The Battle of the Angels
Monica King
February 02, 2006
I have been writing for a few months now here in this Chronicle, about the sacred realms, which include most importantly the planet earth at this time.
I hope by now it is clear that I myself have taken a firm & obvious & public stance as a believer in & disciple of Christ. This is my own personal witness. This is the spiritual inheritance I was blessed with through the lineage of both of my parents who dutifully raised me within the traditions of organized Christianity beginning with a sprinkled baptism of holy water as an infant daughter at the White House Chapel by the Chaplain, for President Eisenhower, a close friend of my mother's parents.
I am the first to say that, in my own lived world experiences since that sacred first ritual espousing me to the body of the whole Church, I have been an explorer & an adventurer. Both of the physical universe, & the universe within, that made & mediated through the individual & group mind; the Jungian notion of the collective unconscious; that Mind containing the rich heritage of the God of gods contained in the world's various religions, cultures & traditions.
I have known from the beginning that my calling was as a healer within the body of Christ. And as I have journeyed in this earth walk, I have learned to, as perhaps a spiritual anthropologist might, tell stories of a sacred nature to illuminate the truth & reality that, though we are many, we are One.
One way to do this, is to perform exegesis.
exegesis;
Critical explanation or analysis, especially of a text.
(especially of the Bible)
The first time I heard the word was in my first class at the Divinity School, I thought, "wow, that word alone is worth a good part of the scholarship money they have given me to come here!"
Exegesis... now THAT is an impressive thing to do I betcha!
Anyhoo, since a good education never goes "bad" unless you leave it unused in the back corner of a shelf somewhere, I thought I would do what the Proverbs urge us to do with good education; pass it on FREELY.
SO, here is the crux of the MOST interesting of the parts of the Bible I have found commanding my own interest: the Battle of the Angels.
Here is a little Exegesis about this most fascinating of all conflicts in the Bible as it is the high drama of the final chapters of the Book of Revelation which ties in the oldest of the prophecies in the old testament with the last revelations in the final book of the new testament, making "one eternal round". Making the complete WHOLE.
I am not going to do all the heavy lifting here though. I am merely going to illuminate some meanings of words that have a common usage in our every day mundane existence with the more ancient & essential notions associated with these terms, & let the Spirit bring the reader the epiphanies the reader is seeking. Way leading on to way, wave upon wave, stringing us all along in our merry dance in the cosmic soup.
I will ask for a little help from the voices of other writers, apostles, prophets, poets & singers along the way. Here is the gist of it though:
Earth has become the battleground of a supreme struggle which began in Heaven.
Our apostle Paul, in his very instructive Book of Acts, wherein the instructions were given to the early church concerning its organization & make-up, was really the most compelling & zealous voice of a widely traveled missionary establishing those churches in the immediate regions of the Middle East & parts of continental Africa, Egypt, & Mesopotamia.
Paul originally settled many disputations concerning HOW to settle conflicts, HOW to wait for the "baptism of FIRE" of the Holy Spirit; & clearly made it known how the Church was a complete organization for supplying every human both temporal & spiritual need, want & desire. Paul addressed the vital subjects of creating a unified intentional community including the need for law, order, justice, mercy & healing within the ushering in of life as well as life's exit; temporal death. More than those early practical teachings in every day living, he taught the importance of understanding that we lived in the world but were not OF the world; making yet another distinction between the "worldy system of things", sometimes referred to as Idumea, & the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven to reign forever, eternally upon the earth, world without end.
Consistently, Paul taught us that the battles we were waging were NOT of the worldly kind so prevalent then as now: ones to be waged with heavy metal, bullets, machine guns, & increasingly evil & insidious forms of nuclear & bioengineered weapons to kill maim & torture with. While such materially heavy & bound weapons were the hallmark of the Roman Empires, then as now, Paul admonished his listeners to understand that; these weapons designed to maim & kill flesh, were only the material outgrowth of the thoughts placed in the hearts & souls of men through the power of & the kingdom of the Evil One.
The real battle he taught us all; was a battle of the angels, with us humans caught here in the middle, or as a popular song said once, "stuck in the middle with you". Now this is consistent with what a shaman would tell you also. I think it fair to say Paul is a good model of a disciple/shaman.
disciple:
a scholar, sometimes applied to the followers of John the Baptist (Matt. 9:14),
and of the Pharisees (22:16), but principally to the followers of Christ. A
disciple of Christ is one who (1) believes his doctrine, (2) rests on his
sacrifice, (3) imbibes his spirit, and (4) imitates his example (Matt. 10:24;
Luke 14:26, 27, 33; John 6:69).
Note that disciple is the root for the word discipline. Disciples discipline themselves first; by tempering their own characters; bridling tempers, lusts, basically childish & egotistically driven urges we all are familiar with. He gave many, many examples of these, using his own life as an example, the most compelling of teaching techniques. Paul did not just "talk the talk", he also "walked the walk" urging consistently those he communicated with to gain strength from his own witness & example.
