I. 2. Hereditary troubles

And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian,

which she had born unto Abraham, mocking.

Wherefore she said unto Abraham,

cast out this bondwoman and her son:

for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir

with my son, even with Isaac.

Genesis 21:9, 10

The first one determined to live independently of Gog was Lucifer – a cherub taking the highest position among the angels next to the Son of God:

Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, 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: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee. Ezekiel. 28:12, 14, 15

The beauty, the talents and glory of this angel led him to proud self-oblivion. The merits of all that was given to him by God, he started attributing to himself. His perverted picture of himself made him envious of the Son of God – the One enjoying full rights in God's councils. Rejecting the order constituted by the Creator Himself, Lucifer coveted the glory which was prerogative to the only begotten of God alone:

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 likethe most High. Isaiah. 14:13, 14

God warned Lucifer with inexplicable love about the perilous consequences of the path chosen by him, pleading for him to come back in the right relationships with his Creator. Lucifer not only encouraged himself to follow his will, but he treacherously deceived the other angels to go after his steps toward apostasy, teaching them that they as holy beings needed not a law to tell them what is right.

Desecration of the covenant

Essentially, the violation of the sacred relations to his Creator means transgression of the covenant and voluntarily deprivation of the privileges coming from the sacred relation to the One Who was the Source of life. Lucifer could not violate the law of God of love and at the same time to keep his right upon the everlasting heritage:

Thou hast defiled thy sanctuariesby the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffick.... Ezekiel28:18

The fallen angel desecrated the relationships of the everlasting covenant. The covenant relationships between God and His Son are the universal standard of relationships, warranting the everlasting well being of the Universe's inhabitants. These same relationships were also represented in a written from and were preserved in the ark of God's covenant found in the heavenly temple.¹ One third of angels joined Lucifer in his rebellion.² Scriptures records this dark moment in the history of the universe:

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, 8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. 9 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. Revelation. 12:7, 9

The Son of God was then known by the name Michael,³ as the Captain of the heavenly host.⁴ With their joining to the first apostate those angels expressed the same relational disloyalty toward their Creator as that of their present leader. The transgression of the covenant on their part is described as follows:

... And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation... Jude 6

That what the angels “left” is described with the Greek words ἀρχή and οἰκητήριον⁵ - the first one relates to their original hereditary property as God's creatures, and the second, is concerning their inability to remain in the holy dwellings where God's covenant order rules.

Adam and Eve represent God and His Son's relationships

Through creation of humanity, God planned to give additional light concerning the pattern of relationships contained in the Legacy toward His Son:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. Genesis 1:26, 27

God and His Son created man after their image. Adam and Eve were a unique creation which had to represent the relationships between God and His Son. The same way as God and His Son were both divine, Adam and Eve were both man, and like the Son was from the Father, the woman proceeded from the man. This also becomes apparent from the original words in Hebrew for man and woman in the following verse:

And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Gen. 2:23⁶

This relationship had to underlined the universal meaning of the Son's voluntary submission and honor to His Father before the whole universe.⁷ Lucifer felt underprivileged also because of not giving him rights to participate in the plans for the creation of our planet. Now, when he anticipated the new creation's unique role, he decided to put his efforts into their disqualification from their holy mission. When God said to His Son "Let Us make man in our image"⁸, Satan became even more envious of Jesus. After the breathtaking sight of creation of our world, the Devil⁹ turned his attention to the new creation, hoping to draw them on his side:

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.Ezekiel28:13

If he managed to deceive also the humanity to transgress the covenant, Satan would win advantage in the Great Controversy between himself and Christ, because people would be used as a confirmation to the ideas he used to lure the angels.

The Test

All that was perfectly well, which God created on Earth was for the human family, but their attitude toward the tree of knowledge of good and evil would display, through their free choice, whose kingdom would they like to be subjects to – Satan's or God's. The consequences of this decision were clearly outlined to them:

And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatestthereof thou shalt surely die.Genesis2:15-17

The Creator wished for His creature to pass successfully the test of faithfulness to the covenant relationships and to remain forever in the glorious realm of God. However, true love had allow the right of voluntary choice even when it would bring in death. It's because of the same reason that God did not annihilated Lucifer immediately even though He could, so that to allow for every being to be thoroughly convinced into the true intentions of the enemy, who by then was masterfully concealing them. If God would straight away stopped Lucifer's existence, all would serve Him driven by fear and suspicion, and this is in contrast with His character of love. The fallen cherub's wish was to represent a distorted image of God as a tyrant who acts of selfish motives. That is why, using the snake as a medium he said to Eve:

...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. Genesis 3:1, 4, 5

In the book of Genesis, Satan is not shown clearly; it tells about the serpent as if that animal was guilty of deceiving the humanity. Moreover, the serpent had obviously been able to fly because one of the punishments that God ascribed to her was “upon thy belly shalt thou go”¹⁰- which means that she had not been going the way we know today. So, there are several similarities between Lucifer and the Serpent:

1. She was pronounced the most cunning animal, and Lucifer was the wisest among the angels;¹¹

2. The Serpent lost her ability to fly and Lucifer was chased from heaven;

3. The Serpent behaves like a higher being than what God ordered for the animal kingdom (she uses human speech), and Lucifer tried to take the Son of God's position in heaven, which surpassed his rights as a created being.¹²

The snake claims that Eve possesses within herself a source of life independent of God, and that the development of this potential of hers along with the power she could obtain outside of her through the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil would make her god. This lie represents the foundation principle of spiritualism – the teaching based on belief of immortality of the human soul. We see here that Lucifer's utterance is opposite to what God had said. God said "ye shall surely die", but Satan said "ye shall not surely die"¹³. In order to protect His children from evil, God gave His COVENANT PROMISE "ye shall surely die". Every covenant should be "established" on promises¹⁴. When Adam and Eve received as truth Lucifer's lie they showed unfaithfulness toward the promise of God and thus they transgressed the covenant:

As at Adam, they have broken the covenant; they were unfaithful to me there. Hosea 6:7

Accepting Lucifer's promise, which was contrary to what God said, they actually made covenant to Satan. The transgression of the covenant by the humankind ancestors deprives all their descendants of the heritage promised to the Son and that relational disloyalty to God is called “sin” in Scripture¹⁵. Still Adam and Eve did not die "in the day" they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Is it because God was not faithful to His promise or there is another explanation to this?  We are going to discuss this and other vital questions in the next chapter.