The Cosmic Conspiracy, Part 2
At some point in God’s eternity, the court of Heaven was in session, and Almighty God sat as Supreme Judge while a case of treason that the universe had never experienced before was being prosecuted. This may sound like a plot line for some mythological tale that took place eons ago in some galaxy far, far, away. However, strange as this may sound, the Bible is filled with references and allusions to heavenly courtroom scenes. God is not only the Creator of all things, He is also the Divine Judge of all things. God calls His realm a Kingdom, and what primarily defines a kingdom is the presence of a King, Who must rule His Kingdom, or chaos will rule.
Psalm 82 is a very intriguing portion of scripture that highlights these divine courtroom sessions. It starts out with this line: “God presides over heaven's court; he pronounces judgment on the heavenly beings.” If you continue reading the Psalm, the trial is centered around powerful spiritual beings that are corrupting justice on the earth and causing chaos among humans. I know, this sounds really far-fetched. This Psalm is the subject of much debate among scholars. The dividing line for this debate centers around those who believe in a vast spiritual world that has access to and influence over the affairs of humanity, and those who are naturalists, who reason away the realm of the spirit. This was the same environment that Jesus ministered in with the Pharisees, who believed in the spirit world, and the Sadducees, who did not. Not much has changed over the centuries.
In the previous post, I stated that if we are to get to the truth about a cosmic conspiracy being in existence we would have to take the biblical account as the authoritative voice on the matter. So, for the purposes of this post, that is the course we will take. In Psalm 82 it appears that the powerful spiritual beings on trial had been in some sort of delegated authoritative positions that were handed down by God to assist in the administration of His Kingdom (the entirety of all that God presides over - everything). At some point, these beings no longer represented the intentions of God and began to abuse their positions, and rule of their own, now corrupt, autonomy. Were these abuses of position and authority just a random collection of rulers gone wild? Or, was there a cohesive coupe d'état working its way through the ranks of God’s administration that was bent on dethroning The King and taking over His Kingdom?
I believe the answers to these questions lie in the outcome of the courtroom scene that was alluded to at the start of this post where the most heinous act of sedition ever perpetrated had been exposed and the sentence was handed down from The Throne. There are two primary passages of scripture that depict the details of the trial that will shed light on what was going on. The first passage is recorded in Isaiah’s prophetic writings. In chapter 14 we find the nature and content of the crime that is on trial. Here is the charge as declared from the Heavenly Court:
“How you are fallen from heaven, O shining star, son of the morning! You have been thrown down to the earth, you who destroyed the nations of the world. For you said to yourself, 'I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God's stars. I will preside on the mountain of the gods far away in the north. I will climb to the highest heavens and be like the Most High’” [Isa 14:12-14 NLT].
The context of this portion of the scripture comes right in the middle of Isaiah’s prosecuting prophetic judgments against the tyrant king of Babylon. Isaiah is laying out the charges against the earthly king for the horrible atrocities he has committed. Isaiah then shifts to an indictment from Heaven against the real maniacal monster that was at work behind the scenes who incited this earthly despot to do its bidding. Isaiah calls this being, “shining star, son of the morning.” There is a large body of scholarly research that is widely accepted that the being alluded to by Isaiah is a powerful spiritual being named Lucifer, AKA, Satan, the devil, the serpent of old, the dragon, etc.
Isaiah is exposing the plot that was formulated in the heart of Lucifer, that had at its core, an overthrow of God’s Kingdom by making himself King. These verses lay out the manifesto that left no room for doubt about its intentions - remove God, become god. What could have happened to Lucifer to create such a diabolical, and ultimately futile, obsession with taking over the universe? Another portion of scripture sheds light on the nature of this perplexing perversion of Lucifer. Let’s look at Ezekiel 28.
As in Isaiah, in this portion of scripture Ezekiel is laying out an indictment from Heaven against the earthly king of Tyre who has abused and corrupted his position of authority and turned tyrant, actually believing that he was a god. At verse 13 of this passage, Ezekiel shifts the indictment from the earthly king to the spiritual force that was the true agent of the rebellion, Lucifer, again. Ezekiel not only names the real culprit, but he exposes the nature of Lucifer's perversions.
If you read through the next portion of verses, a tragic account unfolds. In essence, Lucifer was at one time, one of, if not the most, beautiful of all of God’s created angelic beings. The language of the passage implies that Lucifer was not only extremely beautiful and multi-talented, but also had the most honorable position of the “covering cherub,” a position that seems to mean that this being stood directly before Almighty God, guarding His presence! What a majestic being, what a privileged position. So what happened?
