Where Did Evil Come From?

The Bible does not present a universe in which good and evil have always existed in cosmic balance. It presents a universe in which the Creator is good, in which all His works were originally very good (Gen 1:31), and in which evil arose as a novelty — a defection from goodness, not a primordial counter-power. The defection began, the Bible says, in the heart of a being God Himself had made beautiful and holy. The story of how it began is essential. Without it, every subsequent biblical theme — sin, judgment, atonement, the cross, the second coming, the new earth — lacks its controversy frame.

This lesson follows Scripture’s plain testimony. At three points the institute will also quote Ellen White, the prophetic gift to the Advent movement, whose exposition of the great controversy walks the question at greater depth than any other writer in the Christian tradition. Her contribution is supporting, not foundational. Scripture establishes the case; Ellen White unpacks what Scripture indicates.

Answer

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.

No. At the close of creation week the entire work of God was pronounced very good. There was no shadow on any of it. And of the very being who would later become the rebel leader, the Lord declares plainly: Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee. There was a period in which he was perfect; there was a moment in which iniquity was found. Evil is a defection from a prior goodness, not a primordial co-existent. It had a beginning.

Answer

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.

Evil did not begin on this earth. It began in heaven, in the heart of a created being whose pre-fall name the Hebrew Scriptures preserve: Lucifer, son of the morning. Both Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 are addressed outwardly to earthly kings — Babylon and Tyre, respectively — but both pivot, in the imagery and the language they use, to a being far older and greater than either. The Hebrew prophets here lift the veil on the prior history of which the earthly tyrants are only the latest re-enactment. The being described as having walked upon the holy mountain of God, having been perfect in beauty, having been created rather than born of human parents, is not a Babylonian or a Phoenician monarch. He is the original rebel.

Answer

Thus saith the Lord God; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.

Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so.

Lucifer was the highest of God’s created beings. Scripture calls him the anointed cherub — the chief of the covering cherubim that surrounded the throne, the highest of the angelic order. He was full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. The tabrets and pipes of his musical capability were prepared in him at his creation. He walked in unbroken access to the holy mountain of God. Among created beings, only the Son stood above him.

The rebel was not an obscure inferior who had little to lose. He was the highest. The greatness of his fall is a measure of the greatness of what he had.

Answer

For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness.

Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.

Self-exaltation. The Hebrew text in Isaiah 14 records five I wills in succession: I will ascend… I will exalt my throne… I will sit upon the mount… I will ascend above the heights… I will be like the most High. Pride in his own beauty, his own brilliance, his own wisdom, led him to desire equality with God Himself. Paul, in warning Timothy not to appoint a recent convert to eldership, traces the original elder’s failure back to the same condemnation: pride is what felled the devil.

The cause of his fall was not external. He was not wronged. He was not lacking. He was the highest of created beings, with the most direct access to the Father, with gifts and station given by God Himself. What he wanted, he already had — except for one thing. He wanted to be God; and being God was not on offer.

Answer

For the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

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.

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

Scripture calls Satan three things in close sequence: a liar, a murderer, and the accuser. The three are related. He accuses God to the creature; he accuses the creature to God. He misrepresents the Father’s character — that the Father is severe, tyrannical, and self-interested — and in misrepresenting the Father, he leads the creature into the rebellion he himself first chose. His first recorded words on this earth, to Eve at the tree, are an accusation against the truthfulness and goodness of God: God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof… ye shall be as gods. The implication: God has lied to you to keep something good from you.

Before he made that accusation on this earth, he had been making it in heaven. The narrative Scripture only indicates here, Ellen White (1827–1915), the prophetic gift to the Advent movement, walked in detail. The institute does not present her writings as Scripture, but as a privileged exposition of what Scripture indicates. Where her observations clarify a biblical question Scripture states without unpacking, this course will cite her as a supporting witness. The first such moment is here.

Insidiously, at first, he sought to excite dissatisfaction concerning the laws that governed heavenly beings, intimating that they imposed an unnecessary restraint. Since their natures were holy, he urged that the angels should obey the dictates of their own will… Satan represented God as severe and tyrannical.

The original accusation, then, was a slander on God’s character. Lucifer represented the Father as severe and self-interested, His law as an arbitrary burden, His government as something to be replaced by self-will. The rebellion was not a tactical disagreement; it was a charge against the Creator’s moral character. And that charge had to be addressed.

Answer

Let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.

For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.

Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee.

Because the charge Lucifer had made against God’s character could not be answered by an act of force. Lucifer had said the Father was tyrannical and unjust. Had the Father immediately destroyed him on the strength of His own word, the appearance — in the eyes of the unfallen angels and the unfallen worlds — would have been precisely the appearance Lucifer was alleging. The other beings of the universe would have served the Father, but they might have served Him from fear rather than from love. The charge would have lingered unanswered.

The unfallen creation, on Scripture’s testimony, is watching. Paul says the apostles are a spectacle unto… angels, and to men. Job 1:6 shows the sons of God gathering before the throne with Satan among them, as if in formal council. The witnessing universe is not a backdrop; it is the courtroom in which the controversy is being resolved. For the witnesses to be persuaded, the case must be tried, the charges examined, and the verdict reached on evidence rather than on executive action.

Ellen White’s exposition of this point is the clearest in Christian literature:

Could Satan have been blotted out of existence at once, it would have been a triumphant vindication of God’s power and justice; but in the minds of his witnesses there would have remained a question whether God’s character had not been misrepresented.

