The Bible shows us that the devil is an angel created by God who fell and rebelled against God, becoming the source of evil. Although sin, suffering, and death exist because of the devil, God has a plan to redeem the world.

In the Old Testament, there are two passages that offer insight into the origin of evil: Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. Thus, although the prophet Isaiah begins his book with a condemnation of the king of Babylon, he then shifts his focus to the spiritual power behind Babylon, in a prophecy about a being called Lucifer or the Morning Star:  “How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! How you have been cut down to the ground, you who laid low the nations! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit on the mount of the assembly of the gods, at the farthest reaches of the north; I will ascend to the summit of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.’ But you have been cast down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the grave!” (Isaiah 14:12–15).

The connection between this and Satan is evident in the fact that Jesus uses similar wording when He states that He saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven (Luke 10:18). It is worth noting the age-old temptation of man that resurfaces at every turn in history: “I will be like God.”

When the serpent tempts Eve not to obey God’s command not to eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, lest she die, he tells her: “You will certainly not die, but God knows that on the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3).

This act of disobedience by Adam is the source of all the evils that followed on earth. Lucifer’s original sin was that of wanting to be like God, of desiring to claim for himself the praise due to God, of exalting himself above God.

That decision transformed him from a glorious and powerful cherub who served God into the source of all evil and rebellion against God. All human sin is the consequence of this original sin, which has contaminated the entire human race, bringing death and destruction into the perfect world that God had created.

The prophet also makes a prophecy against the king of Tyre, which then develops into a revelation of the power behind the king of Tyre—a power described as the guardian cherub with outstretched wings. This prophecy is a description of Lucifer before his fall, when he had reached the highest perfection, was full of wisdom, and was perfect in beauty. Then iniquity was found in him: “You were a guardian cherub with outstretched wings; I had placed you on God’s holy mountain, and you walked among the fiery stones. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created until the day iniquity was found in you. Because of the vastness of your trade, you became filled with violence and committed sin; therefore I have cast you down from the mountain of God and will destroy you, O guardian cherub, from among the sparkling stones. Your heart became proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom with your splendor. Therefore, I will cast you to the ground; I will make you a spectacle to the kings. (Ezekiel 28:11–19)

The passage tells us that this being was created by God to be holy, wise, and perfect until sin entered into him. Lucifer became proud and exalted himself because of his beauty. He sought to redirect the worship due to God toward himself. As a result, he was cast out from God’s holy mountain and became filled with violence and corruption. So God cast him out of heaven, and he became Satan (the Hebrew word means “adversary”), the source of all evil. He took with him one-third of the angels in heaven, who later became demons (Revelation 12).

The Bible does not explain how a being created by God could have become evil or where the idea of evil came from. The Apostle Paul describes this as the mystery of lawlessness (2 Thessalonians 2:7). It is enough for us to accept that good and evil exist and that behind evil stands a personality who embodies the source of all forms of wickedness—the devil. Through the temptation of Adam and Eve, sin entered the human race and contaminated all of humanity.

But God promised the coming of a Redeemer who would redeem us from this power right from the moment of the Fall: “I will put enmity between you (the serpent/Satan) and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

The Messiah came, as the seed of the woman, to fulfill this prophecy and others like it. He came down to earth in human form, as the Son of Man and the Son of God, in the person of Jesus the Messiah. Through His death on the cross, as a sacrifice for the sin of the world, He crushed the serpent’s head, for the devil’s power lies in the accusations he levels against people. The serpent will strike His heel—that is, it will inflict a wound that will cause Him suffering, but not a fatal blow.

The Apostle Peter wrote that the Lord Jesus bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we, having died to sin, might live for righteousness; by His wounds we have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24–25).

Likewise, the apostle Paul tells us that in the same way He Himself also shared in them, so that, through death, He might destroy the one who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and deliver all those who, through fear of death, were subject to slavery all their lives. (Hebrews 2:14).

The Lord Jesus lived in this way, fulfilling the prophecy about the faithful servant: “Yet He Himself bore our sufferings and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brings us peace fell upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. We all wandered like sheep, each going his own way, but the Lord made our iniquity—the iniquity of us all—fall upon Him.” (Isaiah 53:4–6).

The Lord Jesus died for us on the cross so that we might receive God’s forgiveness for our sins and eternal life. But to receive all these blessings, we must turn to God with repentance and faith in His atoning death and His resurrection from the dead: “But to all who did receive Him—that is, to those who believe in His name—He gave the right to become children of God; born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:12–13). If we reject this offer, we remain in our sins and under God’s condemnation.

According to the teaching of the Lord Jesus, this situation will persist throughout the time between His first and second coming, which explains why evil and suffering still exist in our present age. At His second coming, Satan’s power over the kingdom of this world will be destroyed, but until then he remains the ruler of this world, as the Lord Jesus called him in the Gospel of John (John 12:31).

The Bible states that the devil will continue to have power over the world system in the times in which we live. This is also evident in the account of the Lord Jesus’ temptation: “Then the devil took Him up to a very high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor, and said to Him: ‘All these things I will give You, if You will fall down and worship me.’ ‘Get behind me, Satan,’ Jesus replied. For it is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.’” (Matthew 4:8–10).

Notice that the Lord Jesus did not dispute Satan’s claim that he had the power to give him the kingdoms of this world, but He refused the condition Satan imposed—to fall down and worship him. Satan always wants to be worshiped. But only God is worthy of our worship.

Satan will continue to be the ruler of the darkness of this present world until the Second Coming of Christ, when his power will be crushed forever.

