JUNE 20 2020
WAR
My views are biased: what I write comes from a certain perspective: I call it a Christian liberal point of view, not a doubting stance, not fundamentalist, not stagnant, but always expanding, and open to interesting interpretations. Writing a blog helps me to explore new ideas.
I do believe the Bible, keeping in mind that many explanations are possible, witness the great diversity in denominations. I also am convinced that no particular church or no particular person has the correct view, influenced as they are by ethnic traditions, history, clericalism, and especially deep-seated religious ignorance and persistent apathy.
With that in mind, I have a shot at REVELATION, the last Bible book, and particularly Chapter 12.
“And there was war in the heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and the dragon and his angels fought back”.
War.
This really reads like a fairy tale, something from Lord of the Rings, or the Harry Potter series. But, no, this is raw reality, not some fantasy. It strongly suggests that heaven and earth are very similar. War, in heaven or on earth, means death, wounds, anger, hate, is a result of creeping resentment. War in heaven took place because the Son of God, always Jesus Christ, came to earth, the Son of Man, always human, was born there, lived, was killed, but then victoriously rose from the dead and ascended to heaven: the dragonish devil was unable to prevent all this, although he tried, continuously.
If all else fails: make war. And this ultimate conflict started in heaven. Heaven? Where God lives? War in Heaven? Yes, you read it right. So the Devil was defeated there, but not vanquished. He escaped. Where did he go? Not to some distant planet, no, he knows the Bible better than you and me. He knows that “God so Loved the World, the Cosmos.” And there’s where he went, next door to all of us, even right where we live, to continue WAR: peace in heaven but war on earth.
But first some backtracking.
Throughout history, right from the very start in Paradise, to the very end on Golgotha, Satan’s aim was to get rid of the Son, but when that misfired, he went after God himself and his precious creation. That’s what’s happening now.
How is it possible for the dragon, and its demonic power, to show up in heaven? What sort of status did he enjoy there, how could he even be there in the first place, a festering force amidst the holy angels?
I don’t know, but what I do know is that the insidious Satan, once there, conducted a constant recruitment campaign to dethrone God! And, amazingly, he found a lot of discontent there! He discovered that God wasn’t all that popular in heaven, just as he is on earth, as we well know.
It was plain that a substantial devil-crowd freely moved around in the heavenly realm, a designation so glorified in our pious hymns. Isn’t that strange? We’ve always been told by our ‘religious’ leaders that heaven was our ultimate goal: perfection guaranteed.
And now we read that even there, in God’s vicinity, evil lives!
From the Bible we know that the devil or Satan appears in the Bible always under two personas.
- He is in the first place the great seducer who tempted both angels and humanity right from the very start in paradise. Here, in Revelation 12, John calls the Satan the one “who seduces the entire world” (verse 9). Jesus depicts him as the ultimate deceiver, the “father of lies” (John 8: 44). He twists human thought in the web of delusion and conjures before the human eye the mirage of salvation and grandeur and drags the people, caught in the grip of falsehoods as an easy prey to their perdition. He is the king of conceit, the royal champion in mind bewilderment. Sounds like Trump!
- But the Bible also depicts this same Satan as the sly informer, who accuses the helpless, disoriented humans before God’s throne. That’s how he, as a prosecutor, appears in the first chapter of the book of Job in the meeting of ‘the children of God’. Scoffing cynically he hisses his poisonous accusation: “Does Job fear God for nothing?” He dissects the disintegrating human life, he picks it apart, he grinds it to pieces, until there’s nothing left but ruin and garbage, and then he triumphantly brings all this to God’s throne to show God that everything in this world has gone to pieces.
1 John 5: 19 paints the true picture:
We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.
The Bible says it like it is: The Evil One is in charge here, right here!
We, our houses and our world are saturated with satanic toys, all ‘war’ toys, all combatting the cosmos. We have become Satan’s devoted soldiers: willing workers in the war waged against God’s precious planet.
This war contaminates the universe in all its spheres, and infects all facets of creation.
War in heaven becomes war on earth.
Here’s Satan’s boast:
“This world, God, your own world, over which you at one time pronounced that it was ‘very good’, now this world, this same world, is, in my possession, distorted into dire destruction, everything in her is in pieces, is poisoned, is on the verge of collapse.”
That’s the Satan, the tireless accuser of all God’s servants. He is the one that carries the title of “the great accuser of all our brothers and sisters”. So, in that capacity, as the accuser of the human being, he has access to the heavenly realms. That’s the case because there is so much truth in his accusations, because, as a matter of fact, he has us in his grip. Satan has, to tell the bitter truth, truth on his side. The facts show that, indeed, we humans are completely corrupt. God is in no position to deny him that truth; God simply cannot ignore this as pure fiction.
The earth in the Balance.
“It is only a matter of time before a coronavirus that is far more lethal and contagious than this one emerges to ravage the world’s population,” says Prof. Dr. Haseltine, a respected epidemiologist. “When that happens, we will no longer be talking about a global death toll in the ‘mere’ hundreds of thousands.” He suspects the world is overdue for a deadly influenza outbreak capable of removing one to two billion people from the planet.
That’s just one example, because Satan’s ultimate aim is to destroy God’s creation. And, indeed, we are in an impossible quandary: thanks to that wonderful elixir, that magical potion that fuels our adored automobiles, and our ingenious flying machines, and feeds our entire food chain, we are toast when we keep on trucking, and toast when we stop.
Thank you Satan: you have been successful: you lost the war in heaven, but we, the earth-people, the God-Crowd in particular, have, by and large, been receptive to your wishes. Will you succeed here?
Fortunately your victory on Calvary was short-lived: PEACE prevailed! There is an ancient Dutch hymn, celebrating Easter. My translation is just that: a feeble effort. Here’s its last verse:
Want nu de Heer is opgestaan
Nu vangt het nieuwe leven aan
Een leven door zijn dood bereidt
Een leven in zijn heerlijkheid.
Now that the Lord rose from the dead
A sign of our new life ahead
Prepared by his three day’s demise
Forever in earth’s paradise!