If you haven't read my article “The TRUE Plan Of The Holy Days”, stop right here; don't bother reading any more because nothing I'm about to say will make any sense to you. It'll sound like I'm making all of this up. Furthermore the article “Saul, Satan, and Samuel” is absolutely fundamental to understanding this article. Seriously, if you haven't read those the rest of this might as well be written in Swahili. That said...

When was Satan Created? Can we know? To be fair, the Bible does not say “Satan was created 12,535,631 years ago on December 25”. In fact, if the answer is in there at all it is so obscure that to my knowledge no one has ever even attempted to answer the question; come to think of it, many great men have made the (foolish) claim that the Bible did not contain that information.

Men should be careful saying what the Bible doesn't contain. At least until they have explained the significance of every sacrifice, every almond, every bell and pomegranate in the temple. If you're reading this, you probably know that I have an affinity for explaining allegories. My articles on the Brazen Serpent, Geography of Salvation, Rachel and Leah, Miriam and Moses, the Tree of Life and things like that in terms of the plan of God, showing that each of these things were “written for our admonition”, and were “examples for us”. They were types of other things. And while the Hebrews did wander in the wilderness, they were also fulfilling a picture of the plan of the lifetime of the Christian; and crossing over the Jordan into the promised land, while it literally happened, was a picture of the resurrection.

I am beginning to believe that the entire Old Testament, if not the whole Bible, is written in such symbols to explain vast segments of the plan of God. Symbols which have until now been locked from almost everyone, but which allowed Paul to make strange connections like “for this Hagar (Abraham's Concubine) is Mount Sinai” (Galatians 4:25). Or that Israel was baptized in the red sea and at Sinai (1 Corinthians 10). Or that Levi paid tithes to Melchizedek while in the loins of Abraham (Hebrews 7). That sort of thing.

Forgive the preamble, but what I'm about to explain is buried so deep in the Bible that to my knowledge no one has ever even attempted to provide an answer that is more than a guess. So you need to understand the background here. I must beg your patience as I will be indulging in speculation at times, but it will be kept as closely confined as possible and supported by scripture, or at least solid logic, at every possible point. That said, let's start with the facts...

God has a rule about Sin. A rule that He spoke to Adam.

Genesis 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for IN THE DAY that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

God in this verse bound Himself to do two things. To kill anyone who sins (Romans 6:23) ... And to kill them within a specified time period. Most people overlook the latter, but it is very clear that IN THE DAY that you sin, you die.

But Satan told Eve that she wouldn't die. As we know she decided to risk it, ate the fruit, gave it to Adam, and then they waited. The sun went down. The day was over! They weren't dead! Satan was RIGHT! Right? God had said that when they ate the fruit, they would die that same day. They didn't die the same day they ate the fruit. So was God wrong? Did God change His mind, after the words had scarcely left His lips? Was He bluffing?

2 Peter 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Now it so happens that, while some came mighty close, no man has ever lived more than a thousand years; which is like one day to God. So Adam and Eve weren't struck by lightning that night – but they did die before the sun set on that symbolic, thousand year day. So while it at first appeared – and Adam and Eve no doubt believed – that God had lied and Satan had been right, that they “would not surely die”, God meant exactly what He said. Just not in the way they assumed He meant it.

I've understood that for a long time. But something else bugged me. The wages of sin is death – death for you, death for me, death for anyone. And not only death, but death in the same day that we sin. We all die symbolically every day, as Paul said He did (1 Corinthians 15:31), and that death which we should die is paid for every night by the symbol of the evening sacrifice; but we literally die in the same thousand years in which we sin, which is a “day” to God.

So does this not apply to Satan? Clearly the wages of sin do apply to Him, as Revelation 20, Ezekiel 28, and Isaiah 14 show us. So is not God equally obligated to deal with his sin “in the day that He sins”?

