2. “And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven”- - 12:8. The almost universal belief that Satan originated in heaven with God and Christ, apostatized from his created angelic state, caused war among the sinless world of God’ s own heaven, and because he could not be tolerated there, he was expelled to this mundane sphere to trouble and torment all humanity for all time-that is an inherited belief or notion completely out of harmony with the character of heaven. It is a great incongruity. Heaven, where God dwells, is the divine domain of light, where is no darkness, no evil, no apostasy. Hell is the diabolical realm of darkness, where there is no purity, no good, and where light cannot penetrate. The generally accepted view that Satan became a wicked angel in heaven where God dwells, and that he corrupted and recruited other angels for his revolution, puts apostasy in heaven and is incompatible with the nature of the angels of God in heaven. If apostasy can befall the inhabitants of heaven, in consequence it would render insecure all who obtain that world, in that being subject to apostasy they, too, might be expelled. No sin, nothing evil, can enter or prevail in the abode of the pure and holy in the eternal mansions of God’ s habitation. The passage in Isaiah 14:12 was descriptive of the degeneration of the king: “ How art thou fallen from heaven, 0 Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which did weaken the nations.” In his degeneracy this wicked king of ancient history, whose depravity weakened the nations, was cut down; he fell from his high place of dominion. The meaning of the heaven from which the Satanic dragon was cast is the same as the heaven from which fell Lucifer, the wicked Babylonian king. When Jesus said to the disciples (Luke 10:18) that he “ beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven,” he did not mean that with physical sight he had seen the devil as a physical object fall-it was rather the Lord’ s forecast that he had foreseen Satan’ s complete defeat and downfall from his throne of evil dominion. It was Satan’ s own heaven or domain of rulership from which he would fall, and it would come soon and as swiftly as lightning--and it did. When Peter mentioned (2 Peter 2:4) the angels that sinned, and were cast down to hell, and delivered to chains of darkness, and reserved to judgment--it was undoubtedly in reference to the downfall of certain representatives of the human race in high estate, the era and details of which the apostle left unmentioned and therefore remains unrevealed. It is more reasonable to theorize that Satan and his devils originated in this manner than to hypothesize that he inhabited and corrupted heaven, the abode of God.