In response to my June 3 piece—on how God kept Paul's gospel, identified as the "revelation of the mystery," a secret since the world began—a friend emailed, "What I found baffling (perhaps 'silly' is not a good word) was this business of a mystery. Viz., if I am God and I create a race I want to pay me respect and follow my plans, why would I cloak those plans in mystery?"

In a separate thought, he reasoned, "God created Satan. Why would he create something that is pure evil? He is omniscient. He must have foreseen this. He is all omnipotent. He had the power to prevent it."

Understanding who Satan is and what he's up to has everything to do with why God kept a secret to Himself for so long, finally unveiling it through the resurrected Jesus Christ in heaven to the Apostle Paul for everyone—Jew and Gentile—to know exactly what is this "mystery" today that Satan so desperately wants to blind people's minds from.

In Hebrew, the name "Satan" means "adversary," but Satan's original given name was Lucifer, meaning "light-bearer," or "bright one." (FYI: Corrupt modern Bible versions omit or change the name of Lucifer, confusing his identity with Jesus Christ's!)

Next to God, Lucifer was the most perfect creature in the universe. He was given unparalleled wisdom and beauty with unrivaled abilities and privileges. He had the high honor of literally adorning God's presence on His throne, leading all of creation in orchestrated praise and worship of God.

To carry out his exalted position, Lucifer was literally created with a built-in pipe organ and given the intellectual genius to devise wonderful and exciting ways of conducting creation in honoring God.

Not only was he a priest over all creation, overseeing the angelic realm in worship of God, he was a prophet expounding on the things of God and taking God's word to creation.

As this chief administrator responsible only to God, though, Lucifer became enamored with himself and was "lifted up with pride." (I Tim. 3:6)

God's throne sits upon a sea of glass (Rev. 4:6) and Satan took to admiring his reflection, as my pastor, Richard Jordan of Shorewood Bible Church in Rolling Meadows, Ill., explains it. In essence, he marveled at his own beauty and looked around him in the universe and determined, "You know, I'm the most dazzling, beautiful hunk that ever walked. I'm the smartest thing anybody's ever come across. I'm the cat's meow; the top dog. I'm the big shot!"

What transpired represents the origination of sin in the universe—an attitude of self-worship and self-will, challenging the authority of God. As the Lord Himself put it in words to Satan through the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 28:15), "Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou was created, till iniquity was found in thee."

Bible scholar Keith Blades, in his book, "Satan and His Plan of Evil," (available through the website www.enjoythebible.org) explains it this way:

"With a sound similar to the grinding of gears and the screeching of wrenched metal when a piece of finely tuned machinery breaks, so the words, 'till iniquity was found in thee,' shatter the air and tell us something horrible happened inside this exceptional creature. Iniquity was found in him. A perverse violation of God's will and design filled the heart of this creature, and from this point on he is described as a sinning creature who also set himself up as the determined adversary of God."

God had given Lucifer, along with all the angels, the ability to exercise free will and he chose to rebel, leading to his removal by God from his privileged position. At no point did Lucifer seek God's forgiveness for his sin, instead devising a devious plot to overthrow the throne of God as he organized a vast rebellion against God among the angels. He determined to be Satan, or "the adversary of God."

With his new desire to actually take up residence on the throne of God in God's own abode (ascending into the realm above which he already lived as the throne's "covering") and sit and be head of the universe, possessing and ruling over heaven and earth, Satan wanted all of creation to worship and serve him rather than God.

"His original policy was to make God out of himself," says Jordan in a study on tape. "The essence and heart of all idolatry is making the creature equal with the creator and that's Satan's program; that's his lie. . .The lie program all through the Bible has to do with worshipping and serving the creature more than the creator—finding your god among creatures that are made. Ultimately the condemnation of God against the world is simply the result of its failure and refusal to give God Almighty the glory due to Him."

From the outset, Satan was very effective in his revolt in the heavenly domain, gaining converts even in the upper echelons of heaven's governmental structure, eventually leaving Gabriel and Michael as the only two chief princes in the angelic government to stand against him and remain true to God.

To stop this defection from worsening, God created the bottomless pit, or hell, comprised of "everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." (Matt. 25:41) The objective was to create something so devastating and terrifying it would instantly squash any interest any other angelic creatures may have had in following Satan and his plan of evil. The lake of fire, as it's also called, was created before man's arrival and wasn't originally intended to be a place for sinful men to wind up themselves.

As we know from the Book of Genesis, God created man in his own image and likeness to have dominion of the earth and its creatures, thereby executing God's will on and over the planet. The battle between the truth and Satan's lie program was introduced into mankind by Adam in the Garden of Eden.

"Through (man), God's authority as 'the most High, possessor of heaven and earth,' would be established in the earth, along with the recompense of the rightful praise and service due Him," explains Blades in his book. "To Satan, though, in order for him to put his plan of evil into practice, this government structure for the earth would also need to be usurped by him. The dominion of the earth would need to be under his control for him to be 'like the most High.'