With men it makes sense; we all die within a thousand year day. But Satan has outlived many thousands of years already, even if created as late as the time of Adam. This is an inconsistency. The Bible tells us that a day means a day. A day also means a year. And a day also means a thousand years. All those are explicitly in the Bible. So why must it stop there? At this point I must extrapolate and say why can't there be a bigger “day” to God? I mean, to keep track of eternities as God must do, a thousand years is nothing to him; why not a bigger number? 10,000? 100,000? 100,000,000?

A day is merely a cycle of on and off; light and darkness. A cycle which God specifically created for our planet, and which He intends to continue to use indefinitely (Jeremiah 33:20, 25). God clearly looks at a year as a cycle exactly like a day; likewise a millennium.

Consider how God set up the cycle of Pentecost. Counting is begun on Sunday, seven weeks are counted, and the next day is Pentecost, meaning “count fifty”. So seven days make a week; seven weeks (plus one day) make a Pentecost cycle. And there are – approximately – seven Pentecost cycles in a year, although none are mentioned in the Bible, but it is obvious that 7x50=350 days.

This cycle is important to God because once a year is built out of that cycle of 7x7+1x7, he used it again in the cycle for the Jubilee where he counted weeks of years. Seven weeks of seven years plus one and you have a Jubilee cycle of fifty years. Ten such cycles gives you 500 years, and twenty makes 1,000.

In the plan of the holy days, I showed that God also uses that plan to keep track of weeks of 1,000 year days; after the millennium, seven weeks of resurrections, each of them containing a millennial sabbath, followed by the fulfillment of Pentecost when God finally dwells with man; at which point the 50,000 year cycle of saving mankind is finished.

After seeing “Jubilee” patterns in so many places, you might say I see Jubilees behind every bush, because I got to thinking one day; the Jubilee cycle in the Bible always kept going. Building, as I just showed, in to larger and larger jubilees through the action of 7x7+1. So if this was one Jubilee cycle for the second resurrection, presumably there would be another Jubilee cycle to do... well, whatever it is we will work on next.

But here is the key; if there is a 50,000 year Jubilee cycle in the plan of the holy days that begins the day after the millennium... why would there not be another Jubilee cycle before the second resurrection – what if we are, now, in a Jubilee cycle that is nearly complete?

With that thought, I started building again. A day is specifically made out of an evening, and a morning. Or rather, a darkness and a light portion. Which are ideally equal. But the darkness always comes first, which is rather strange since I would have started a new day at dawn, as many cultures did. So why put the darkness first?

As these days build up into weeks, and the weeks build up into jubilees, the jubilees build up into years, which are themselves a type of day. The years build up into weeks, then jubilees, and ten jubilees makes 500 years; two of those make one thousand year day. Thousand year days build up into weeks, jubilees, and then... why not a day? What if the 50,000 year Jubilee is merely half of a 100,000 year day?

If that idea is right, then we have two divisions of the hundred thousand year day; the evening, or former part was 50,000 years; then dawn came and there was light for 50,000 years. Together they make one day, which in theory should make up a 700,000 year week, then a 5,000,000 year jubilee, then a … well, then an eternity. I don't think the concept has an end.

So according to that premise, there was darkness for 50,000 years, a period of dawn, when the darkness began to lift, and then a light for 50,000 years. Which would fit very nicely if Satan ruled the dark – he who now is the god of this world, and has been since we-don't-know-when – and then Christ will rule the light and chase away the shadows left by the darkness. And the dawn period in the interim corresponds to when the “light of the world” was born (John 9:5). Fits nicely, doesn’t it?

*****

Ok, that's half the story. That reasoning is... well, I think it is compelling but so far couldn't be called anything close to proof. It also hasn't yet answered our question, but it has given us a framework in which to answer it. The following idea is completely independent of the former, but when finished will go a long way towards proving it.

As you remember, in my article on “Saul, Satan, and Samuel” (if you haven’t read it, put this article down and do so now before proceeding), I showed that David, Saul, and Samuel were symbols; symbols of heavenly actors. And that their actions showed us a great deal about the interactions of the three beings they picture; David pictures Jesus. Saul pictures Satan. And Samuel pictures God the Father. For the sake of sanity and space I must assume you already understand this. However, to summarize I will quote the following conclusions which I proved in that article.

