A Tragic Change, January 4

“He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” John 8:44^L.

Once Satan was in copartnership with God, Jesus Christ, and the holy angels. He was highly exalted in heaven and was radiant in light and glory that came to him from the Father and the Son, but he became disloyal and lost his high and holy position as “covering cherub.” He became the antagonist of God, an apostate, and was excluded from heaven.... He invited all the powers of evil to rally about his standard, in order to form a desperate companionship of evil to league against the God of heaven. He worked perseveringly and determinedly to perpetuate his rebellion, and to cause members of the human family to turn from Bible truth, and to stand under his banner.

As soon as the Lord through Jesus Christ created our world and placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Satan announced his purpose to conform to his own nature the father and mother of all humanity, and to unite them with his own ranks of rebellion. He was determined to efface the image of God from the human posterity, and to trace his own image upon the soul in the place of the divine image. He adopted methods of deception by which to accomplish his purpose. He is called the father of lies, an accuser of God and of those who maintain their allegiance to God, a murderer from the beginning. He put forth every power at his command to win Adam and Eve to cooperate with him in apostasy, and succeeded in bringing rebellion into our world....

Through generation after generation, from age to age, Satan has gathered human agencies through whom to work out his diabolical purposes, and to bring about the enforcement of his plans and devices in the earth. The great putrid fountain of evil has been continually flowing through human society. Though unable to expel God from His throne, Satan has charged God with satanic attributes and has claimed the attributes of God as his own.... Through his serpentine sharpness, through his crooked practices, he has drawn to himself the homage that human beings should have given to God, and has planted his satanic throne between the human worshiper and the divine Father.—Manuscript 39, 1894 (The Review and Herald, April 14, 1896).