Ezekiel states that at some point in eternal history, Lucifer stopped looking at God and began to look at himself. In doing so, he became obsessed with his own beauty, talent, and position and became “internally corrupted” (meaning, beyond the point of repair). The obsession with self-worship led Lucifer to believe that all the worship that was directed to God should now be directed to him. The only way for this to happen would be to remove God and sit on the very throne he was guarding. Then, and only then, could the all consuming passion for receiving worship be satisfied.
Ezekiel states that once Lucifer’s perverted plot was exposed, he was convicted of treason of the highest degree and cast out of Heaven and banished to the earth to await a final, eternal sentencing to come on a day of judgment. There is much speculation about the nature of this expulsion and what it did to the earth as a result of Lucifer being under house arrest on the planet. A few things we do know are that Lucifer brought his corruption with him and he did not come alone.
I know, this still sounds so fanciful and mythic, but keep following along. Hopefully, with forensic faith, we will be able to conclude that the conspiracy to overthrow God that was birthed in Lucifer’s innermost being is still in the process of being played out…
As stated above, Lucifer is still eternally corrupted with no hope of redemption. During his time in the realms of Heaven, Lucifer apparently was able to fang the teeth of his wickedness into the core of other heavenly beings. This poison, this perversion, was so powerful and convincing that hordes of them joined the rebellion and were cast out of heaven with Lucifer (see Jude 1:6). Now under the doom of eternal condemnation, Lucifer, or better, now Satan (“adversary”) and his demonic angels are bound to the realm of Earth awaiting sentencing. Even though they have been bound from Heaven, there is still a measure of activity allowed while Satan is here roaming the earth. To be sure, being cast out of Heaven has not cast out the diabolical intentions to dethrone God and take over the universe. Now that sounds like a cosmic conspiracy if there ever was one!
Fast forward into human history - “in the beginning.” The narrative is recorded for us in the first few chapters of Genesis. For the sake of space and time, we will pick up the story where Adam and Eve encounter Satan in the form of a celestial being named Nachash (“spell caster,” “whisperer”), more commonly known as the serpent. All of the amazing aspects of the creation of humanity, their placement in God’s garden (Heaven’s headquarters on Earth), and humanity’s position as being made in God’s image, must have sparked a new angle for Satan’s conspiritus claws to sink deep into the Heirs of the earth. Satan already had a legion of demons and other angelic beings under his spell of deception. Now, if he could somehow entice this new order of creation, God’s pride and joy, God’s crown and glory, into joining his rebellion, he might just have the missing piece of the plan. If he could take over the earth, he could take over Heaven!
As the account of early creation unfolds, Adam and Eve are in constant communication with God regarding the purpose for their presence on planet earth. This beautiful garden (actually meaning a walled-in, or protected space, much like a governmental compound) served as a staging platform and pattern for Adam and Eve as their mandate was to multiply, fill the earth, and bring the governmental rule of the garden to all corners of the earth. It seems that the language of these verses implied that outside the garden there was a world that was still wild, and perhaps even in chaos that needed to be subdued. Could it be that the chaos and disorder was the result of Satan’s activity on the planet? Something to ponder...
We are not told in the account, but somehow Satan had access to God’s governmental compound and appeared in the form of an upright walking, talking serpent (not a snake, that came later). Adam and Eve did not think this strange, as there were probably other heavenly beings in the vicinity (there were at least angelic guards around - see Genesis 3:22 and following). Now that Satan had access to these earth rulers, how would he approach them so as not to expose the true nature of his interactions with them?
The first sentence of chapter 3 gives us the modus operandi that Satan used and has perfected through the ages when interacting with humans. The account says that Satan was the “shrewdest” of all the beings that God created. A deeper look at the meaning of shrewd will shed some light on the power of this quality. Shrewd can mean cunning, crafty, wise, sly, etc. But the root of this Hebrew word means primarily, subtle. Of all the things we would never expect a maniacal maniac to be, subtle is one of them.
This subtlety appears well intentioned, reasonable, sensible, and possibly even caring and concerned. It is the epitome of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The deception is imperceptible on the surface. Its ability to cloak and mask true intentions is unparalleled. Taken at face value there would be no reason to suspect that a deeper, dark agenda could be lurking beneath the soft spoken, smile laden, smooth talking, exterior of the quintessential mister nice guy. Wow, Satan is a master at his craft!
Is this subtlety powerful enough to lure the prince and princess of the earth into Satan’s lair of deception? If we continue reading the story we see that it worked. Adam and Eve were entranced and now they were entrapped in the wicked web of Satan’s plan to take over the earth. Seems like the game is over and Satan got what he needed to set his sites on Heaven’s throne now that he was sitting on Earth’s throne.
But hold on, there is more to the story and it contained a twist that Satan did not expect! So, stay tuned, and tune in...
by Pastor Jim Anan
Elevate Church