If God knew that Satan would turn bad, why did he create him?

Wow, that is an awesome question! The truth is that no one knows why God does certain things. When God initially created Satan, Satan’s name was Lucifer and he was an archangel. In fact, he was the equivalent of God’s second-in-command. Lucifer was the most beautiful angel and he was given a lot of power. His job was to take care of God’s glory.

But, then Lucifer became prideful and thought he could do the job just as well as God could do it. So he tried to take over heaven. The problem was: Lucifer was a created being created by God! He only had the power and authority God gave him. God, on the other hand, has always been here and always will be here and He is all-powerful, all-knowing and ever-present. There was no way Lucifer could win.

I suppose God could have just destroyed Lucifer right then and there but, instead, he cast him down and, sadly, also threw one-third of the angels out of heaven that decided to align themselves with him. And ever since that time, Satan has been corrupting this earth and God’s people through sin.

God has allowed Satan to live and roam the Earth and let bad things to happen And, for the record, let me just say that God could take Satan out anytime that He chooses, if he wanted to, but that God has a greater unstoppable plan in store for us. In fact, I know God can take Satan out because, eventually, God does get rid of Satan by throwing him in the Lake of Fire.

The real question is why didn’t God do it yesterday or why doesn’t God just do it now??? I mean, if God had gotten rid of Satan yesterday, I wouldn’t be tempted the way I am today, right? The best way to get rid of temptation, it seems to me, is to get rid of the Great Tempter, right??? So, why doesn’t God do that?

Well, the Bible does not directly answer that question. But, here is a truth we do know: God sent His one and only Son to us and it is through His death on the cross that you are saved! And when you put your love, faith and trust in Jesus despite Satan’s lies, tricks and temptations, Jesus’ glory will shine through you and you will be able to overcome anything! “I can do all things through Christ Jesus who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:13)

What are Nephilim? They mention them in the Bible but are they real?

That is a very interesting and awesome question! First off, Nephilim are beings in the Bible that are described in the Book of Genesis, the first book in the Old Testament, as children born from “the daughters of men” and the “sons of God.” (Genesis 6:1-4)

No one really knows who the “sons of God” are; there are many biblical scholars that have theories but the truth is that we really don’t know. At any rate, the Nephilim came into the world during the time just after Adam and Eve but before Noah. They were also described as giants because in the Book of Numbers, in the Old Testament, it says, “We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them." (Numbers 13:33)

So, are they real? We must accept them to be real if we believe the Bible to be true. The Bible cannot be partially true and partially not true. We must believe on faith, just like we believe in angels, that the Nephilim existed. So are they around today? Probably not. There is some speculation that because the “daughters of men” and the sons of God” chose to have children together that God used that to justify the great flood and destroyed the Nephilim.

But, if they are still around today…I think Shaquille O’Neal is one! He’s huge!!! ;)

Why do we have wars and why can’t people just compromise?

Wars have been around since Satan battled God’s angels and was thrown out of Heaven along with a third of the angels that took his side. Wars are a result of sin.

Sin is a state we are born into and, although we try to overcome our sin nature by ourselves, we just can’t do it. That’s why Christ had to die for us. Only by His sacrifice was sin defeated.

And, one of the biggest sins is: PRIDE. When prideful, sinful people can’t get along or can’t agree, that’s when wars occur. They are just too stubborn and prideful to give in and compromise.

If God says in Thessalonians that he’s going to call people to heaven, why does he say in Revelation that demons are going to kill a third of mankind?

Wow! Awesome question!

I started by finding the verses I think you were asking about. Here they are:

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

Revelation 9:14-19
14It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates." 15And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. 16The number of the mounted troops was two hundred million. I heard their number.
17The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur. 18A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths. 19The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury.

At first, this does seem a bit confusing, so let’s break this down and understand it. First, do you see that in Thessalonians God is calling people to heaven, but in Revelation it is again God who has sent the angels (even though they may be evil angels) to destroy a third of mankind?! Is that even more surprising, or what? (That’s important to understand, though … read on …)

In order to understand the Bible correctly, we have to understand that God gave these words to us and – because this is how awesome God is – one part of the Bible will agree with another part of the Bible. It becomes our job to understand it correctly! In order to do that, one of the things we have to understand is the “context” of the verses we are reading. Go grab a dictionary and look up the word, “context.” (go do that right now, and then finish reading this.)

So you see that “context” means the words, and sentences, and even the story that comes before and after the verse we are reading, AND (and this is very important) it affects the meaning and our understanding. If I tell you to go ahead and pick out a shirt to wear, but I don’t tell you whether we are going to a funeral or a football game, then you can easily pick out the wrong shirt (and obviously you would want a different shirt for those two times.) It would help if I gave you the “context” of why you needed to grab another shirt, right?

OK, back to Thessalonians and Revelation … what is the context of those verses? Take a few minutes right now to read the verses that come before and after the verses we are talking about (take a minute to do that right now …)

Here’s what’s going on with those two letters:

In 1 Thessalonians: the apostle Paul, Silas and Timothy have visited Thessalonica, a Greek city, on one of their missionary journeys. They started a church there, and many of the people who came to that church did not know God. The people there were enthusiastic about getting to know God, but they also had a lot of questions. And they didn’t always come up with the right answers!