He firmly did away with such notions as "he who has the gold rules" replacing it with the Golden Rule.
He compared & contrasted the worldly governing laws with the Law of Heaven. He came before rulers & authorities both within the synagogues & villages & cities where he traveled to witness these teachings suffering much persecution for doing so, nonetheless staunchly persisting to the end to consistently preach the gospel truths he had been endowed with. He was the writer who set the stage for the final Revelations John the Revelator followed with in the final book. He defined the key players.
The key players then as now, & forever, world without end are ANGELS & humans. With other assorted spirits, ghosts, demons, elementals, gods, & charlatans in the great final Play. Think of Paul as your cosmic stage manager. Behind the scenes, has the whole script, prompts the actors with their lines & knows the whole play, line by line by heart.
If we were to look at Paul's script today it would have notes penned in the sides of the well worn script he often referred back to which would go something like this;
CAST
ANGELS-(Latin angelus; Greek aggelos; from the Hebrew for "one going" or "one sent"; messenger). The word is used in Hebrew to denote indifferently either a divine or human messenger. Essential functions; as MESSENGERS
HUMANS-"You have made him (man) a little less than the angels" (Psalm 8:6).
Imagine if you will now, as we go through Paul's side notes about the Angels, that you are receiving the order of a heavenly postal service, like our own United States Postal Service. In Heaven, as on earth, in America, the business of delivering important messages is vastly complex, necessitating many, many workers who are highly organized to deliver a service & group of products for the governed. On earth the USPS, in Heaven, the Angelic messenger service.
In Heaven as on earth there is a need for management & order. The Supreme Deity GOD is the head honcho in Heaven. Often referred to as Our Father, but variously known by many, many other names, numero uno is GOD.
In the Heavenly Order there are offices, the names of those in those offices, as well as distinctions & divisions, just like the postal service.
Angels, equally with man, are created beings; "praise ye Him, all His angels: praise ye Him, all His hosts . . . for He spoke and they were made. He commanded and they were created" ( Psalm 148:2, 5; Colossians 1:16-17)
Both angels & humans were SPOKEN into being.
It is as messengers that they most often figure in the Bible, but, as St. Augustine, and after him St. Gregory, expresses it: angelus est nomen officii ("angel is the name of the office") and expresses neither their essential nature nor their essential function, viz.: that of attendants upon God's throne in that court of heaven of which Daniel has left us a vivid picture:
I behold till thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days sat: His garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like clean wool: His throne like flames of fire: the wheels of it like a burning fire. A swift stream of fire issued forth from before Him: thousands of thousands ministered to Him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before Him: the judgment sat and the books were opened. ( Daniel 7:9-10; cf. also Psalm 96:7; Psalm 102:20 ; Isaiah 6, etc.)
This function of the angelic host is expressed by the word "assistance" (Job 1:6; 2:1), and our Lord refers to it as their perpetual occupation ( Matthew 18:10). More than once we are told of seven angels whose special function it is thus to "stand before God's throne" (Tobit 12:15; Revelation 8:2-5). The same thought may be intended by "the angel of His presence" ( Isaiah 63:9) an expression which also occurs in the pseudo-epigraphical "Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs".
NOW, lest you think you have an accurate picture of this celestial scene, I caution you; a throne has more than one meaning.
YES, throne does mean a very nice chair for a royal ass if you will, or derrier for the more sensitive & discreet reader, but throne is itself ALSO the term used to IDENTIFY one of the many offices & types of angels GOD spoke into being.
This is where the Spirit will help you now. Instead of picturing a chair in the center of heaven, you may picture instead a Heavenly Messenger of the highest order in the GOD squad. A Throne. An Angel. A very important & authoritative one in the celestial management chart. In the center of the council. WITH Christ.
The Key Personages, the center of the circle of countless beings as the judgment commences.
The distinction of good and bad angels constantly appears in the Bible, but it is instructive to note that there is no sign of any dualism or conflict between two equal principles, one good and the other evil. The conflict depicted is rather that waged on earth between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of the Evil One, but the latter's inferiority is always supposed. The existence, then, of this inferior, and therefore created, spirit, has to be explained.
And I will explain it as we go along this month. For today, since we apparently have six more weeks of winter ahead now, to contemplate some of these things, let me introduce you to the King of the Angels, one Jesus Christ, the Queen of the Angels, His Mom ( a throne), the bride of Christ, (His bride), & the Chief Prince of the Angels, Archangel Michael.
These are the MAIN characters in the scripts Paul is holding. A King, a Queen, a Bride, & a Prince. Heading up the Majority of Angels in the whole play; exactly two thirds of the angels. All are Angels of Light. These are the Chief COoperating officers.
