Possessing no absolute or true existence of its own, evil is, by nature, parasitic. Being not of the created order, it can exist only by drawing its existence from that order. Evil must use the good. And so though good can exist without evil, evil cannot exist without good.

Truth can exist without falsehood, but falsehood cannot exist without truth.

Laws can exist without crimes, marriage without adultery, and life without murder. But crimes cannot exist without laws, adultery without marriage, and murder exist without life. Destruction requires structure, immorality requires morality, and sin requires the holy.

The good is primary. Evil is the parasitic inversion of the good. And so the existence of evil inadvertently testifies not against the existence of the good—but for it. It bears witness, unwillingly, to the existence of the good—the existence of God.

If evil is uncreated, how did it come to exist? God did not create evil, but He did create personhood, consciousness, and volition—free will. Free will is a necessity. If one does what is good because one has no choice in doing so, then it is not good. The good must be freely chosen and thus requires free will. And therein is the risk. To allow the choosing of good, one must allow the choosing of its opposite. And the opposite of good is evil. It is the allowance and risk of the good that allow for the risk of evil.

Evil requires personhood, will, consciousness, and volition.

Therefore, when looking for the source of evil we are looking in the direction of personhood, toward a conscious entity. It must be a created being that by its volition turned against the created order, against existence itself, a being that became an anti-being, an inversion. And this is exactly what the Scriptures reveal. There are two entities with the ability to choose good or evil: one, human, and the other, angelic. Since evil is spiritual and beyond flesh and blood, its origin must be found beyond flesh and blood, beyond the human, in the realm of the spiritual and the angelic. And in that realm, we see it, the entity that fulfills all the prerequisites—consciousness, volition, free will, and inversion and yet not of flesh and blood—an angelic being that turned against the fabric of the created order and against existence itself. In his inversion, he became the anti-being, the parasitic inversion of the good, the nemesis of reality. He became the one who should not exist and yet does. He became the Devil.

“How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’” Isaiah 14:12-14

This information is in Jonathan Cahn’s new book The Dragons Prophecy: Israel, the Dark Resurrection, and the End of Days‘. God is using Jonathan mightily as a prophet to America, but we can learn from him as well.