The controversy is moral, not military. God’s answer to the slander on His character is to permit the slander to be tested — to permit Lucifer to develop his principles to their endpoint, in full view of the universe, so that no doubt remains. The patience of God in dealing with His rebel is not weakness. It is the unhurried answer of a Sovereign who has nothing to hide and an entire universe of intelligent witnesses to convince.

Answer

And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth.

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.

Yes. One third of the heavenly host followed Lucifer in his rebellion. The symbolic stars of heaven in Revelation 12 are the angels (cf. Job 38:7, where the morning stars and the sons of God shout for joy in parallel). A war ensued in heaven, in which Michael (the great prince of God’s people in Daniel 12; Christ Himself in the Adventist exposition) and His loyal angels fought against the dragon and his angels. The rebellion was defeated; the rebels were cast out; their place in heaven was forfeited. From the moment of their casting out, they have continued their work in the dimension to which they were confined — this earth.

Answer

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?… And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.

After his expulsion from heaven, Satan brought his accusation to the new race in the garden God had planted. He appeared through the serpent, addressed Eve, and repeated to her the same slander he had used in heaven: that God was withholding something good, that God’s prohibition was an arbitrary restraint on her flourishing, that the Father had lied to her about the consequences. Eve received the slander. Adam followed. Sin entered the human race through a deliberate act of unbelief in the truthfulness of God, and death entered through sin (Rom 5:12; Rom 6:23). This earth, of all the worlds God had made, was the world that fell.

Answer

Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.

For we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.

Scripture affirms that God created the worlds — plural — through His Son. The Book of Job opens with the inhabitants of those other worlds, called sons of God, gathering in formal council before the Lord. They are intelligent, in covenant with their Creator, and unfallen — the loyal creation that never rebelled and never required a Redeemer. Satan’s presence among them in the council is conspicuous in the text precisely because he is the rebel, the representative of the one fallen world among the many.

This earth, therefore, is not the universe’s only inhabited world. It is the one world that fell. The controversy God permits to unfold on this earth is watched, with sober attention, by the unfallen creation whose worlds Scripture names but does not describe in modern-astronomical terms. We are a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men. The great controversy of this earth has cosmic resonance because the moral character of God is the only ground on which the unfallen creation continues, of its own willing love, in the covenant He made with it. If His character is what Satan accused it of being, the unfallen worlds have lost their reason to love and serve Him too. The whole creation has a stake in the outcome.

Answer

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.

And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.

Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.

The cross was not only the place where the price of sin was paid for the human race. It was also the place where Satan’s long accusation against God’s character was finally and publicly answered. In the cross, the Father’s love for the rebel world was demonstrated in terms no being in the universe could misread; and in the cross, Satan’s claim to be the rightful ruler of the human race was finally undone. Paul names both. Christ spoiled principalities and powers and made a shew of them openly — the very Greek language of a Roman general parading the defeated enemy through the streets of the victorious city. The cross was Satan’s public unveiling. What had been argued in heaven was now seen on earth.

Ellen White’s exposition of this moment:

Satan was unmasked. He had revealed his true character as a liar and a murderer. It was seen that the very same spirit with which he ruled the children of men, who were under his power, he would have manifested if permitted to control the inhabitants of heaven.

The unfallen worlds, watching, saw at Calvary what they had not before seen with their own eyes: Satan’s true character revealed in the murder of the Son of God, and the Father’s true character revealed in the giving of His only-begotten for an enemy world. The controversy was effectively decided at the cross. What remains is its working-out in time and the final judgment-day execution of the verdict.

The full atonement — what Christ accomplished for the believing sinner at the cross — is the subject of Lesson 5. This lesson notes only what the cross meant for the cosmic argument.

Answer

What do ye imagine against the Lord? he will make an utter end: affliction shall not rise up the second time.

And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

It will end. Once, and forever. The Lord declares Himself, through Nahum, that affliction shall not rise up the second time. Sin had a beginning; sin will have an end. Satan, his angels, and all who finally identify themselves with his rebellion will be destroyed in the lake of fire (Rev 20:10, 14), and the universe will be cleansed. The new earth, restored to its original goodness and more, will be the home of the redeemed forever — with no more death, no more sorrow, no more pain, the tabernacle of God with men.

The doctrine that sin shall not rise up the second time is, in itself, the answer to the most recurrent objection to the great-controversy framework: if sin arose once in a perfect universe, what is to prevent it from arising again? The answer is the cross. The unfallen creation has now seen, with its own eyes, what self-exaltation finally amounts to and what the love of the Father finally costs to redeem its consequences. No created being, having seen Calvary, will choose the path of Lucifer a second time. The universe is secured.

Lessons 15 and 16 walk the closing scenes and the new earth in detail.

Personal response

Every reader of this lesson stands inside the great controversy, whether they realise it or not. Two principles are competing for the throne of every human heart: the self-exalting principle Lucifer first chose and propagated, and the self-giving principle the Father and the Son have always lived in and finally demonstrated at the cross. There is no third option. Neutrality is itself a vote for the principle that does not require God on its throne.

The institute commends a simple prayer for the willing reader:

Father in heaven, the only true God, I see now that the controversy in which my world stands is the controversy between Your character and the slander Satan has been making against it since heaven. I refuse Satan’s principle of self-exaltation. I receive Your principle of self-giving love, manifested in the only-begotten Son You sent. Place me on Your side of the controversy. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

From the origin of evil, the next lesson asks the next question: given that the controversy has reached this earth, what did Christ actually accomplish at the cross for the believing sinner? Lesson 5 walks the atonement — the gospel proper — in the apostles’ own words.