DISCUSSION.
1. Recapitulatory: The fact of the Eternity of Intelligences, their essential qualities, their capacity for progress, the necessity for union with earth-elements in order to attain a fulness of joy, the purpose of God with reference to man's earth-life—all these subjects having been treated in the preceding lessons; we are now prepared to consider the several steps taken with reference to bringing to pass the earth-life of the spirits of men.
Running throughout the Hebrew scriptures, but more or less vague, there are traces of the pre-earth existence of intelligences, and of strife and struggle in that existence; rebellion and war; failure of certain ones to keep first estates, their being cast out and reserved in chains of darkness to some future day of judgment; some reference also to eternal life that was promised of God before the world was made. Though these lack somewhat in clearness, let me, if they may not be set forth in anything like order, at least mass them, that they may be before us in one view.
2. The Hebrew Scriptures on the War in Heaven: In the very beginning of the Hebrew scripture God, in the creation, is represented as addressing others engaged with him in the creation work: "And God said let us make man in our image, after our likeness."[A] Then after the Fall: "And the Lord God said: Behold the man has become as one of us to know good and evil."[B] Perfectly blending with this idea of a plurality of divine Intelligences engaging in the work of creation is the Lord's question to Job: "Gird up now thy loins like a man, for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me: Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"[C]
[Footnote A: Gen. i:26.]
[Footnote B: Gen. iii:22.]
[Footnote C: Job xxxviii:4-7.]
It seems, then, that there were sons of God before the foundations of the earth were laid, or even the measuring line was stretched upon it. And may it not have been these Sons of God, whom God addressed in the creation work, saying to them: "Let us make man in our image"—"The man has become as one of us?"
On the return of the Seventy whom Jesus sent out on a special mission into every city and place where he himself proposed to go, they said: "Lord, even the devils are subject to us in thy name." To which Jesus answered: "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven" (Luke x:17, 18). As if he would say, "Your victory over evil spirits in my name, is not the first I have won over Satan. I saw him as lightning fall from heaven."[A] One other reference to Lucifer in this same connection is made by the Christ; when addressing contentious Jews, he said: "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it."[B]
[Footnote A: There is much confusion among the commentators on this passage c. f. Jamieson—Fausset-Brown with the International Revision Commentary on the passage. Dummelow's Commentary, however, says: "Our Lord poetically compares Satan's discomfiture at the successful mission of the Seventy, to his original fall from heaven." He also regards John viii:44, as referring to the same event.]