SATAN FALLING FROM HEAVEN LIKE LIGHTNING?
May 30, 2019
READ TIME: 1-2 minutes
“Dave, what did Jesus mean in Luke 10:18 when He said that He saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning?”
Christ, an omnipresent being, was certainly present when Satan fell in the remote past (Isaiah 14:12-15; Ezekiel 28:12-17). Therefore, Christ’s divine power over Satan remains a fixed, settled, and certain reality. Also, Jesus reminds His disciples that any power or victory that they were presently exercising over demons (Luke 10:17) had been delegated to them from Him (Luke 10:19). Moreover, because of His power over Satan (Luke 10:18), His disciples should rejoice that the ultimate victory is His and they are eternally secure in Him (Luke 10:20). In other words, Christ is here merely using a past event (Satan’s fall) as a springboard for teaching present spiritual lessons concerning humility as one exercises delegated authority and walks in joy over the certitude of their eternal security.
In v. 19, Jesus’s authority belonged to Him because He had expelled Satan from heaven at the time of his original fall (Luke 10:18; compare Ezekiel 28:12-17 with Isaiah 14:12-15).
In v. 18, Jesus was not speaking of Satan being cast out at that precise moment, but that his power had been broken and that he was subject to Jesus’s authority.
The notion that Christ was referring to a past fall of Satan as opposed to some event taking place at that precise moment in Christ’s ministry seems confirmed by the fact that subsequent Scripture in no way indicates that Satan’s grip on planet earth or humanity had in any way lessened due to his alleged fall in Luke 10.
If Luke 10:18 is a record of a fall of Satan during Christ’s ministry, then why did Jesus later on in His ministry in John 12:31 indicate that Satan’s defeat, with the Savior’s death and resurrection, was still an imminent and yet future event? Satan will someday be cast into the lake of fire to suffer eternal torment (Revelation 20:10).
Therefore, as Jesus was continuously reflecting upon the one-time past fall of Satan, He applied the spiritual lessons there gleaned to the circumstances of the seventy-two by reminding them that their power over demons was a merely a delegated power and that they should rejoice in the fact that they had been given the promise of eternal security from an omnipotent God.
Source Used
Woods, Andrew M. The Coming Kingdom: What Is the Kingdom and How Is Kingdom Now Theology Changing the Focus of the Church? Grace Gospel Press. Kindle Edition, chapter 16.