Paul wrote back to that church (that’s the letter of 1 Thessalonians) to correct some of the errors they had made. One of the main issues he is writing about concerns what happens to people who believe in God when Jesus returns. You see, Paul was worried that the church there (because it was so young) would abandon their commitment to following Jesus, so Paul is writing to correct them and ALSO to encourage them!

SO – in 1 Thessalonians, the apostle Paul is encouraging new believers in Jesus Christ to hang in there even though things were at times a bit confusing and difficult.

Revelation was written by the apostle John at the very end of his life. John’s purpose was to comfort Christians who were going through really rough times; and Christians were being heavily attacked and persecuted during those days. John is telling his readers that the ultimate victory belongs to Jesus but – as you probably noticed – he uses some pretty wild and imaginative images to get his ideas across. He talks about horses of different colors and lakes of fire and swords coming out of mouths and WOW! how do we understand all that? Well, let’s remember that this letter is intended to comfort people (not to scare them, though the apostle John is not afraid to scare people into trusting Jesus!) and then recognize that this type of writing is called “apocalyptic.” (that’s a big word, but it just describes a kind of writing that uses lots of visions and wild images.) This is a little bit like how The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia stories are also pretty wild, but there are good stories and message there, right? Apocalyptic literature was a style of writing used to encourage people who were really being persecuted. Does that make sense to you?

In these verses in Revelation, Jesus is making it clear that those who don’t follow him (read verse 20 to see what all people were doing!) were going to be separated from him forever – and that sounds way harsh. But the context of this part of the story shows that ultimately God wins, Satan loses, and those who follow Jesus and accept him as their Savior, get to be with him forever. See, that’s the encouraging part that people needed to hear – and that’s the bigger picture that you and I have to understand. If we just see God as this God who is going to slay one third of mankind and we don’t realize that that third is the third that has rejected God, then we wonder if he is a mean God, or if we’re going to get killed like that.

SO – in Revelation, the apostle John is encouraging all believers in Jesus Christ to remain committed to him and to be comforted by the fact that in the end he wins, and Satan loses, even though things were way tough, confusing and difficult right then.

Why did Satan and some of God's angels leave him?

The Bible doesn’t clearly – like without a doubt – answer why Satan and some of God’s angels left God. There are some verses in the Book of Isaiah that start to give us a clue, but honestly, we probably won’t know that answer until we get to heaven.

Isaiah 14:12-15 says this -

"How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once 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 enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.' But you are brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit."

When Satan says he “will ascend to heaven and … make myself like the Most High” it is believed that he sought to rule heaven himself.

These verses are still a little confusing though because Isaiah was speaking specifically about a corrupt nation called Babylon, and not specifically about Satan. He is just making a comparison.

Anyway, Isaiah says God threw (or cast) Satan and the angels that followed him down to the earth! This is probably because Satan chose to do evil rather than worship & serve God. So they didn’t leave heaven as much as God threw them out! Do you see the difference?

Here’s the key - God gives each of his created beings a choice to follow him or to not follow him. If you choose to, you can be with God always – both now when you are alive, and forever. If you chose not to follow him, God allows you to be separated from him always – both now and forever. That’s the kind of love God has for us – he gives us that choice. Believe me, though, he wants you to choose to follow him because he created you, loves you, and wants a relationship with you.

Were the seven angels watching the seven churches once men or not?

What an awesome question! In the simplest terms, no, they were not. You see, angels are created beings just like us. In fact, they are powerful beings created by God to serve Him. They also have served as God’s messengers. In Hebrews 1:14, angels are described as ministering spirits sent to look after human beings.

There is a big misconception where people believe that when we die, we become angels. This is not Biblically correct. We receive “glorified” bodies when we enter Heaven and we live with angels but we do not turn into angels.

BUT, don’t be sad, angels do exist! And there are worker angels and there are angel princes called archangels. Michael, one of only two angels ever mentioned by name in the Holy Bible, is an archangel. Gabriel, the other angel mentioned by name, is the Messenger Angel.

You wanna know what’s really cool? There is some Biblical basis for believing you have a guardian angel! In Matthew 18:10, Jesus seemed to indicate that little children have angels assigned to them for He said, “Their angels always behold the face of God.”

Are angels naked?

Hmmmm…that is a very interesting question. I think the reason you’re asking this is because when God first created Adam and Eve, they were naked and not ashamed. That is because there was no sin in the world so they really didn’t realize they were naked. Heaven is a place without sin so it stands to reason that people could be naked up there too, right?

Well, I am going to go out on a limb and say that I believe that angels will be wearing what everyone else in Heaven is wearing and that is: a white robe.

So where did I get the idea that people will wear white robes in Heaven? Well…

In Revelation 4:4, it says, “Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads.”

In Revelation 6:9-12, it says, “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, "How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?" Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.”

In Revelation 7:9, it says, “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.”

In Revelation 10:1, it says, “Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven. He was robed in a cloud, with a rainbow above his head; his face was like the sun, and his legs were like fiery pillars.”

In Revelation 15:6, it says, “Out of the temple came the seven angels with the seven plagues. They were dressed in clean, shining linen and wore golden sashes around their chests.”

And, finally, the greatest vision that John the Revelator saw…the second coming of Christ!!! What an incredible picture John paints for us in Revelation 19:11-16 when he describes our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, coming back, not as a lamb but as a warrior! Read how John describes it:

“I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. "He will rule them with an iron scepter." He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.”

Whew! Amazing, isn’t it? So, going back to your question…I don’t believe angels are naked for all the reasons stated in the scripture passages listed above.