Friday, September 22, 2006

War in heaven

And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down--that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: "Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short." (Revelation 12:7-12)

Americans love to read about war. There are countless books that have been published about the Civil War, World War One, World War Two, Vietnam, and the recent wars on terrorism. People are also fascinated with revolution—America’s own Revolutionary War, the French Revolution, and the overthrow of the Russian monarchy by the Bolsheviks, to name but a few. And American Christians love to read about Satan’s battle with the Archangel Michael, and the devil's expulsion from heaven.

We are fascinated with war, I think, because it crystallizes for us who the enemy is. There was never any doubt that Hitler and his Nazis were the enemy, and we knew where to go to fight them. The same was true for the Empire of Japan. And the war of good versus evil is nowhere else so clearly laid out as when we see the forces of heaven in combat with the forces of hell.

Regrettably, much of what has been written about Michael and the angelic army has strayed quite a ways from what God tells us in the Bible. So to begin with, let us look at the words of Revelation and see what they tell us about the time and nature of this "war in heaven".

It is always dangerous to interpret a Bible passage separately from the verses that precede and follow it. Looking at Revelation chapter 12, we read in verses 4 to 6: The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. From today’s reading we know that the dragon is John’s picture-name for Satan; the devil is called a dragon to remind us of the serpent that he controlled when he tempted Eve to sin in the Garden of Eden. Since a dragon is the largest, most dangerous type of serpent, John describes our most dangerous enemy by calling him a dragon. The woman was about to give birth to a male son, who will rule the nations. This male child is Jesus, and the woman is Mary. The dragon was ready to devour the child, but God acted to save Him by rescuing Him from the grave and taking Him to His own side to live forever as the king enthroned over heaven and earth.

Following these events, we are told of a conflict in Heaven. It should not surprise us that Satan had a presence in heaven up to this point; at the beginning of the Book of Job we read, One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Satan answered the LORD, "From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it." Although God knew that Satan served his own interests and not heaven’s, open rebellion had not yet occurred, and Satan still had access to the throne of God. What Satan was doing was going down to earth to tempt people to sin, as he had tempted Eve. When he succeeded in getting someone to sin against God’s commands, he then hurried to God to tell Him all about that human’s sin, and demand that God be just and condemn that wretched sinner. This is how the devil got his name—The Accuser.

But after Jesus was born and took on human form, the devil got worried. Jesus became God and Man in one in order to earn forgiveness for Mankind, and with forgiveness the devil would no longer be able to successfully accuse us of sin. So Satan tried his hardest to get Jesus to sin, to doubt His Father, to turn away from death on a Roman cross. But Jesus was the perfectly obedient Son of God, and He would not disobey His Father’s command—out of love for His Father, and out of love for us, Jesus allowed Himself be killed as a criminal for our crimes against God and against each other.

When Jesus died, all of God’s punishment for every sin was meted out. There is no punishment for sin left in God, for those who put their trust in Jesus’ all-availing sacrifice. God the Father was so pleased with His Son’s perfect obedience and perfect love that He raised Jesus from the dead and gave him all authority over heaven and earth. But all this was too much for Satan. Satan is Jesus’ complete opposite. Where Jesus is obedient to God, Satan is disobedient, looking for ways to get around God’s laws. Where Jesus loves others completely, Satan only loves himself. When Satan tempted Adam and Eve, what he did was to encourage them to think as he thought—love yourself, and disobey God if His laws get in the way of your selfish desires.

There was no place in heaven for Satan. With our sins forgiven in Jesus, there was nothing left for him to accuse us of. And for Jesus to now be king was galling to Satan—in the desert, Satan had shown Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. "All this I will give you," he had said, "if you will bow down and worship me" (Matthew 4:9). Satan wanted to be in charge, and now he was to be subject to God’s Son? It was inevitable that conflict resulted.

There are writers who claim that the war in heaven happened before Mankind’s fall into sin in the Garden of Eden. But aside from the Book of Job, we must also consider the voice from heaven that John heard: "Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death." Clearly, the power to overcome Satan and remove him from the presence of God’s throne is the blood of Christ, blood which was shed on the cross. It is Christ who bought salvation from the punishment for our sins. It is by Christ’s power and authority as king that Satan and the angels who sided with him were deported from heaven, never to return. It is because of this deportation that the voice cried out, Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! No believer in Christ need ever fear being accused by Satan before God again. Paul says in Romans chapter 8, Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died--more than that, who was raised to life--is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

It was by Christ’s power and authority that Satan and his followers were evicted, but Michael was delegated the responsibility of carrying out the king’s orders. In Jude, we read that Michael is an archangel—a leader among angels. Nevertheless, even he does nothing without the consent and by the command of God. Michael and his angels act only to carry out the will of the king of heaven. This is like Jesus’ parable of the Wedding Banquet; at the end of the parable, there is a man who tries to crash the celebration, but he has refused to let the king’s servants dress him appropriately for the occasion. We read: Then the king told the attendants, `Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth' (Matthew 22:13). Like the attendants in the parable, God’s angels act to carry out their king’s commands.

So far, this has all been uplifting and hopeful. But then we read, "But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short." Satan has been barred from heaven. Satan is in no hurry to enter hell for eternal torment. So Satan encamps on earth, and spends his time making life as miserable as he can for God’s chosen people. The devil is furious—he can no longer accuse us before God, he has no hope for rulership in heaven, and he knows that the tortures of hell are not far off for him. So he acts out of spite. He lashes out like the mortally wounded animal that he is, bringing pain and suffering wherever he can. He knows his time is limited, so he works all the harder to hurt God’s children in the time that he has left.

But this state of affairs need not concern us too much. Yes, we must be on our guard, because Saint Peter warns us: Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). But God reassures us that we can have victory in our struggles with the devil—John recorded, They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. This is how we can prevail over Satan. First, we have the blood of the Lamb. Jesus, the unblemished Lamb of God, was sacrificed for us—His blood atones for our guilt before God. With all our sins forgiven, Satan has no power to call condemnation down on us, no way to make us his eternal slaves. We have access to the power of Jesus’ blood through faith in Him, and through the wine of Holy Communion, a wine that gives us a taste of Jesus’ own true blood, according to His promise.

Second, there is the word of our testimony. John tells us that Jesus is the living Word of God—Jesus speaks of everything that God wants us to know about Him. When Jesus lives in our hearts through faith, God’s own Word lives in us. Remember how Jesus withstood Satan’s temptations in the desert (Matthew chapter 4)? Every time that the devil tried to get Jesus to sin, Jesus responded "It is written", and He then quoted the Holy Scriptures to Satan as His defense. Satan is the Prince of Lies and misdirection; he cannot stand firm in the face of God’s pure truths. The Scripture is our sure defense as well. Whenever we are pressed by Satan with temptation, we have the Word of God to turn to. We can quote those memory verses that we learned in confirmation class, or we can use our Bible’s concordance to find one of the many verses that speaks to our needs. Opposed by God’s living Word, Satan will back off. Jesus did not use any power of His own to resist Satan in the desert—He only used the same divine power that we all have access to, God’s own inspired book: the Bible.

So let Satan rant and rave, let him lash out in impotent fury. The worst that he can do is stir up his followers to kill us; but since we know that Jesus has made heaven ours, we know that we are safe because once in heaven Satan can never approach us again. That is why the voice from heaven said, they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. All our lives, we walk a path towards death; this journey is not always pleasant, but we do not shrink away from the prospect of death because it frees the Christian from Satan’s attacks forever. Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ.

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