It all began a few billion years ago when an angel named Satan developed supercilious thoughts that he could be a god besides God.
This challenge to God's absolute authority was not only blasphemous; it was simply impossible. The truth is that only God possesses the power to be a god. Satan simply did not possess the necessary power or qualifications to take care of a dominion, as a god, and run it efficiently without chaos, disease, misery, and accidents.
While Satan was the initiator of this horrendous blasphemy, billions of creatures, not realizing that there was much more to godhood than they can ever imagine, agreed with Satan. They decided that Satan's God-given powers qualify him to be a god in his own right. Thus, the heavenly society became divided (38:69). The rebels' unjustifiable challenge to God's absolute authority had to be met and resolved in the most efficient manner.
If you claim that you can fly a plane, the best way to test your claim is to give you a plane, and ask you to fly it. This is precisely what God decided to do in order to expose Satan's incompetence as a
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god. As for those who agreed with Satan, they were given a chance to reconsider their ideas and accept God's absolute authority, or go through a test where they witness Satan's attempt to demonstrate his abilities (33:72). About 150 billion creatures chose to participate in Satan's demonstration; they maintained that Satan could be a god besides God.
This monumental heavenly dispute led to the classification of God's creatures into three categories:
1. Angels: Creatures who never challenged God's absolute authority; they knew that God alone possessed the power to be a god.
2. Jinns: Creatures who made up their minds that Satan was definitely capable of being a god.
3. Humans: Creatures who remained neutral; they did not make a firm stand with God. These creatures' blasphemous crime was that they were not sure whether God alone possessed all power or not.
It is only common sense that members of God's kingdom must firmly believe, better yet know, that
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God alone can be a god.
When God informed the angels that He was going to give Satan a chance to demonstrate his claims, and the creatures who agreed with him a chance to be redeemed, the angels objected: "Will you place on earth those who would commit evil and shed blood?”(2:30) In other words, they suggested that God should dismiss us from His Kingdom, i.e., send us to Hell. God, however, is the Most Gracious, Most Merciful. He willed that we get a second chance to denounce our blaspheny, and redeem ourselves by deciding that God ALONE possessed all power.
In order to carry out the projected test, God "created death;" He put all the guilty creatures to death (67:1-2), in order to bring them into another life, another dimention, where they have no recollection of the heavenly feud. Under the circumstances of this first life, after the first death, the humans and the jinns are given absolute freedom to re-consider their idolatry, after studying God's messages and Satan's messages.
To emphasize the infinitesimal size and utter insignificance of Satan's |