First God created Adam and Eve, and He also created a serpent. Of all things, this serpent was the most poisonous; its body contained venom, which Satan utilized to take advantage of it. It was the serpent that tempted Eve to sin. Adam sinned after Eve did, and the two of them were then able to distinguish between good and evil. If Jehovah had known that the serpent would tempt Eve and that Eve would tempt Adam, then why did He place them all inside a garden? If He had been able to predict these things, then why did He create a serpent and place it within the Garden of Eden? Why did the Garden of Eden contain fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Had He meant for them to eat the fruit? When Jehovah came, neither Adam nor Eve dared to confront Him, and it was only then that Jehovah knew that they had eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and fallen prey to the serpent’s trickery. In the end, He cursed the serpent, and He cursed Adam and Eve as well. When the two of them ate of the fruit of the tree, Jehovah was not at all aware that they were doing it. Humanity became corrupted to the point of being evil and sexually promiscuous, going even so far that everything they harbored in their hearts was evil and unrighteous; it was all filth. Jehovah therefore regretted having creating humanity. After that, He carried out His work of destroying the world with a flood, which Noah and his sons survived. Some things are not actually as advanced and supernatural as people might imagine. Some ask, “Since God knew the archangel would betray Him, why did He create it?” These are the facts: Before the earth existed, the archangel was the greatest of heaven’s angels. It had jurisdiction over all the angels in heaven; this was the authority God had granted it. With the exception of God, it was the greatest of heaven’s angels. Later, after God had created humanity, down on earth the archangel carried out an even greater treachery against God. I say it betrayed God because it wanted to manage humanity and to surpass God’s authority. It was the archangel that tempted Eve into sin, and it did so because it wished to establish its kingdom upon earth and to get humans to turn their backs on God and obey the archangel instead. The archangel saw that so many things could obey it—the angels could, as could the people upon the earth. The birds and beasts, trees, forests, mountains, rivers, and all things upon the earth were under the care of humans—that is, Adam and Eve—while Adam and Eve obeyed the archangel. The archangel therefore desired to surpass God’s authority and to betray God. After that, it led many angels in rebellion against God, which later became various sorts of unclean spirits. Has not humanity’s development to this day been caused by the archangel’s corruption? Humans are only the way they are today because the archangel betrayed God and corrupted humanity. This step-by-step work is nowhere near as abstract and simple as people might imagine. Satan carried out its betrayal for a reason, yet people are unable to comprehend such a simple fact. Why did God, who created the heavens and earth and all things, also create Satan? Since God despises Satan so much, and Satan is His enemy, why did He create Satan? By creating Satan, was He not creating an enemy? God did not actually create an enemy; rather, He created an angel, and later that angel betrayed Him. Its status had grown so great that it wished to betray God. One could say that this was a coincidence, but it was also an inevitability. It is similar to how a person will inevitably die after maturing to a certain point; things have just developed to that stage. Some absurd fools say, “Since Satan is Your enemy, why did You create it? Did You not know that the archangel would betray You? Can You not gaze from eternity to eternity? Did You not know the archangel’s nature? Since You clearly knew that it would betray You, why did You make it into an archangel? Not only did it betray You, it also led so many other angels with it and descended to the world of mortals to corrupt humanity, yet to this day, You still have been unable to complete Your six-thousand-year management plan.” Are those words correct? When you think in this way, are you not putting yourself through more trouble than is necessary? There are others who say, “Had Satan not corrupted humanity through to the present day, God would not have brought humanity salvation like this. As such, God’s wisdom and almightiness would have been invisible; where would His wisdom have been revealed? God therefore created a human race for Satan so that He could later reveal His almightiness—otherwise, how could man discover God’s wisdom? If man did not resist God or rebel against Him, it would be unnecessary for His acts to be revealed. If all of creation were to worship Him and submit to Him, God would have no work to do.” This is even further from reality, for there is nothing filthy about God, so He cannot create filth. He reveals His acts now only in order to defeat His enemy, to save the humans He created, and to defeat the demons and Satan, which hate, betray, and resist God, and which were under His dominion and belonged to Him in the very beginning. God wants to defeat these demons and, in doing so, reveal His almightiness to all things. Humanity and everything on earth are now under Satan’s domain and lie under the domain of the wicked. God wants to reveal His acts to all things so that people may know Him, and thereby defeat Satan and thoroughly vanquish His enemies. The entirety of this work is accomplished through revealing His acts. All of His creation is under Satan’s domain, so God wishes to reveal His almightiness to them, thereby defeating Satan. If there were no Satan, He would not need to reveal His deeds. If not for Satan’s harassment, God would have created humanity and led them to live in the Garden of Eden. Why, prior to Satan’s betrayal, did God never reveal all His deeds to the angels or to the archangel? If, in the beginning, all the angels and the archangel had known God and had submitted to Him, then God would not have carried out those meaningless acts of work. Because of the existence of Satan and demons, humans, too, have resisted God, and are filled to the brim with rebellious disposition. God therefore wishes to reveal His acts. Because He wishes to do war with Satan, He must use His own authority and all His acts to defeat it; in this way, the work of salvation that He performs among humans will allow them to see His wisdom and almightiness. The work God is doing today is meaningful, and in no way resembles that to which some people refer when they say, “Is not the work You do contradictory? Is not this succession of work merely an exercise in making trouble for Yourself? You created Satan, and then allowed it to betray and resist You. You created humans, and then handed them over to Satan, allowing Adam and Eve to be tempted. Since You did all these things on purpose, why do You still detest humanity? Why do You loathe Satan? Are these not all of Your own making? What is there for You to hate?” Quite a few absurd people say such things. They wish to love God, but deep down, they complain about God. What a contradiction! You do not understand the truth, you have too many supernatural thoughts, and you even claim that God made a mistake—how absurd you are! It is you who are fiddling with the truth; it is not the case that God has made a mistake! Some people even complain over and over, “It was You who created Satan, and You who cast Satan down among humans and handed them over to it. Once humans possessed satanic disposition, You did not forgive them; on the contrary, You hated them to a certain degree. At first You loved them to a certain degree, but now You detest them. It is You who has hated humanity, yet You are also the one who has loved humanity. What exactly is going on here? Is this not a contradiction?” Regardless of how you look at it, this is what happened in heaven; this was the manner in which the archangel betrayed God and humanity was corrupted, and this is how humans have continued to this day. Regardless of how you phrase it, that is the entire story. However, you must understand that the whole purpose behind this work God is doing today is to save you and to defeat Satan.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. You Should Know How the Whole of Humanity Has Developed to the Present Day