Satan to destroy or not to destroy? (OP)

I frequently go to a place called IHOP (International House of Prayer) to be with the Lord. Through this place I have met a variety of people from interesting backgrounds. While giving one particular guy a ride home I brought up a subject that a youth from the group I help lead asked me about. Basically, the young man had asked me about why God had not destroyed Satan when he first betrayed the Lord. This is a legitimate question. However, the answer is never directly addressed in the Bible. Thus, the answer is left to reasoning and deduction from what is presented about God’s character through the Bible. The reason he posed the question was because a good friend of his who followed wiccan beliefs had originally asked him, and he had not known how to respond. Therefore, his love for his friend had caused him to seek out some answers.

My initial response was the concept of choice. That is, God wanted Adam and Eve to be able to choose Him over anything else, and, because God is the only one who is good, to choose anything else is to pick that which is not good. Thus, Satan was allowed to continue existing in order to present the rest of creation with the ultimate choice. I believed this to be a viable explanation, but it did not seem to satisfy the interests of my young friend. He did say he understood more about the subject, but he was unsure about his friend’s response.

It was because I felt like my friend, whom I was giving a ride home, might have something more to add to the subject that I asked his opinion. This particular person has experience in occult beliefs, and in fact had been part of such a group before coming to know Christ. However, He actually had the same perspective as mine on the issue. This was conformation to me because I had not explained my stance before asking him what he thought. One thing he did say that I had not thought about was that God is not regulated by time. Therefore, God knew about Adam and Eve before creating them and what was going to happen with Satan. This of course opens the question, "Then, why did God create anything?" I just say Love is the answer.

While my friend was explaining his view I thought about another reason why God did not destroy Satan. This idea came from the perspective that the spirit is eternal. Thus, all spirits will live eternally and have an eternal destination, i.e. heaven or hell. Actually, this idea adds on to the original thought of choice. This is because God gives every spirit a choice in their everlasting residence. Basically, I thought about how creation is never actually destroyed, it is simply rearranged. This caused me to address the idea of eternity brought up in Revelations describing the smoke of Satan’s torment rising forever and ever. I really don’t know the differences between the physical and the spiritual realms, so I am just guessing about all of this. However, it seems to me based on the idea of spirit having eternal presence that God will never actually destroy Satan. This idea is assuming that God created all things to last forever in one way or another. Thus, God will not actually destroy anyone, but He will separate everyone/everything into two distinct groups, those who love Him and those who are against Him. My hope is that everyone comes to know and love him as He Loves everyone. Frankly, I am sad to think that anyone would take the second option and so is He.