"As with the heavenly principalities and powers, so also would this earthly 'prince' (Adam) need to be brought into league with Satan's rebellion, so that Satan could secure for himself the right to exercise his will in the earthly realm."

Hence, Satan, in the subtle guise of the serpent, deceived Eve into disobeying God's command not to partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which had to do with knowing about human good and human evil. When she offered fruit from the tree to her husband, Adam, and they both had eaten of it, sin entered the world.

"Satan wasn't just a snake on his belly crawling up there; he stood in front of Eve as a handsome, beautiful, articulate, attractive, entreating man and there had never been any other man in Eve's life up to that point—she had a challenge at that point," explains Jordan in a taped study. "He says, 'Hey, you'll be like the gods.' You know what he's talking about? He counted himself as a god as well as the Lord and he lies to Eve, telling her she can be like a god. He's talking about the deification of man; taking the creature and elevating him to the place of being equal with God Almighty Himself."

By this clever usurpation, Satan became the "prince of this world" as well as the "prince of the power of the air" (the word "air" refers to the invisible realm of God's creation surrounding us).

"Adam was put on the earth to go out and win back creation from the adversary, being told by God, 'You're a prophet, a priest and a king—go out and have dominion over the earth; go out and win it back!', but Adam got out there and the first encounter he had with the adversary, the adversary just cleaned his plow," explains Jordan. "Man flopped, joining Satan's cause, being lifted up with pride just as Satan was, and for 6,000 years men have followed in the train of their father Adam."

It wasn't until Jesus Christ became a man—or the 'last Adam,' as Paul puts it—and died on the cross at Calvary after being tempted in all points as a man but leading a perfect, sinless life, that the adversary was defeated. The point was Jesus Christ came to earth as a man specifically to win for man what man couldn't win for himself.

By example, there is a direct parallel between what happened to Adam and Eve in Gen. 3 and Satan's unsuccessful tempting of Jesus Christ in the wilderness, as laid out in Matthew 4. Satan, as the prince of both the heavenly and earthly realms, offered Christ "all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them" if He would fall down and worship Satan, but Christ was not the least bit persuaded.

As Blades' points out in his book, Jesus Christ did not dispute Satan's claim that he had dominion over the kingdoms of the world, something Satan gained possession of as a direct result of Adam's sinful fall into rebellion.

To back up a bit, it was also in direct response to Adam's fall that God, in Gen. 3:15, openly declared his plans to repossess the earthly domain for Himself, contending with Satan and producing the "bruising" of his head.

But no mention was made of God's plan to repossess the heavenly places too, which would obviously be necessary for God to restore His authority over all creation and to have Christ sit as the head of "all things," meaning "all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named," according to Paul in Eph. 1:19-22.

This is what God kept a secret to Himself all along precisely to take the cunning, wise Satan in his own craftiness. (I Cor. 3:19)

While Israel would be Christ's agency to reclaim the government of the earth, He needed the "new man," made up of the Body of Christ—or Jews and Gentiles who believe in Jesus Christ as personal Savior—to fill up the positions of governmental authority in the heavenly places, carrying out the business of the heavenly kingdom.

Paul tells us that if the "princes of this world," meaning Satan and his cohorts, had known God's secret plan to establish a "new creation" from redeemed humanity through the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ (by which He would repossess the heavenly places unto Himself), "they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." (I Cor. 2:8)

"The strategic, tactical victory of the wisdom of God took place on that hill outside Jerusalem that we call Calvary," summarizes Jordan in a taped sermon. "Satan entered into Judas and caused Christ to be betrayed into the hands of the Romans, who crucified Him and Satan instigated and orchestrated the crucifixion of Israel's Messiah thinking, 'If I do away with Him, I've done away with the threat,' not knowing God had a plan through the work of His Son at Calvary. . . Satan literally did the one thing that became his complete and total undoing.

"It's sort of like God ambushed him, but you see Satan's swagger was, "Nobody can ambush me. Any secret, I can figure it out. You can't trick me.' And what was on display was God's wisdom, being that He was willing to give Himself up for you and me in order to provide redemption for us. Satan would have never have figured that out. He doesn't understand love. He doesn't understand grace. You see what's on display today is the wisdom of God and that's what we put on display when we put the life of Christ on display."

In short, by simply keeping secret what He intended to accomplish through Jesus Christ's death, burial and resurrection, God, as Paul tells us, "spoiled principality and power," making a "shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it." (Col. 2:15)

Editor's Note: Next I will address what Satan is doing today, especially through apostate Christian churches and preachers (his ministers "transformed as the ministers of righteousness," as Paul calls them in II Cor. 11:15) and how he will ultimately manifest himself as the anti-christ in Israel.