Category: The Story

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.



The Story (2)

Now was Evil unleashed in the halls of Heaven, now were all our woes made. For what was possible to alter was the fundamental strucures of how things are. Thus is the power of angels, not just the greatest. The Adversary was at the root controls of the universe. It was said they even ruined a part of Heaven: this is the Hell of story and myth, though not a place of eternal torture, and there came a time when it were torn away and into the earth.

Why does God let this happen? He waits to have just cause to act. Yes, He knows what will happen and why, but until it is real, it exists merely as potential—not enough to counteract. It would be unfair, too, to prevent the consequences of an individual with full faculty of mind. Those who go against guidance have no one to blame but themselves. And they are given room to repent, which may seem like unnecessary delay, but in an unfair world, we receive from God all that might be wise for us to notice. This is an article of faith.

Another text which is useful in the understanding of what went on is the Ainulindalë, by J. R. R. Tolkien, one of his lesser known works. It is the creation story for Middle Earth. In it, Ilúvatar, who is God, creates the Ainur, angel-like entities, who by their music cause to be the things that are meant to be. However, the greatest of the Ainur, Melkor decides he will go his own way, and not be in harmony with the rest, nor Ilúvatar. Sound familiar?



The Story (3)

What if pain were not a creation of the Most High? And the Most High God is not the cause of destruction? That Lucifer, the greatest of all beings besides God, could actually have had that much effect on the world at large? Like Adam and Eve being banished from the Garden of Eden so that they would not eat of the Tree of Life, Satan and his angels were thrown from Heaven so that they would no longer have access to the inner gears of the cosmos. Their sin was pride.

A clue to why God takes responsibility for all that goes wrong is in the Book of Job. At the end, God sort of appears before Job and asks him where was he when He measured out the dimensions of the world, that sort of thing. That he cannot fathom why things happen as they do. Nowhere does God say, Satan did it to him, don’t blame Me. But the fact of the matter is, throughout the universe, it is due to the War in Heaven that there are calamities great down to the most trivial of injuries. Lucifer from his station in eternity threw a wrench in the whole works.

And so it was that Lucifer out of pride sought his own way, his own Logos, and so made that which was not of love, outside of all good, to become the avatar of Evil. And from Evil came Sin, which is also called Error, which is also called Pain; and from Evil and Sin was begotten Death: and this was enough. Before they could cause irrevocable damage to the pillars of creation, they were hurled from Heaven. With their exile the part of Heaven now in ruins was torn from the main of Eternity and cast free into the earth, as the abode in the outer darkness for Satan and his angels, who were now subject to time.



God in the Age of Iron

The Black Iron Prison was the hidden architecture of what was called the Age of Iron. Which was what basically the Old Testament covered: the wrath of God, who was a jealous God. The Age of Gold is what Jesus Christ came to bring about: the God of mercy, the God who is love. One might well wonder, just exactly how is it that the first God is the same God as the second? There was one theory a friend of mine handed me, that when God came down to Earth and lived life as a man, He at that point understood the human condition, and sort of mellowed out. But aren’t we told that God does not change? How is it that the God who is love rained down fire and brimstone and obliterated Sodom and Gomorrah?

One idea that might lead us somewhere is the Book of Job. This is where God and Satan (the Satan who at that time seemed to be a minor functionary in His court) made a wager at the expense of Job. Satan, in stages, completely wrecks the man: kills all his children, breaks his bank, and even covers him in painful sores. At the end, when Job is at the end of his rope—complaining how it’s not fair—God shows up and asks him, where were you when I laid down the foundations of the world? Basically, oh, do you really know so much as to criticise Me? What one is careful to mark, however, was that at no time does He bring up Satan as the culprit of his pain. God takes all the credit for all that happens to Job, good and bad—telling him, I know better, I know why.

What if there are other “judgments of God” that aren’t actually Him, in just the same way? It’s an interesting take. He would have known about them all, but He had delegated certain authority to other entities, who were not “all love”, that did all the bad things we associate with that unforgiving Age of Iron… But we can investigate another avenue, which is to follow what Jesus Christ said about divorce. That Moses gave divorce to the people because of the hardness of their hearts. Down that simple road of thought, the trip leads to the stop that it was us that changed, not God. Something happened to change us, to change the whole equation of the world: and it was Jesus Christ. Not just what we observed on Earth, but a hidden act, within the sign of Jonah.

