Luke 10:18

He replied, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven".

That line is starting to sound very Blade Runner to me. But moving on.

I've been thinking a lot lately about this one legend I knew. It started when a good friend was asking whether Satan is actually an angel - a good question. I don't know where that belief comes from. We can see from the verse above that he is from heaven, and he is a fallen being, but it's not angels alone that occupy heaven.

This legend I know goes something like this: God created Adam and Eve. And he said "hey my head angels, come check out what I did. Pretty cool huh. Now bow."
And Gabriel and Michael were all like "yay God! Your creation is awesome and we will bow to it!"
But Satan took offense at this abomination that was created after him, and refused to bow to it. Michael was all like "hey Satan maybe you should be careful... I mean, God told us to bow" and Satan was like "I don't care what God tells us to do!"

Hence the fall happened.

I don't know where I learnt this. It's a rough approximation of Islamic scripture, as I found out today - you can find out more about it here, here and here.

Like I said, I've been thinking about this passage a bit. Even more so with reading Luke 10:18, and Peter repeating it in his sermon on Sunday. The fact that it's of Islamic origin kinda makes my following musings farfetched, but bear with me. It's interesting.

Jesus was obviously around when Satan fell, yet the fall was pre-humanity (that is, Jesus's humanity). And we believe that God is all-knowing, right? So for Satan to refuse to bow down to created man - the form that Jesus would take upon himself - would be a refusal to bow down to God.

I think I would like to know about how Satan feels about Jesus. Because if the above scenario did touch on truth (unlikely; it has no founding outside the Qu'ran and I just came to conclusions myself) then it reveals one of the biggest mistakes in history. A lack of awareness of the things God has planned, a refusal to do his will, to trust him. I don't think an omniscient Satan makes sense. How could you know you were going to lose and still rebel? (Sounds a bit like Norse religion, ne?)

But that's as far as those musings get me. Interesting, nonetheless.

On a side note, seeing I've brought up Norse mythology--

Today one of my friends corrected someone in class for saying B.C. and A.D., as it is now officially (really? not sure. think it depends on the organisation really...) B.C.E. and C.E. for the purposes of avoiding religious slanting. But if we rename our dating system--should we not also rename the days of the week, lest we appear to be aligned with Norse gods? Thor's-day? Odin's-day?

What do you think?