicked out of Heaven and Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. The loss of innocence became so prevalent to the extent God regretted creating man “because his thoughts were continually evil” Genesis 6:5-8 reads 5 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.  The bible is replete with men and women losing their innocence – Cain killing his brother Abel, Jacob stealing his brother Esau’s birthright, and blessing from Isaac, their father.  2 Samuel 11: 6–27 records David’s attempts to cover-up his sin of adultery with Bathsheba. This cover-up is done with such ferocity, that he ends up engineering the death of Uriah, the soldier husband of Bathsheba, one of his own ‘mighty men’. David instructed Joab to put Uriah on the front line of a battle where the fighting was fiercest and withdraw from him so he would be struck.  In the story of Samson and Delilah in Judges 16. Delilah was a Philistine who was bribed to entrap Samson, coaxing him into revealing the secret of his strength was his long hair, whereupon she took advantage of his confidence to betray him to his enemies -by cutting his hair to weaken his strength.  I retell these stories because these were men and women who were in God’s favor who were still human and fell like all of us do at some point and time, but most of these them had lost their innocence long before these tragic incidents arose, which were just the culmination of their loss of innocence leading to moral bankruptcy and acts of atrocity. But there are instances of profound innocence such as the story of Nathanael. John 1:43–47: “The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me. “Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. “Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. “And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see. “Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” This word “guile” is defined in the dictionary as “insidious cunning, or deception, or duplicity”. So, Nathanael is “without deception”. In fact, this quality of being without deception is sometimes called “integrity” or “trustworthiness”. It is a most God-¬like characteristic. In fact, the name “Nathanael”, according to the Bible Dictionary, means “God has given”. Indeed, He has. He has given this quality to His true sons and daughters. And it is a quality He Himself both possesses and is revered for. On the other hand, it isn’t just the people who lie to deceive who have lost their innocence. It is also those who choose to believe their lies. Or remain silent in knowing complicity. Another story of Innocence is that of Enoch:  The text of the Book of Genesis says Enoch lived 365 years before God took him. The text reads that Enoch "walked with God: and he was no more; for God took him" (Gen 5:21–24), which is interpreted as Enoch's entering Heaven alive in some Jewish and Christian traditions. The most important story of innocence Is that of Joseph and Mary Joseph first appears in the Bible in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, one of which (Matthew) traces Joseph's lineage back to King David. After Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, an angel came to Joseph again, this time to warn him and Mary about King Herod of Judaea and the violence he would bring down upon the child. Joseph then fled to Egypt with Mary and Jesus, and the angel appeared again, telling Joseph that Herod had died and instructing him to return to the Holy Land. Zachariah and Elizabeth  According to the Gospel of Luke, Elizabeth was "of the daughters of Aaron". She and her husband Zachariah were "righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless" (1:5–7), but childless. Everyone is bombarded by thoughts that tug at our innocence. The internet despite its vices has become almost indispensable to modern life. When you surf the Internet with all its ugliness. And when you walk downtown take the subway having to watch your back. Or weave through perilous traffic, it’s impossible to think as a child. But In today’s context of realities, I interpret loss of innocence to mean— It is possible to be childlike, yet shrewd, astute, or sharp-witted Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.  Being as a child does not mean being naïve. The bible tells us to be wise as serpents but as harmless as doves. I believe the loss of innocence in today’s context can be characterized by deviousness, deceiving, envying, cruelty, scheming, plotting evil, devising wickedness, witchcraft, gossiping and slander, fault finding, hypocrisy, exploitation, sexual promiscuity, greed or avarice , and the like.  Being as a Child Matthew 18: NIV. At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven?" He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven. Now going back to Lucifer prowling the earth now brooding for equal status with the archangels. In the book of Job, Lucifer appeared before God with other “sons of God” with whom he wanted to claim equal status. Job (1: 8–12 and 42:1–6) The bible describes Job as a good man who loves God. Lucifer challenges God, saying that Job is only good because he has a happy life. ... suggesting Job would turn against God if his fortunes were removed, including his family. Many bad things happened to Job afterwards, and it got so bad his wife told him to reject God and to accept that he is dying, but Job refused. Today Lucifer continues to attempt to wreak havoc on God’s creation in demand of that status —the ultimate of hubris and loss of innocence — the ultimate of evil. I also got a sense of what Lucifer looks like now and it was frightening. So frightening I literally I had to make a covenant with God through the Holy Spirit — An extraordinary commitment to a relationship with God. That covenant Is now constantly invoked through prayer and when I am involved in duties to His service, or when things go haywire and it seems I’m under attack. Through that covenant I’ve asked the Lord for guidance and wisdom through the Holy Spirit. And now wherever I go I’m aware of that covenant and its power through Jesus Christ. I understand contracts very well because I had to sign lots of them. But I never knew I could make a covenant with God. And that’s what I did. And then it seemed my eyes were suddenly open to new mysteries in the bible. It was so daunting that at one point, I actually asked the Lord in jest, “Lord, did you really have to tell me that?” But on the other hand, it gave me a new confidence, I’d never felt before. And a peace unimaginable. The bible says in John 16:12 I still have much to tell you, but you cannot yet bear to hear it. 13However, when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth. For He will not speak on His own, but He will speak what He hears, and He will declare to you what is to come. 14He will glorify Me by taking from what is Mine and disclosing it to you.…  Folks regain your innocence. Be the little child you once were again. See yourself metaphorically playing on the swings of life's playground, imagining your adult friends as little kids too, with all of you having the time of your lives—finding joy and serenity in uncomplicated simplicity. Stop being so self absorbed and so hard on yourself. But that also means, not being so hard on other people and so quick to judge. Stop labeling and pigeon holing yourself or let your life be swayed by what you think are other people's perceptions of you. What matters above all is God's love for you and his thoughts towards you , It is everything. Jeremiah 29:11 reads, "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."  Always remember, you are first and foremost, a child of God. Go back to that innocence of childhood that God calls you to. Proverbs 4:23 reads  Most Importantly, always remember, It isn’t the loss of innocence that gets you in trouble,. It’s the decisions you make as a result that cause you to sin. Follow our Lord God’s example with Adam and Eve, when God saw that they knew they were naked. God clothed them with the skins of animals, to guard them. in the same way, guard your heart. The bible says, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. accoding to Matthew 7:21-23 ESV. The way to combat loss of innocence is by guarding one’s heart, from which one’s thoughts and desires flow. Matthew 15:18-19 reads18 But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these things defile a man. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander. And when we fa stubbornly refuse to repent and turn back from our sinful ways, the bible says, 21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in Heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ It appears from this passage that entering the Kingdom of Heaven is not just about doing good works, but also knowing God and being known by Him for the way we live and the truth of our inner selves – our innocence Despite their shows of good works and piety, Christ condemned the Pharisees and scribes for hypocrisy and perjury. more vehemently than about anything else. Because he knew they were anything but innocent. 13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of Heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.[d] 15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.  

King Solomon said it best: “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4:23) 

Finally, here’s a song from Danniebelle Hall titled “A Little Child.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN4O9zSyY90