Why Does God Allow This?

Q

We know that God is all powerful. He created the Heavens and the earth. There is nothing that God cannot do. So why did God ever allow the conflict with Satan in the first place? He is going to throw him in the lake of fire in the end anyway. Since He loves us so much, why allow Satan to torture us for a zillion years and then throw him in hell? I have never understood this. Perhaps we are not meant to know??

A

There’s a dimension of God’s relationship with Satan that we’re not made privy to. Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 tell us he’s a created being, and was first among the angels of heaven. He was already a fallen being by the time man arrived on the scene, yet we see him in God’s presence at the beginning of the Book of Job. Colossians 1:16 says all things were created by Jesus and for Jesus, and the language clearly includes Satan. In Jude 9 we’re told that even the archangel Michael didn’t dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, and we know Satan is not expelled from Heaven until the beginning of the Great Tribulation (Rev. 12:9). This is long after the Church is gone, when half of the 70th week is over. Although Satan’s continued existence is a mystery to us, we know that in some way it serves God’s purpose, and because of it God will be glorified. Because when the time comes to confine him it only takes one angel to bind him in chains. (Rev. 20:1-2)

By the way, there are things God can’t do. For example, He can’t overlook sin, He can’t make you love Him, He can’t make you accept the pardon He purchased for you, and He can’t keep you from going to Hell if that’s what you’ve chosen to do.