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Joseph Francis Alward The
King James Bible makes it clear that the New Testament writers believed the being
called Lucifer who fell from heaven to hell in Isaiah is the same being
called Satan that fell from heaven to hell in Revelation. |
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The King James Bible teaches
that the being referred to as Lucifer in Isaiah 14 is the same as the being
called the Devil, or Satan, in Revelation.
Here is the evidence: Old Testament Reference to
Lucifer
In the King James version of the
Old Testament, there is only one reference to a being falling from heaven,
and it is called Lucifer: Hell from beneath is moved for
thee to meet thee at thy coming…How art thou fallen from heaven, O
Lucifer…thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. (Isaiah
14:9-16 KJV) The Hebrew word translated as "hell" twice in
the verses above is sheol, and scholars have questioned the accuracy
of this translation. In other places in the Old Testament, sheol was the
place where dead people go—the grave, for example. I don't dispute the claim by some scholars that the proper
translation of sheol in the verses above is "grave," because
it doesn't affect my argument that the King James Bible teaches that Lucifer
fell from heaven to hell. Whether
this teaching is demonstrably false is beside the point. On another point,
note the other attributes of "Lucifer":
New Testament References to Satan
Just like Lucifer in Isaiah, Satan fell from heaven: And there was war in
heaven…Satan was cast out (Revelation
12:7-9)
Satan was cast out into the earth (Revelation 12:9) Note that Satan is cast into
the earth, not onto the earth.
Other Bible versions translate it "to the earth," but just
as the question of whether the KJV translators rendered sheol correctly is irrelevant to my argument, so
is it irrelevant whether the correct translation is "to the earth"
rather than "into the earth."
The fact remains that the KJV teaches that Satan was cast into
the earth, not to it or onto it. Thus, the image we have is of a being
falling from heaven into the bowels of the earth, just like the Lucifer who
fell from heaven to hell. Lest there
be any doubt that New Testament writers would have imagined that hell is
where Satan went, we have the following: And the devil that
deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone (Revelation 20:10)
In the verse below, the Lukan
author tells of Jesus associating a great light with the fall of Satan from
heaven, as would be appropriate for a being whose other name means
"light-bringer": I beheld Satan as
lightning fall from heaven (Luke
10:18) Thus, the Lukan and Revelation
authors describe a Satan which falls from heaven to hell, just as the Lucifer
did in Isaiah, and furthermore the Satan they describe has the same
light-giving property that the name Lucifer represents. Clearly, then authors either thought the
two beings were one and the same, or at least that the Isaiah Lucifer
prefigured the appearance of a Lucifer by another name, Satan. Thus, the name Satan is just
another name for the being called Lucifer in the King James Bible, and so it
was Lucifer who was thrown from heaven in Revelation. Ralph Nielsen, in a March 24, 2004, communication to Farrell Till's
biblical errancy discussion forum, tells us that
in a letter to the editor of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News (Moscow ID,
Pullman WA), he wrote, Bill Tozer says that God threw Lucifer and
his followers out of heaven. I will pay $1,000 to anybody who can show me
where the Bible says that. I think it is clear that the King James Bible teaches
that Lucifer and Satan are two different names for the same being. Thus, the
Bible does indeed say that God threw Lucifer out of heaven, and Nielsen
should pay Tozer his $1000. |
