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who tempted the angel (lucifer) if there was no devil or sin back then??
so God gave the angels the choice of whether they want to stay with Him or not. lucifer had soo much self pride and rebelled.. BUT WHO TEMPTED HIM??! there was no sin before adam and ever. right? and there was no satan to tempt him BECAUSE HE WAS SATAN. sa7?
then who tempted him and created this seed of evil within him?? everything that comes from God is good yeh??
then who tempted him and created this seed of evil within him?? everything that comes from God is good yeh??
Comments
This is what happened with Satan. He deceived himself.
Indeed we should not blame Satan for all of the faults into which we fall since, like Adam, in the end we are responsible for our own choices. It is not in being tempted, either by an evil spiritual being, or by a situation, that we are considered as falling into sin, but in turning our own will and desire towards the enjoyment and fulfillment of that by which we are tempted. The beauty of Lucifer was the cause of his being tempted because he turned from the enjoyment of the beauty of God to an enjoyment of himself. This is sin.
Sin does not have any reality. It is not a 'thing', it is a turning of the will away from God. In the end this is in our own hands. It was in Satan's own hands. He chose to idolise himself.
Father Peter
Pray for me
Im not sure if this is correct or if it is wrong but I think Angels have free will like we do. If this is true ill get into it more but I do not want to continue unless i know if that is correct.
Pray for me
nah i think u are right. look this is what i understand:
we have free will to choose between Christ, the bible,..etc and temptations that the devil sets before us. is that right? so we are put in situatiions where we have free will to choose whether to listen to the devil or God. but satan didnt have that. because there was no devil to tempt him.. he had free will to choose between God and----?? how did he kno what it meant to have self pride??
i understand that they had free will . i just dont get where the evil thoughts and the desire to sin came from (if there was no devil yet).
It seems you've got some misconceptions of who God is and who the devil is.
[quote author=Trinity+ link=topic=7736.msg101068#msg101068 date=1237260528]
we have free will to choose between Christ, the bible,..etc and temptations that the devil sets before us. is that right? so we are put in situatiions where we have free will to choose whether to listen to the devil or God.
What your saying here is that the devil is the complete opposite of God and that we must choose one of the two.
Free will is a gift from God which allows us to choose between following Him and NOT following Him. Satan is only there to tempt us to NOT follow God, thereby attempting to make us fall. We don't really choose the devil, as such, we more choose to NOT follow God.
If you can understand this, you can understand why Satan, who is an angel with free will like all the other angels, fell. He chose NOT to follow God, but himself. "He chose to idolise himself" as Father Peter so eloquently put it.
Cheers,
Andrew
thank u soo much for ur replies. God bless and Rabena ma3ako
St James teaches us..
When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.
The cause of sin is within us, it is our own misuse of the human faculty of will. When we choose something other than the will and glory of God then we fall into sin. If we occupy ourselves with God then we have less occassion to sin, and train ourselves to desire God above all else.
Satan fell into sin because that same misuse of the will became evident in him. He desired his own glory and became proud. There is no need for an external cause of sin, Satan just tries to make us fall, but often we trip ourselves up because we are not concentrating on the narrow path we are walking on.
When I respond with a sharp word to someone in my family because I am busy doing something it is a sin rooted in my own selfishness, I have not been tempted by Satan in any direct way. I have just put myself first. Indeed I am reminded of one saint who was commended because when his master called him while he was writing a copy of the Bible he jumped up in the middle of the letter he was writing. The choice is always ours. When we sin it is our own fault. God gives faithful Christians all the grace they need to jump up to do good.
Father Peter
Busyness, preoccupations, addictions, distractions, indifference, indecisiveness, procrastination etc.......in fact almost anything else that keeps us away from God are means through which we unwittingly get drawn into Satan's web of influence.
Hence, even being too religious, legalistic and fastidious could be a manifestation of this influence in our lives. However, God gave us all a free will and it is for us to use this responsibly and for His glory.
If I may speak of myself for a moment. I am from an evangelical background and I am used to being very active. Yet this can stand in the way of being truly present to God. Remember Mary and Martha. Sometimes it is better to be still at the feet of Jesus, even though there are things that need doing. I am always thinking of great plans. In my head right now there are lots of ideas kicking around of useful ministries and outreaches. But sometimes the good ideas can stand in the way of the best ideas.
I am learning that there is no power greater than prayer and fasting. More than planning city-wide evangelistic missions and all the other things that come to mind, the growth of the Church and the growth of each one of us needs nothing more complex than prayer and fasting.
When I was in Senegal staying with some missionaries I can remember being left in a village for a night and sitting out in the fields wishing I had brought a book about prayer. I remember it striking me as really odd that I was missing a book about prayer instead of getting on with prayer itself.
That is always the danger for someone who has begun to walk along the spiritual path a little. There are times I have snapped at my family when I have been studying a writing by St Severus. Have I really learned anything from such a Father if it has not changed my attitudes? Indeed there have been times when I have insisted on the importance of my studies as an excuse for not doing house work. Now I try hard to leap up when asked to do something around the house as if God was asking me. Otherwise it is very easy to be deceived into thinking that what we are doing is so spiritual and important that we do not need to participate in a spiritual way in the ordinary things of life.