The devil and the demons operate in the heavenly realms—an unseen realm from which Satan and the demons direct their influence on earth and exercise power over the kingdoms of this world. Thus, the apostle Paul urges the believers in Ephesus to put on the full armor of God, so that you may be able to stand firm against the devil’s schemes. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:11–12).

In our day, evil can be kept in check through the prayers and influence of God’s people (1 Timothy 2:1–6). In the parable of the wheat and the tares in the Gospel of Matthew, the Lord Jesus shows us that in the present age, good and evil grow together and will not be separated until the end of the age, on the day of judgment: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. When the wheat sprouted and bore fruit, the weeds also appeared. The master’s servants came and said to him, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? ‘Where, then, did the weeds come from?’ He replied, ‘An enemy has done this.’ And the servants said to him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull it up?’ ‘No,’ he said to them, ‘lest, in pulling up the weeds, you pull up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “First gather the weeds and bind them in bundles to be burned, and gather the wheat into my barn.’” (Matthew 13:24–43).

Later he explained the parable to his disciples: He replied, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the Kingdom; the tares are the children of the evil one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age; the reapers are the angels. Just as the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send His angels, and they will root out of His Kingdom all that causes sin and those who commit lawlessness, and they will cast them into the fiery furnace; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

This parable tells us that in the present age we have a choice between good and evil, between God and Satan. God has given us free will and does not force us to make this choice. He has the power to put an end to evil in the blink of an eye, just as He will do at the end of the age, when He will judge the world with justice. But God delays in doing this to give us a chance to repent, and He now offers us forgiveness and the hope of eternal life with Him in heaven, if we repent and turn to Him in faith. When we place our trust in Him, we receive forgiveness and a new life with God in heaven.

If we remain in our sins and reject God’s way of salvation, He cannot save us: “No, the Lord’s hand is not too short to save, nor His ear too dull to hear; but your iniquities have set a wall of separation between you and your God; your sins hide His face from you and prevent Him from hearing you!” (Isaiah 59:1–2).

In our day, the sons of the kingdom—that is, the children of God—live alongside the sons of the evil one (those who reject God, the children of the devil). Evil will reach its peak at the end of this age, when wickedness will reign and perilous times will come. The end of this state of affairs will be the period of the Great Tribulation, during which humanity would destroy itself were it not for God’s intervention: “For then there will be such great tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will be. And if those days had not been cut short, no one would survive; but for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short.” (Matthew 24:21–22).

The book of Revelation reveals that the devil will give power to his Antichrist on earth, who will be supported by the false prophet, and who will usher in the final period of evil’s existence on earth. (Revelation 13).

At His return, the Lord Jesus will cast both the beast and the false prophet into hell, and the devil will be bound in the abyss for 1,000 years (Revelation 19–20). The kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ, and He will reign forever (Revelation 11:15).

Thus, the day is approaching when God will put an end to all the troubles of the world, but on that day He will also stop those who have caused these troubles. At His second coming, the Lord Jesus will come with all the power of God to put an end to Satan’s rebellion against God and to destroy the works of evil. Only those who repent of their sins now and trust in Jesus will be saved, but those who reject Him will be cast into hell.

At His Second Coming, He will judge the world righteously, according to how we have responded to the message of the Gospel. The Holy Spirit is now at work to draw people to faith in Jesus, so that they may be saved from the judgment that will come upon the world. But the devil is also at work to lead people to reject God’s message.

Today he uses the same tactics as in the past: he sows doubt in people’s hearts so that they will reject the word spoken by God. The devil uses a whole arsenal of weapons to convince people not to believe in God: atheism, false religions, humanism, and all kinds of errors within professing Christianity. Likewise, Satan leads some to believe that he does not exist or causes them to worship him through occult and demonic forces.

But Satan is a defeated enemy. And all who follow him will be judged by God. We must submit to God and resist the devil: “Be alert and keep watch! For your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Those who stay alert will be on the winning side, for Satan will soon be condemned. According to Revelation 12, Satan will be cast out of his place in the heavenly realms onto the earth during the final three-and-a-half-year period of the Great Tribulation: “And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but they could not prevail; and their place was no longer found in heaven. And the great dragon, the ancient serpent, called the devil and Satan, the one who deceives the whole world, was cast down to the earth, and his angels were cast down with him… Therefore, rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to you, earth and sea! For the devil has come down to you in great wrath, knowing that his time is short.” (Revelation 12:7–12).

At the end of this period, the Lord Jesus will return with all the power of God to bring the time of tribulation to an end and to establish His messianic kingdom, and the devil will be cast into the abyss and will no longer be able to deceive the nations: “Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the abyss and a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. He cast him into the abyss, shut him up there, and sealed the entrance over him, so that he might no longer deceive the nations until the thousand years were completed. After that, he must be released for a short time.” (Revelation 20:1–3).

After he is released from the abyss at the end of the millennium, Satan will attempt one final act of rebellion against God. After the thousand years, Satan will be released and will come out of his prison to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—to gather them for war. Their number will be like the sand of the sea. And they went up over the face of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. But fire came down from heaven and consumed them. And the devil, who had deceived them, was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. (Revelation 20:7–10). But Satan will be cast into the lake of fire forever.

This is the moment when God will bring about the final state of all believers, in the context of the new heaven and the new earth, where righteousness will dwell: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more… And I heard a loud voice coming from the throne, saying: ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men! He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them. He will be their God.’ (Revelation 21:1–4).

Nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. (Revelation 21:27). His coming is near, and when He comes, He will punish the devil and his demons forever and save all who have trusted in Him.

God’s love and power will be manifested there for all eternity. If you want to reach that wonderful place, now is the time to put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, repenting of your sins and believing in the Gospel. Amen!