Have you ever walked into a play or a movie late? If you miss the beginning of a story sometimes the middle and ending can seem really really confusing. Without the first part of the story you might not know who the villains are, who the heroes are, or what any of them are fighting for. The first part of a story usually sets up the stakes - the conflict - that define the rest of the story.
The book of Genesis tells the story of the fall of Adam and Eve, but the account of the fall found in Genesis essentially leaves out the first part of the story. In the book of Moses which is the restored version of Genesis there is an important prologue to the story of the fall found in Moses chapter 4 verses one through 11, and this helps us understand the good guys and the bad guys. Just after setting us up for the story the fall, Moses for employs a flashback that takes us back to the root of the conflict that plays out in the garden of Eden.
We learn to even before Adam and Eve or any of us came to earth there was a great council in heaven. The Father proposed plan. Sometimes when we imagine this scene, we make it seem like there was some kind of election and that Jesus just got more votes than Lucifer so he was chosen as the savior. Instead Moses tells us that Jesus was the Father‘s beloved and chosen from the beginning. Heavenly father didn’t ask for volunteers. He had already chosen Jesus, the only person qualified to act as the savior and is the key figure in the plan.
When Satan said here am I send me he was acting against the wall the father because the father had already chosen Jesus as the savior.
we do get a little bit of Satan sales pitch in these verses however he apparently said that if he was sent instead of Jesus that not one soul would be lost. The passage also says the Lucifer became Satan and that he’s sad to destroy the agency of men. We sometimes summarize this by saying that Satan‘s plan was the force everyone to be righteous but there are problems with oversimplifying his approach in this way.
First there’s no mention of Satan having a plan in any of the scripture passages to talk about the premoral War in Heaven. Satan didn't have a plan. Just empty promises that he couldn’t even fulfill.
Second forced righteousness is a philosophical impossibility. If you have to force someone to commit a righteous act it just isn’t a righteous act. Righteousness is found when we willingly follow God‘s commands. No one can force a person to be righteous because removing our will from the question removes righteousness as well.
So how could same destroyer Agency? There are several things required for Agency to exist.
First for agency to exist they have to be laws that allow us to know good from evil.
Satan can’t destroy the laws but if he ensure that we never knew about them it would seriously limit our power to choose.
We all also have to know about those laws in order to follow them to grow in progress in this life.
If Satan kept us in ignorance about the laws, it would limit our agency. There must also be opposites or opposition in all things. There have to be good and bad choices for Agency to exist. Again Satan can’t take away opposite but he can deceive us into thinking there is no right and wrong and that whatever person feels is right is right.
If we don’t believe in objective good and evil, then our choices don’t have any power to bring about good or evil things in our agency is limited again.
Finally we have power to choose. God empowered Adam and Eve when he explained the laws they have a follow in the garden of Eden. He also told them they were free to choose. All along the way God was giving them knowledge to allow them greater Agency, while Satan was covering up and blurring the truth in an attempt to deprive them of their agency.
This culture culminated in Satan‘s approach the Eve in the garden. He told a half truth telling her that she would know good from evil like God but lied by saying that she wouldn’t taste of death when she took the fruit.
God wants us to have greater Agency. he’s constantly seeking to give us light and knowledge, increasing our understanding of the laws of the universe, it’s light and darkness, AND helping us on our way to immortality and eternal life.
Satan wants to limit our agency. The only real tool he hast to do this is the blur our perception of the way things really are. They both want us to become like them but God wants us to become beings of light and knowledge while Satan wants us to become like him: a creature of darkness, misery and ignorance
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