Harshness, in the Age of Iron, was the only way things got done. We were all in the Prison, which, indeed, was not the work of God. The Black Iron Prison was what the world in its entirety was contained within. We had to play by Prison rules. And if we were going to be like that, God was going to be hard on us—not the least reason of which was because we deserved it. Then, something amazing happened: Jesus who is Christ came here, and He broke the vicious feedback loop, and breached the Iron. And the breach was like the tiny mustard seed, which took and is taking 2000 years to blossom. For a thousand years is as a day to God, and the Christ was two days in the earth. The breach finally bubbled up to the top in 1974 in the resignation of Richard Nixon—a king deposed by tradesmen, without a drop of blood being shed. Hallelujah.

But now, as we are still left with much of the trappings of darkness, let us be ready to understand the world in a greater vision than was apportioned Job: the Iron was not of God. You can believe in a God who is all love, and that includes both mercy and justice. Many things He took credit for, and blame, many misunderstandings he patiently suffered until the time came as to remove from us the judging of God by man. Whether we be ready or not for the Age of Gold to come, it comes. In certain places it has come already, but not nearly enough. And some still work as if the Iron has not broken, but we know better. Light has already peeked in. Hearken: the Beginning is near.



The Reality

The War in Heaven wasn’t just about kicking an angel who got too big for his britches out of the Kingdom. You must understand exactly what the rebellion meant, the tremendous reach of what it affected. Firstly, to remove the notion that there was something inherently noble in the defiance of Lucifer and his crew, the whole Milton idea of “better to rule in hell than serve in heaven”, we must get a clear idea of who and what was involved. In my visions, I was told by the Lord that the ultimate sin, the one written of in the Gospels as absolutely unforgivable, was simply to say “no” to the Holy Spirit. When I first heard it, I did not at all understand how that could be. If this were the case, then no one could be saved, correct? Yet this is exactly what Christianity teaches us: none of us by himself or herself can be saved. For saying no to the Holy Spirit, this is saying no to the spirit of love itself. That part of us is dead. Permanently. And as the Lord also said, if your eye offends you, pluck it out. Better to go blind into the Kingdom than be cast whole into the flames. And so, are all those pieces of us that are dead burned up in Purgatory when we are saved, for no trace of sin enters Heaven.

It was not at all that God was some sort of tyrant who imposed rules and regulations without reason. Logos, the “Word” of God—observed as the means by which things happen—can in one sense be thought of as Holy Reason. Lucifer understood the consequences of what he did when he said “no” to the Holy Spirit. And methinks it took tremendous effort to render that first “no”. To decide to become the embodiment of Evil. To be the genesis of Sin and Death. And Sin? We also know her as Pain. That is correct: pain was not invented by God. And perhaps in knowing this, we can start to grasp the scale in which the War of Heaven was fought, and is being fought, and will be fought. (Though it ended, it is a war in eternity, and there is mystery here in the telling of its when.)

Lucifer, now become Satan, he was not thrown out of Heaven because he rebelled, per se. Just like Adam & Eve were not expelled from Heaven because they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God says specifically the pair were sent out of Eden so that they would not eat of the tree of life (and so make their sin permanent). In likewise, Satan was cast from Eternity because he had so much power in the halls and means of the Kingdom. And the War, the front line of it, was fought in contention for the nature of reality. Michael and his angels fought so that logic would stay logic. Something that fundamental. It was Logos vs. derangement. And this is what it means to be an angel of Heaven: if the least of Michael’s angels had lost their fight against the evil, all of creation would have suffered permanent derangement forever.

I am saying that we come full stop in the dualism of good vs. evil. By their fruits shall they be known. How much of it is God’s “Plan”? One wonders. But it can be seen that in the model where the Devil had an effect on the fundamental structures of creation, maybe God can be forgiven for how things turn out in this world. One thing I have found in my searching: it is never His fault, anything bad that happens anywhere. Simple as that. God is light, and in Him is no darkness. God is love. Courage, take heart. For He is the First and the Last, and vengeance shall be His in the Judgment that shall surely comes. May peace not be far from where you stand.