“Samuel anoints Saul king, Saul is lifted up by pride and sins; Samuel tells Saul the kingdom is torn away from him and anoints David. David then works under, around, and ultimately against Saul, narrowly avoiding being killed by him in the process; and assembles a new kingdom out of the rejects of the present one. And all this time, even though Samuel is alive for much of it, Samuel never sees Saul again until the day Saul dies, at which point he repeats that the kingdom is torn from him and given to David, and prophesies of his death, and the death of his sons, the next day.

Compare that to this story... the Father anointed Lucifer king over the Earth. Lucifer was lifted up by pride and became Satan. The Father kicks Satan out of Heaven and anoints Christ king in his place. Christ then works around, under, and against Satan on this Earth, but without removing him from power as the “god of this world”. Several times avoiding being killed by him, and once... not avoiding it. And assembling a new spiritual kingdom out of the rejects of this life. During all this time Satan only interacts with Christ, not with the Father. God the Father doesn't see Satan again until the day of his (Satan's) death.”

That, in the briefest way possible, sums up the events in the lives of Samuel, David and Saul as they relate to the Father, Christ, and Satan. But now let's go beyond that article and explain some new questions; for instance, since the first time I read the Bible, I couldn't understand why it took YEARS for David to take the throne after being anointed by Samuel.

When Saul was anointed, it was a matter of WEEKS before He was crowned king. But when David was anointed, He began to work in Saul's court; fell in and out of favor a dozen times; and finally started his own army, hid in the mountains and fought occasionally for years, the Bible doesn't specifically mention how many years – and then, after the death of Saul, he began to reign. Why did it take so long for David to become king – and more to our point, what does that symbolize in respect to Satan and Jesus?

The Old Testament does not tell us how long Saul was king. The only word in the Bible on the subject is the following:

Acts 13:21-22 And afterward they desired a king: and God gave unto them Saul the son of Cis, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of forty years. And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king; ...

Just about everyone, myself included, have read that to mean that Saul reigned for forty years then died. But it doesn't say that. It said that He gave them Saul to be their king for forty years... “and when He had removed him He raised up David...” So the question becomes, when did God remove Saul? Was it when Saul died, as we've assumed... or when God SAID He removed Saul?

1 Samuel 15:28 The LORD hath rent the kingdom of Israel FROM THEE THIS DAY, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine, that is better than thou.

God told Saul, before anointing David, that on “THIS DAY” the kingdom was taken from him. So in God's eyes, Saul wasn't king from that point forward. He was a usurper, no longer the rightful king. Shortly thereafter Samuel anointed David. This means Saul lived on, continued as king to all outward appearances, but in God's eyes he only reigned 40 years until the kingdom was taken from him and David was “raised up”, or anointed.

We know that David was not crowned after being anointed for at least two years, and probably much longer; say around ten years (although the Bible is not clear, a lot happened during the interim). The Bible says that David reigned in Heshbon seven years and 33 in Jerusalem, for a total of 40; but that doesn't count the time from when He was anointed as king, only from when Judah crowned him. So that “missing ten years” isn't counted in either the reign of David, or of Saul.

Stay with me, this is going somewhere. Yes, it's going there soon.

As I said, all those things that happened between David and Saul were types of things that happened between Jesus and Satan. And now at this point, I resort to a chart. Compare the things we know happened between Saul and David, with what we know happened with Jesus and Satan. And with those things, notice how other things can be extrapolated to fit the pattern...

From the time he was anointed, Saul reigned 40 years; so then must Satan have reigned 40 years, whom God also anointed, telling him “thou art THE anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so:” (Ezekiel 28:14)

Only one cherub was anointed. Satan, then Lucifer, ruled Earth from the time of its creation, under God's auspices of course. Before that, practically nothing is known; but extending it back 40,000 years works nicely to match the reign of Saul, who is beyond question a type of Satan. Both were perfect until they sinned.

Ezekiel 28:15 Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.

