Satan Continues Warfare Against Christ on Earth

Lucifer in heaven desired to be first in power and authority; he wanted to be God, to have the rulership of heaven; and to this end he won many of the angels to his side. When with his rebel host he was cast out from the courts of God, the work of rebellion and self-seeking was continued on earth. Through the temptation to self-indulgence and ambition, Satan accomplished the fall of our first parents; and from that time to the present the gratification of human ambition and the indulgence of selfish hopes and desires have proved the ruin of mankind.  — { RH January 16, 1913, par. 3}

Satan’s rebellion shut him out from the courts of heaven; and all who engaged with him in warfare against Christ were cast out with him. The exercise of Satan’s seductive arts against the government of heaven did not cease with his expulsion from the presence of God. Year by year they have grown more deceptive, more subtle, more determined. Every additional evidence rejected increases his power to resist the government of God and of Christ. And every ray of hope resisted helps to create for him and for his followers a hopeless future.  — { 23LtMs, Ms 73, 1908, par. 9}

War came and the result was that Lucifer, with his party, was thrown out of heaven; and thus there has been in our world a rebellious party ever since. Let no man suppose that these angels became saints. Through satanic agencies, the great exaltation of certain ones became united to have a change in the divine order.  — {25LtMs, Ms 90, 1910}

Satan, with associate rebellious angels, having swerved from his allegiance to the Lord God, the only Potentate, was driven from Heaven, and the holy angels who became disloyal and untrue help him as he seeks to conform all things to his image and to infuse his own nature into individuals. Stimulated with hatred against God’s holy law, he approaches man, seeking to gain his attention that he may misrepresent and falsify God. His hellish plots would efface from our world the image of the Divine, and stamp his own hateful, apostate image on the human soul. He could not employ force, but [with] the attention and the will given to him, he can act upon minds. When Satan dissolved relationship with the universe, and the Son of God in particular, he became altogether selfish, and ceasing to be a universal good, he became a universal evil. — {7LtMs, Ms 4, 1891, par. 5}

Satan came with this temptation: ‘If Thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread.’ He tempted Jesus to condescend to give him proof of His being the Messiah, by exercising His divine power. Jesus mildly answered him, ‘It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’ — {EW 155.3; 1882}

Satan was seeking a dispute with Jesus concerning His being the Son of God. He referred to His weak, suffering condition and boastingly affirmed that he was stronger than Jesus. But the word spoken from heaven, ‘Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased,’ was sufficient to sustain Jesus through all His sufferings. I saw that Christ had nothing to do in convincing Satan of His power or of His being the Saviour of the world. Satan had sufficient evidence of the exalted station and authority of the Son of God. His unwillingness to yield to Christ's authority had shut him out of heaven. — {EW 155.4; 1882}

It is a masterpiece of Satan's deceptions to keep the minds of men searching and conjecturing in regard to that which God has not made known and which He does not intend that we shall understand. It was thus that Lucifer lost his place in heaven. He became dissatisfied because all the secrets of God's purposes were not confided to him, and he entirely disregarded that which was revealed concerning his own work in the lofty position assigned him. By arousing the same discontent in the angels under his command, he caused their fall. Now he seeks to imbue the minds of men with the same spirit and to lead them also to disregard the direct commands of God. — {GC 523.1}