Jamin Bradley

The story of Satan’s fall is told in several ways, but the general narrative remains the same. In Ezekiel 28, he’s described as a wise and beautiful cherub who lived in Eden. But once his pride went to his head, he sinned and was cast to the ground. Isaiah 14 explains this pride further, telling us that Satan tried to ascend the “Mount of Assembly” where God ruled from, and overtake his throne. Satan’s attempt to transcend to the highest place had him cast down to the lowest place—not just the ground, but the world underneath the ground: the realm of the dead.

In Genesis 3, Satan’s attempt to take God’s throne is pictured as him convincing humans to choose to follow him. There he is in Eden, perhaps assigned to guard the sacred space of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge, but instead, he’s found welcoming humans to eat from it. It’s not too jarring to find Satan looking like a snake here since other divine guardian beings like seraphim are often thought to be firey, winged snakes. But the Hebrews pictured Satan in this animal-like form for another symbolic reason: this specific animal has had its legs cut off and forced to the ground.

This little-g-god has done humanity and the earth incredible damage. Satan may have been sentenced to the lowest place of the underworld for his crime, but he remains a powerful being there. Because he won humanity over to his will, he was allotted the power of death, sentencing all dead humans to his reign—until Jesus took the power of death away from him during his three-day tour of the underworld. Since Jesus never sinned, he didn’t belong with Satan, nor was he subject to the death that was a punishment for sin.

Satan is cast to the ground over and over again when Christians cast out demons, cultivate Heaven on Earth, do good works, perform miracles by the power of the Holy Spirit, and share the gospel. For as Satan’s kingdom is destroyed and people are liberated from his grasp, Jesus declares that he “saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” all over again. And so we work to keep him down. For on the day of Har Magedon, Satan will try to ascend the Mount of Assembly again and take God’s throne. But there he will run into Jesus, whose simple judgments will make an end of him once and for all.