“I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High” (Isaiah 14:14).

These are two of the “I will’s” of Satan—or Lucifer—as he aspired to usurp the throne of God as ruler of the universe (see Isaiah 14:12–15; Ezekiel 28:11–17). Not content to be “the anointed cherub,” the highest of the angelic hierarchy (Ezekiel 28:14), he wanted to be God, and this monstrous pride became “the condemnation of the devil” (I Timothy 3:6), so that he is now “fallen from heaven” and will soon be “brought down to hell” (Isaiah 14:12,15).

Lucifer, of course, is not the Creator, for he was “created” (Ezekiel 28:15) himself. It would seem therefore that for him to rationalize his ambition to be like the most High, he must somehow persuade himself that he is like the most High—that is, that God is a created being like himself, and thus can be defeated. He only had God’s word that he had been created by Him, and he evidently chose not to believe what God said (just as do multitudes of men and women today).

He, like they, chose rather to believe that the eternal cosmos had somehow created them all by its own powers. The great cosmos (call it Mother Nature, perhaps) has “created” spirit beings, as well as men and women, and all the worlds inhabited by them. In this scenario, the true Creator God is viewed as only one of many. Therefore He is vulnerable to defeat—or so Satan evidently believes.

Thus Lucifer became the first evolutionist, and this great lie by which he deceived himself became the basis of his later deception of Eve and then of the founders of all the varied pantheistic religions of the world, as well as modern evolutionism and New Age philosophies. Nevertheless, God is still on His throne, and “the Lamb shall overcome them: for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings” (Revelation 17:14). HMM