“The Lord is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works” (Psalm 145:17).
The great controversy between good and evil began in heaven as an outgrowth of love that flourishes only in freedom. When the controversy is over, the universe will have seen a demonstration of this love in such a display that it will prevent another rebellion from ever happening again. Every manifestation of creative power is an expression of God’s love–especially His decision to create intelligent beings who could say No to Him!
Because love freely given is the foundation of true happiness, God desires from all created intelligences the response of love. Because genuine love is loyalty and appreciation, freely offered, God takes no pleasure in forced love or forced obedience.
But Lucifer, the summit of all God’s creation, perverted this freedom and pervasive love. Little by little, Lucifer began to indulge the desire for self-exaltation. He envied one of the Godhead, whom we know today as Jesus. Fellow angels and God, Himself, pled with Lucifer, but he continued to foster deep, strange thoughts. With his extraordinary mind he began to devise a plan to win the allegiance of the angels by insinuating that God was unfair. Lucifer’s big promise was to offer freedom from the “restraints” of God’s government.
God knew that it was necessary for Lucifer’s plans to be developed further and that if He eliminated Lucifer from the universe, angels would immediately believe that Lucifer was right when he charged that God was a power-hungry tyrant.
Herbert Edgar Douglass,
Love Makes A Way, p. 9.