Do you remember the story from the Desert Fathers when one of the brothers told his brother that he no longer wanted to do any work but wanted to live like the angels in constant prayer. He wandered off into the desert but after a few days when he was hungry and thirsty he came back and knocked on his brother's door. When his brother heard him he said, 'my brother has gone to live like the angels and no longer needs food or drink'. He left him there for three days until his brother repented of his spiritual pride.
We easily deceive ourselves, and are deceived. That is why it is often good to be obedient in simple, menial things, and find the presence of God in those, even though it is also good and a blessing to pray all the hours of the Agpeya. If my wife calls me as I am about to begin the Third Hour and says, 'come and help me cut the grass in the garden!' is it better to refuse to help because I am about to pray, or to help willingly and pray within my heart in any case?
May God grant us all the grace and wisdom to resist temptation and become humble people.
Father Peter
God bless
I believe that it is not possible to tempt lucifer if evil cannot exist without lucifer becoming evil, therein lies a chicken/egg problem.
Also, who are we to say that lucifer had free will? What is free will? To choose between 2 determined outcomes? Whether or not to "sin" against god.
I realised that we choose when to twist the passages in the bible to come up with solution to the blatant errors in it. If the old testament was indeed set into its place by God's word, why then, do we need so many human interpretations?
There is no God. Life is short. Don't waste your time.
Thank you.
Evil does not exist. It has not reality as a thing. It is a deformation of the will that turns away from God.
Sin is not making one choice rather than another, it is a motion of the heart and will away from God and towards the self.
Therefore it was possible for Lucifer to fall into sin, just as it is possible for us to sin, but also for us to be responsible for our own sin, since we ourselves choose to turn away from God.
I am not sure why you post here, in an obviously Christian forum, but may God bless your seeking.
Father Peter
JEHOVAH was the one who tempted Satan and made him fall into sin. He not only tempted him but he made him sin also (cause he controls every living thing in the Universe -- angels, humans, animals).
i have to disagree.....
Angels have free-will as humans. that's what brought them to destruction.
and Lucifer tempted Lucifer.
that's the easiest way to put it..
this is actually the first time that i have ever heard that the devil is the only cause of sin, i'm pretty sure we all temp ourselves, it wouldn't be fair to act like full on victims being toyed by the Devil and God.
We have free will, God di not create robots, and we don't sin because lucifer fell from Heaven, if the fall of Lucifer hadn't happened, and the fall of man hadn't happened and we were all living in heaven....sin and temptation would still always be an option...
wait...right???
also...who is this Jehovah???????????
also...who is this Jehovah???????????
Jehovah is the english word for "Yahwah" يهوة or also in english "Yahweh." It's a name given to God in the Old Testament in Hebrew. In NKJV, when it was translated from the original Hebrew language, they translated "Yahweh" or "YHWH" to be "LORD" not as "Lord" which is originally "Elohim"
just imagine it...why would lucifer settle forrr just being an angel when he could try and battle God
i mean..it's obviously no doubt a horrendous idea...but...that's what pride does..eh?
and reallly...we all do it every single day.
true we are not actually in Heaven, but we know that we can end up there if we follow the simple "rules" outlined in the Bible, yet we break them on a daily basis. righhtt?? seems like the situation to me...
Just as there was the possibility of Adam and Eve falling into sin, even though there was no necessity that this occur, so there was always the possibility of the angelic beings falling away from life and light, and in the case of some of the angelic host this certainly took place.
Temptation does not always come from an external personal agency such as Satan and his demonic horde. But in the case of created beings there is always the possibility that even the enjoyment of good can become a temptation to evil. The Lives and Sayings of the Desert Fathers provide many examples of holy men who fell into sin, and into utter ruin, even after a lifetime of growth in the monastic life.
Even in the monasteries there are tensions, and causes of temptation that we are not aware of as occasional visitors. Just as when we visit another family it often appears that everyone there has perfect relations with each other, and yet in private there are many causes of temptation and even sin. Much of this is much more subtle than perhaps we struggle with. We may fight against erupting into anger all the time, but a monk might be aware that a slight movement of irritation is an indicator that he is not yet perfect and is still brought to anger. Now in terms of sin even the slight fall into irritation is death for the soul, and the slightest movement of pride is death to the angelic spirit.
The fall of Satan was not a necessity, but it is in the nature of created beings to lack stability apart from union with God, and God allows us space, both mankind and the angelic host, to make choices, to grow into union. Many of the angels never fell away and have been rewarded with incorruptibility and stability in God, but the possibility was there for all of the angelic host to fall, and it is to their credit that they chose God. We should remember that our guardian angel could have fallen into sin and yet chose not to, and we should seek their aid to sustain us in our efforts to resist the temptation to fall into greater sin.
Father Peter
Wayfairer