OK. I need your help. My oldest daughter is at the point where she is making her "faith" her own. No longer is God the God of her parents, he is becoming real for HER. This is wonderful on most levels, but it has it's fair share of difficult moments. It's hard to watch her wrestle with the same things that I did when I chose to "really" follow God. Many questions are arising and we have been doing a LOT of talking. Most questions are pretty typical (if God is real, why do bad things happen to Christian's, etc). I like apologetics, so I can handle most of what she asks, but she stumped me today. SO, any of you that have an answer (especially you pastor's wives) HELP!
Here it is:
"If heaven is perfect, and there is no pain and suffering, how did the angels fall?"
Thanks! ~Karlie
Friday, July 20, 2007
Tough Kid Questions
Posted by ConservaChick at 12:12 AM
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15 comments:
Wow, good question. The great thing about following God is it's OK to not have it ALL figured out and still have a few questions. And I don't think God is a bit offended.
(I know I didn't really answer the question. Sorry, I'm a vague un-answerer. :o>)
This is sort of a short/basic answer but I would say: they still had the opportunity to choose for themselves if they would submit to God or try to live their way, by glorifying themselves. When we trust in Jesus, we are choosing for ourselves.
Anyone...Anyone...Bueller?
{Fade to black as the crickets chirp loudly}
LOLOLOL!
Ummm, I'm going to go with maybe the heaven we will get to live in is not where angels fell from?
Not a clue.
Being a pastor's wife means squat.
I have no idea. Why do the angels long to look into the redemption of Christ? There is so much that we can not grasp. God is so much bigger than our mind can grasp. I want to make God in terms I understand and spiritual things don't always fit into my realm of understand. Sorry I guess I'm not much help.
My seven year old asks me these types of questions all the time, I think maybe I should be scared of what he will ask when he is a teenager.
Shari
The Garden of Eden was perfect, man walked physically with God, only had one rule, etc... but man had free will to choose...and chose evil. Angels did the same thing in a perfect environment with perfect communion with God. God decided to take free will away from angels to chose to obey or disobey. I'll find the reference to this, but it looks like you have it.
That's all I can think of !!
~Heather
well, I am not feeling too brainy at the moment, but I know I have pondered this too. I have not researched scripture to give you at the moment, but I think that it has to do with free choice. This is a great question. "If heaven is perfect"...we know that we are created above the angels and I dont' think that we will be kicked out of heaven, but I don't know exactly where things stand with the angels. There must be some differences. This is making me think!
Thanks for all the great feedback! Heather, I think I'll share your comment with my daughter. Cindy... LOVED your comment... no answers, but a good laugh is worth more! Thanks again ALL of you!
I found myself wondering why she wanted to know the answer to this. Is she worried that heaven maybe isn't "perfect?" Or that if the angels fell, could she fall, also? I don't know why, these questions just popped into my head. As a homeschool mom, I'm used to always trying to find the answer to questions but one day, I realized that there are questions, especially spiritual ones, that I just can't answer. For those questions, my answers are either, "I don't know, when I find the answer, I'll let you know" (or we can find it together) and "We have finite minds - we can't possibly fathom some of the mysteries of the Bible, heaven and God. Some things we'll need to find out when we get to heaven." And that's where faith comes in. We have to have enough faith to believe, even when the answer isn't there at the moment. I hope you don't mind all this pondering. I generally don't think much about angels so this was an interesting question. You could (and probably do) pray with your daughter for the Lord to provide the answers she seeks. God bless!
Kate
Hi Karlie;
Well it is perfect(heaven) , but Lucifer had free will and made the decision to rebell against God. One third of the angels also decided to rebel (think about it, why do people who have beauty, money, all that life has to offer, end up with their lives a MESS?the old free will problem and SIN vs. holiness)
God is righteous...totally holy, he requires destruction of everything he created that rebelled (s) against Him. Simple forgiveness would violate his holiness.
Not sure if this will satisfy your daughter- hope it helps
HUGS
Kimmie
mam to 6
one homemade and 5 adopted
ps- being that God is the only one without sin... this suggests that even the angels "can" chose evil over good or wrongdoing over right.
A good article to read from Answers in Genesis on this topic is Who was the serpent?
One section in particular to read is under "Where did Satan come from?" where the writer says "God has chosen not to tell us very much about the origin and apostasy of Satan. From the Bible we learn that he is the chief of the fallen angels (called demons or devils), and is the great adversary of God and man (Job 1:6–12; 2:1–6; 1 Peter 5:8)."
I hope this helps.
Sorry...meant to include the entire segment of the author's quote:
"God has chosen not to tell us very much about the origin and apostasy of Satan. From the Bible we learn that he is the chief of the fallen angels (called demons or devils), and is the great adversary of God and man (Job 1:6–12; 2:1–6; 1 Peter 5:8).
He fell through pride (1 Timothy 3:6), and we deduce that this event must have been after the sixth day of creation, when God 'saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good' (Genesis 1:31), and before the Fall of man, recorded in Genesis 3.
Concerning his present abode, it is incorrect to think of Satan as the 'ruler of Hell', as the Bible makes no such reference. Rather, Jesus called him 'the prince of this world' (John 12:31: 14:30; 16:11), and the Bible also calls him 'the god of this world' [or 'age'] (2 Corinthians 4:4), and 'the prince of the power of the air' (Ephesians 2:2). It speaks of Satan 'going to and fro in the earth, and . . . walking up and down in it' (Job 2:2;1 Peter 5:8), and of his activity 'in the heavenly places' [or 'realms'] (Ephesians 6:11–12)."
Love your daughter! She's well on her way to encountering God for herself.
Well, I haven't blogged since Feb!! And when I went through my friends list on HSB I saw you were gone, and I was sad. So I've found you. I clicked back over a couple of times to make sure that was you, but it is! Nice to find you again.
Angela
FruitfulFamily
Well I was always taught that Lucifer (Gods son)was jealous of God and rebelled. That he sewed discontentment and rebellion in the other angels. Which they were cast out for, and were given this time to reign here on earth instead (Being that Lucifer is God's son). However, that is why God is allowing us to be tried here on earth, to prove the souls that are true hearted and desire to serve Him, so that they can make Heaven their home. That the time of EVERYONE living there was no more. Only the souls who proved themselves to God, here on earth, would find a place in Heaven, to never have war again there.
I have enjoyed reading all the comments.
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