After that, Satan sinned, pictured by the day of Atonement. He was no longer welcome in the throne room of God, and was cast to Earth. At that point the kingdom was torn from Satan and given to his neighbor who was better than him; Jesus, of course. Jesus was anointed and Satan was rejected at that point.

But like David, Jesus didn't take the kingdom right away; instead He chose to work around Saul/Satan, using him to sort out the rabble who didn't like the reign of Saul/Satan, and would prefer to follow Jesus/David instead. He did this for ten (thousand) years to build the foundation of His kingdom; those who would be leaders in the world He was building.

But once Jesus returns, Satan will be bound for a thousand years; then loosed again; after that, bound permanently so that all nations may have the opportunity, as they are resurrected, to see the one who started this mess.

Isaiah 14:16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

Then at the end of it all, on the day of Atonement in the 49^th year, after all the resurrections are finished and all who can be saved, are saved, a trumpet will be blown, freedom proclaimed to all captives (Leviticus 25:9-10), and on the same day sin entered the universe, Atonement, Satan and sin will be finally destroyed. This is that day when “... death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. ...” (Revelation 20:14)

Likewise, Saul died at the end of the 10 years, corresponding to the end of the millennium when Satan becomes physically helpless to deceive the nations any more forever. But Saul will be resurrected, and if he refuses to repent of his sins, will be finally destroyed at the second death – the same time Satan will be. Another point is that David was to reign Israel forever.

2 Chronicles 13:5 ... the LORD God of Israel gave the kingdom over Israel to David for ever …

Ezekiel 37:25 ... and my servant David shall be their prince for ever.

I'm sure I needn't quote where Jesus was promised the same thing. It was because of this promise made to David, and to Jesus through David, that there must ALWAYS be a person on the throne of David, ruling somewhere on Earth. If that is ever broken, then the symbol of Jesus' reign throughout eternity will be broken with it.

So what do we conclude from all this? Satan must be killed in the day in which he sins, just as Adam and Eve did; but God has set a larger “day” for Satan to live in, and therefore a larger “day” for him to be killed in. Satan will be killed in the same hundred thousand year day in which He sinned. This will satisfy the law.

Satan was created approximately 49,000 years ago; to correlate with my works on chronology, I'd say 48,977 years ago to be exact, or about 46,968 B.C.; and while it would make sense if Christmas was his birthday, I suspect it was in April on the Wavesheaf day. But that's just an educated guess.

*****

One final chapter. Before we leave this subject, let's use this to explain the significance of the number 40. It shows up a lot in the Bible. No one really understands why; Israel wandered 40 years, and other 40s could picture that, but we know that their wanderings only represented other things, spiritual things.

Israel was forced to wander in the wilderness 40 years because of their lack of faith. They spent 40 days in the promised land – and mind you, they liked the promised land – but the price for that promised land was trust in, and obedience to, God.

Satan was in the throne room of God, as God's most trusted angel. He was in the literal promised land, the place we're all trying to get into, and he no doubt liked it a great deal; But it came with a price; obedience to God, and faith which is inseparable from obedience.

Satan was in that promised land for 40,000 years before He sinned; that's 40 days, just like the Israelites. And even though they liked the milk and honey, they just wouldn't pay the price of faith and obedience to God to have it. So both he and the Israelites were cast out of the promised land by Christ.

In a type of this, Christ fasted 40 days in the desert before casting out the Prince of Devils in the temptation on the mount; after all, He said “this kind comes not out but by prayer and fasting”. In an archetype of that, Christ waited – not needing to fast since He was already pure – 40,000 years before casting Satan out of heaven.

Acts 1:3 To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God:

Christ was with them for 40 days after His resurrection; then for 10 days He was “separated” from the flock, then He gave them the holy spirit and was with them forever; just as for 40,000 years He was with the congregation in heaven, then for 10,000 years He was “separated” from that flock to prepare for the sacrifice, then He will be with that flock again forever.

Psalms 90:4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

The conclusion to all this? A date for Satan's creation that fits a lot of patterns, answers a lot of questions, and is quite plausible. Proved beyond question? No. Logical? I think so. Fascinating? Definitely.