The War in heaven was not for the Throne of the Father, It was for the Throne of Jesus.
Jesus said He would return to the Father and have the same glory He had with the Father, before He came to earth. We know Jesus returned to the kingdom of heaven and sat on His Throne at the right hand of the Father. We can safely assume that this was his position in eternity. It was this position that Satan wanted.
Furthermore we have to consider the character of creation. What is a perfect or good creation in God’s eyes? Is it a mindless drone that says I love you when told to do so, or is it a totally free moral agent? From Genesis we know that God created man as a free moral agent, and He called that creation Good. We can therefore say that a perfect creation is one that is free to choose to love his
creator.
The problem then arises where did evil come from? Where did the evil thought come from? Either God created the thought, so his creation could have the choice, or as you state, there was an external force that caused Lucifer to believe that thought. I think we go along those lines of thought when we neglect to look at the whole character of God.
God is Love, and he is good, and he is life, and he is light. We like focusing on these because they make us feel good. However God is also jealous, God also gets angry, God is also vengeful, God also hates, God also judges, God also destroys. We cannot call these things evil, because then God is evil and we know that He is not.
Now when God created the angels, he gave them his likeness, the freedom to choose and have the same “emotions” He has. Lucifer was capable of thinking he is giving honour to the Father better than the Son was. He could perceive his own beauty and consider himself more beautiful that the creator. He was also able to be jealous of Jesus. He considered himself better than Jesus looking from his perspective. He was leading thousands of angels on a daily basis, He was worshipping the Father daily – in his mind better than Jesus did.
All these things are from the freedom to choose which come from emotions already present in and similar to God’s emotions. The problem is that a created being can never see the full picture. Created beings can always only see their here and now circumstances, their here and now actions, and reactions. If Lucifer could for one millionth of a second have seen the eternal picture, the thought would have died before it could start. But he had a limited picture of the full relationship between the Father and the Son and in this limited view he decided that his work is better that that of Jesus. Thus he experienced the emotions that was already there, created in him as a gift from God.
Satan chose to defy not because there was a dark force that convinced him, He chose based on the emotions created in him as a created being in the likeness of God, and his decision was based on a diminished view of eternity. The Angels that joined him made their decisions based on the same criteria.
If a force existed that is controlling Satan then that force is called God. The reason for this argument would be that Satan is the God of this world. The only other God above that station would be Jesus, creator of this world and all that is. The only force controlling Satan is his own lust.
Jas 1:14-15
But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
Consider what brings forth Death from the above scripture. Lust that brings forth sin brings forth Death. What is Death? Where there is no Life. What is life? God is life. Therefore Death is separation from God. Satan Lusts for the throne of worship, he wants to be worshipped as God. He is god of this world but is not worshipped as God. This is why he hates man so much because we still worship God. Satan rules this world for one reason only, and that is to sit on the throne of Jesus and be worshipped as God. This lust has conceived sin in him and this sin keeps him in perpetual death – that is constant separation from God.
From this we can see there was no force of evil as an entity that rules Satan or man or the Demons. The only thing we see is that our choices give birth to sin and sin give birth to death. Death is separation from God, and perpetual separation from God can cause our action to become so vile that the word we use to describe the outcomes of such actions is the word evil. Evil does not exist as a separate entity. Evil is the result of actioned sin. If no one sinned for a day, there would be no evil. It would not be a separate force floating around in its own right. If the next day one man sinned, his actions would be called evil but the sin would be born out of his own freedom to choose based on the emotions he feels.
Satan does not control the will of man until the person hands his will over to Satan. It is again the actions of man based on the decisions of his lusts that causes him to be stuck in his situations. Addictions are purely the lusts of a man that drags him away and he then chooses to sin. Man’s sin leads to death concerning that sin. In essence such a man does not see the sin and telling him his in sin does not open his eyes, in this area he is in death, in other words the light and life of God does not penetrate that area of his life. His own lust and choices based on this lust keep him in the cycle of addiction.
Satan was defeated in Heaven. However, man is under the bondage of an evil god. Satan is god of this world, and we are born in this world under that ruler ship. Is it any wonder that we needed and need a saviour everyday of our life? We have a ruler that hates who we are, we have to have a hero that will step in and save us from certain destruction. We are not only saved from our own inability to stand against sin in our own minds and bodies, but we are also saved from the oppressive ruler ship of an evil God.