Thank you for answering my question. However, you did not answer all of it. If God does not restore the earth to paradise, then has not Satan won? He kept God from fulfilling his purpose, did he not? ~ David Aldridge
Sometimes querists are not satisfied with the answers provided to their inquiries through the pages of Gospel Gazette Online. However, the Gazette is neither a forum for debate nor a discussion list. Consequently, rebuttals to the biblical answers for religious questions posed, as well as subsequent counterpoints to rebuttals usually are not entertained in the pages of the Gazette. We choose, though, to treat this follow up question because, like everything we include in the Gazette, we believe there are some points that may prove useful for our readers.
It is a grievous misunderstanding of spiritual matters to imagine that (1) Satan is victorious over God if God does not “restore the earth to paradise” and (2) God’s primary “purpose” respecting the human experiment is provide mankind an earthly paradise. Also, it is a misrepresentation that the earth was ever the paradise versus God placing a paradise (called the Garden of Eden) on earth. Further, the querist’s acknowledgement that his previous question was answered, for which he offered no complaint other than the above assertion, allows that the previous answer stands, which standing disarms this more recent question before it was asked. Yet, we will respond.
Indeed, Satan did realize many victories in his battle against God, including tempting mankind to sin in the Garden of Eden, from which the original pair was expelled. God, however, also realized many victories, ultimately and finally being victorious, even as prophesied as early as Genesis 3:15. Especially the victorious resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave is an ungetoverable victory over Satan. God wins! The whole Book of Revelation is a volume of God’s ultimate, complete and final victory over Satan. It is very shortsighted and biblically incorrect to assign victory to Satan over God owing to man’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Second, it never was God’s purpose for mankind to spend forever on earth in paradise. This earthy mentality is the same religious error that led the Jews to petition the Romans to crucify Jesus Christ. They were not interested in a spiritual kingdom (John 18:36), but desired a physical kingdom to liberate them from their subjection to the Romans (John 6:15). This misguided earthy mentality, further, underscores the same error among millennialists, for which cause, at all costs, irrespective of what Scripture clearly teaches to the contrary, they feverishly long for paradise on earth.
Instead, God’s eternal purpose appears in brief in Ephesians 3:9-11. God’s purpose was “from the beginning of the world” (Ephesians 3:9) or from “before the world began” (Titus 1:2). That purpose pertained to Jesus Christ (Ephesians 3:9, 11; Titus 1:1), involved the church (Ephesians 3:10), was eternal (Ephesians 3:11) and pertained to eternal life (Titus 1:2). God’s purpose pertains to spiritual matters, not merely earthly habitation.
The earthly habitation that the querist desires would frustrate the true purpose of God, which is spiritual, eternal and heavenly, not earthy. Had Satan been able to prevent Jesus Christ from resurrecting, establishing his church and consequently providing for the redemption of souls from sin, then Satan would have been victorious over God. Satan loses! God wins! Earthly real estate, alias “paradise,” notwithstanding.
