Editorial February 22, 1947 Issue

Satan's Fall from Heaven

Paul Stark Seeley

Christ Jesus had a trenchant way of stating his thoughts, and an impressive originality in his form of expression. Incisively he presented his ideas with a rare economy of words, but with great depth of meaning.

To the seventy who had just returned from their successful healing mission he stated in graphic phrase what had been taking place in his thought. Let us weigh his words: "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven" (Luke 10: 18). Although the physical explanation of lightning was not then known, Jesus' hearers well knew the almost instantaneousness with which lightning bolts fell from the heavens.

The Master used this simile to picture the complete separateness of Satan—all evil—from the all-ness of God, which the Christ-idea had revealed to his consciousness. The same thought of evil's complete unrelatedness to Truth's creation, or God's heaven, was voiced by Jesus' trusted disciple, John, in Revelation, thus: "Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven" (Rev. 12:7, 8).

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