To begin, there is absolutely NOTHING in the Bible to indicate Jesus was ever thrown out of Heaven. Jesus came voluntarily to be the ultimate sacrifice for sin. Being a fairly fundamental sort of man for the last sixty-odd years, I will state I have never heard any Bible believing church ever teach anything of the sort. There may be some radical – heretical – group that holds such, but no mainstream Protestant church teaches such a thing, let alone Baptists.
Nor do I find any instance where Lucifer was removed and Jesus inserted.
For the record, Erasmus died in 1536. The KJV was translated (finished) in 1611. Erasmus had no direct contact with the translation of the KJV.
The only occurrence of the word “Lucifer” is in (KJV) Isaiah 14:12: “How fallen thou art from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how thou art cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!”
The NET Bible translates this verse thusly: “Look how you have fallen from the sky, O shining one, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the ground, O conqueror of the nations!” One notes the Hebrew word is translated by the meaning ‘shining one’ rather than by a name.
The word itself transliterated from the Hebrew is ‘hay-LAL’ and means ‘morning star’; not grammatically related to Venus or Mars or any other astronomical body. The word ‘Lucifer’ is from a Latin word meaning ‘light bearer’ – and no, it does appear in the Bible. It is the word in Latin that means the same – or nearly – as the Hebrew word. The Latin word ‘Lucifer’ can mean the planet Venus, but only in the sense that Venus is considered the morning star. I might add, Mars is also thought so.
The passage in Isaiah then goes on (Vv. 13 – 20) to relate the great sin of Lucifer, his pride.
This passage could also refer to the king of Babylon. Both theories have supporters. Traditionally, this passage is primarily held to refer to the Archangel Lucifer who was cast out of God’s presence. (At least in my experience, no doubt someone will argue the point.)
The word ‘Satan’ is found numerous times in the Old and New Testaments. The transliteration is ‘Sah-TAN’ and means (in most cases) ‘adversary’ in the sense of legal or philosophical opponent. In a few instances, Satan is described as physically interfering with the movements of angels sent by God.
Then to round this out, the word ‘Devil’ comes from the Greek word ‘dee-A-bah-las’, meaning false accuser or slanderer.
Now the problem is, how did these words – names – come to signify the same being?
Mostly from context. Satan is the one who opposes good men – Job, for instance – and provokes King David to conduct a census of the nation Israel, angering God. Later on, Satan is portrayed in Zechariah 3 standing before God in opposition to “Joshua the High Priest” (Joshua being the same name as Jesus). In the New Testament, Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness and so forth.
In Revelation, Satan is identified as the Devil (Revelation 12:9), so the relationship between the two names or titles is clear.
The passage identifying Lucifer in Isaiah sounds like a renegade angel being cast from Heaven. As I mentioned earlier, this is the traditional thinking on the subject. Forgive me, but I’m doing this in a hurry and another hopefully will fill in the gaps.
“My daughter is asking me that if the KJV is word for word preserved words…”
No. It is not. No translation is ‘word for word’; simply because most languages do not have exact equivalents in other languages. Nor is the sentence structure the same. So simply replacing Hebrew words with English words would result in a rather confused list of words. Translations have to be done at the very least sentence by sentence and sometimes, paragraph by paragraph, in order to accurately convey the original content and meaning.
By the way, the Hebrew word translated ‘word’, means not only a single unit of language (ink stain on paper) but the meaning of what is being said, the concept behind the symbols. Just as in English we say “What’s the word?” or “Pass the word”.
How do you give your daughter an answer? If you have a Bible Lexicon, have her look up the words – as I have demonstrated – so she knows she is getting the direct information. If you do not have one, the website
www.blueletterbible.org has a built in Strong’s Lexicon one can use for free.
