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The Story (1)

Heaven, and its angels, is within a mysterious sphere called Eternity. To say that this reality existed “before” the material world (or will, after it) does not have a logic that we can casually use to comprehend what these ideas might mean, we living in within time. Eternity one can equate to the spirit world, the unseen world. We understand this because the apostle Paul tells us that the visible world is only temporary, while the unseen world is eternal. One might think this curious since we think of the spirit world existing in ghostlike terms. But it is not impossible for that world to have solidity to it, too, even more than the hardest thing in the realms material. It is just not how it is usually described, when the few who have, came in contact with it.

One might consider that the angels were created “before” the world was, since they were created in the context of Eternity. They are spiritual entities, though throughout the Bible they assumed material form; however, we do not hear of any human being actually physically touch an angel, which may make us conjecture that while they may have had visible form, they may not have been corporeal. We do not know. As for how the story goes, the angels who existed in Heaven were ordered from greatest to least, and at “first”, there was harmony among all the heavenly host.

Then, the greatest angel, called Lucifer (“light bringer”), began to swell up with pride because of his greatness, and in so doing became blind to wisdom. Instead of following the way of love, the way of the most high, he sought his own way: and what was outside that way was to say no to the Spirit, for this is the blasphemy that you are not forgiven for. To say no to love kills within you that part which so denied it. And even that kind of act was originally from the Devil, for in causing Sin to be was the consequence, an entity which formed when he moved to blaspheme. This idea is an expansion of what Milton wrote in Paradise Lost. Milton also wrote that Satan then copulated with his daughter Sin, and so gave rise to the coming of Death. This would be the Devil’s primordial son, the spirit of the Antichrist.



War in Heaven

If myths are lies that tell the truth, what is a myth that turns out to be true? For there are various myths in the book we call the Bible: the story of creation, the son of slaves who frees his people, the God-man who died and rose from the dead. The bulk of the Bible is people doing things, sometimes epic, sometimes quite ordinary; or even sometimes the way God Himself got involved in the world. But there is one drama that seems to be pure myth, otherworldy, and it is in the last book in the Bible, briefly mentioned:

7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,

8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.

9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

[Revelation 12 KJV]

It has been written of in extra-biblical texts, but other than the above, the only other mention of it in the Bible is when Jesus Christ said that he saw Satan fall like lightning from Heaven. So there, we get what happened straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. It was something that is rooted in such Truth as the Son of Man represents. There have been secondary sources about just what might have transpired, notably Milton’s Paradise Lost. There is also, curiously, something written by J. R. R. Tolkien: the Ainulindalë, or “the music of the Ainur”—a creation myth. In it, Melkor, the greatest of the Ainur, rebels against Ilúvatar, who is God. Which sounds familiar, do you not believe? One imagines that Tolkien took the Lucifer myth to heart, but in elaborating on what had been written, the War in Heaven—the actual one—seems to have some curious commonality with what he wrote as fantasy. It turns out the world out there is the way it is because of how this singular thing, this war in eternity, was fought, and won (but being a war in eternity, is still going on). And perhaps you can do something yourself, to see it end as it should, in you.

You can read about my experiences in the War in my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.