The Bible: Ezekiel 25-28

This is the first week after the Bible movie on History Channel culminated.  And like I said, I want to continue this new trend of visualizing the Bible.  I happen to be reading Ezekiel this week and read chapters 25-28 today.

In chapter 25, Ezekiel denounces Moab, Philistia, and Ammon.

The next three chapters is a long lament over Tyre and Sidon in the country of Phoenicia. In chapter 28, this is the chapter that people interpret to mean that Satan started out as an angel, became arrogant, and God threw him out of heaven.

Now that I've read verses 11-19, I do now see that interpretation.  I think most of those chapters really are about the Phoenicians and their arrogance.  But verses 11-19 of chapter 28 specifically mention Eden and a person falling from heaven's height. 

I struggle with this because there is no obvious passage that tells us the origin of Satan.  It's alluded to when prophets denounce prosperous nations who have turned their backs on God. 

While those passages are vague, Genesis 1-3 are very specific that God created a beautiful and perfect world with no flaws, death, sickness, thorns, or pain.  All that occurred as a curse to the earth when Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree.  To blindly follow the secular scientists who were not there when the earth was created and more than the creationists were, and try to harmonize absolute contradictions of long ages of death and suffering before man even existed is to destroy the Gospel and our faith in a God who is truly good.

But here is what I know: The earth is not old.  Adam and Eve really did eat fruit God told them not to eat.  Eve really was prompted by Satan speaking through a serpent.  Satan is a real being who really is the source of all evil which will all be destroyed when Christ returns to earth.

So, God created a perfect world.  But in his wisdom, he allowed Satan to live there as a chance for his two new humans to truly decide between right and wrong, between following God's Word or following their hearts.  These were the only people ever created who had free will.  No one else has had it since then.

So we can rule out the possibility of tragedy before Adam sinned.  But we can also see that God always planned on man sinning and sending his Son to live and die in their place, and then to rise from the dead showing that evil is only a passing trend.

Why did God plan this?  He never told us.  He never really made a clear story of Satan's fall either, though it is between the lines.  God revealed enough to us that we needed to know, but there is no more we need to know.  We simply must trust that he has the only authority to define a day and that the earth was truly his prize creation and that death and evil are not natural.  They are just here for a time in God's wisdom.  We must only remain at Jesus's feet in awe at his wisdom and generosity.