Their Adversaries: the evil angels. Only one third of the multitude in this highest of dramas. Chief Adversary; satan.
These folks, are the divine entities battling it out right now. With YOU in the middle. A Human Being, endowed with the ultimate divine gift; CHOICE; LIBERTY, FREEDOM TO CHOOSE.
This is NO DRESS REHEARSAL now either.
All the world is a stage & we are ALL players on it. Thanks, Shakespeare!
More to come...
I hope by now it is clear that I myself have taken a firm & obvious & public stance as a believer in & disciple of Christ. This is my own personal witness. This is the spiritual inheritance I was blessed with through the lineage of both of my parents who dutifully raised me within the traditions of organized Christianity beginning with a sprinkled baptism of holy water as an infant daughter at the White House Chapel by the Chaplain, for President Eisenhower, a close friend of my mother's parents.
I am the first to say that, in my own lived world experiences since that sacred first ritual espousing me to the body of the whole Church, I have been an explorer & an adventurer. Both of the physical universe, & the universe within, that made & mediated through the individual & group mind; the Jungian notion of the collective unconscious; that Mind containing the rich heritage of the God of gods contained in the world's various religions, cultures & traditions.
I have known from the beginning that my calling was as a healer within the body of Christ. And as I have journeyed in this earth walk, I have learned to, as perhaps a spiritual anthropologist might, tell stories of a sacred nature to illuminate the truth & reality that, though we are many, we are One.
One way to do this, is to perform exegesis.
exegesis;
Critical explanation or analysis, especially of a text.
(especially of the Bible)
The first time I heard the word was in my first class at the Divinity School, I thought, "wow, that word alone is worth a good part of the scholarship money they have given me to come here!"
Exegesis... now THAT is an impressive thing to do I betcha!
Anyhoo, since a good education never goes "bad" unless you leave it unused in the back corner of a shelf somewhere, I thought I would do what the Proverbs urge us to do with good education; pass it on FREELY.
SO, here is the crux of the MOST interesting of the parts of the Bible I have found commanding my own interest: the Battle of the Angels.
Here is a little Exegesis about this most fascinating of all conflicts in the Bible as it is the high drama of the final chapters of the Book of Revelation which ties in the oldest of the prophecies in the old testament with the last revelations in the final book of the new testament, making "one eternal round". Making the complete WHOLE.
I am not going to do all the heavy lifting here though. I am merely going to illuminate some meanings of words that have a common usage in our every day mundane existence with the more ancient & essential notions associated with these terms, & let the Spirit bring the reader the epiphanies the reader is seeking. Way leading on to way, wave upon wave, stringing us all along in our merry dance in the cosmic soup.
I will ask for a little help from the voices of other writers, apostles, prophets, poets & singers along the way. Here is the gist of it though:
Earth has become the battleground of a supreme struggle which began in Heaven.
Our apostle Paul, in his very instructive Book of Acts, wherein the instructions were given to the early church concerning its organization & make-up, was really the most compelling & zealous voice of a widely traveled missionary establishing those churches in the immediate regions of the Middle East & parts of continental Africa, Egypt, & Mesopotamia.
Paul originally settled many disputations concerning HOW to settle conflicts, HOW to wait for the "baptism of FIRE" of the Holy Spirit; & clearly made it known how the Church was a complete organization for supplying every human both temporal & spiritual need, want & desire. Paul addressed the vital subjects of creating a unified intentional community including the need for law, order, justice, mercy & healing within the ushering in of life as well as life's exit; temporal death. More than those early practical teachings in every day living, he taught the importance of understanding that we lived in the world but were not OF the world; making yet another distinction between the "worldy system of things", sometimes referred to as Idumea, & the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven to reign forever, eternally upon the earth, world without end.
Consistently, Paul taught us that the battles we were waging were NOT of the worldly kind so prevalent then as now: ones to be waged with heavy metal, bullets, machine guns, & increasingly evil & insidious forms of nuclear & bioengineered weapons to kill maim & torture with. While such materially heavy & bound weapons were the hallmark of the Roman Empires, then as now, Paul admonished his listeners to understand that; these weapons designed to maim & kill flesh, were only the material outgrowth of the thoughts placed in the hearts & souls of men through the power of & the kingdom of the Evil One.
The real battle he taught us all; was a battle of the angels, with us humans caught here in the middle, or as a popular song said once, "stuck in the middle with you". Now this is consistent with what a shaman would tell you also. I think it fair to say Paul is a good model of a disciple/shaman.
disciple:
a scholar, sometimes applied to the followers of John the Baptist (Matt. 9:14),
and of the Pharisees (22:16), but principally to the followers of Christ. A
disciple of Christ is one who (1) believes his doctrine, (2) rests on his
sacrifice, (3) imbibes his spirit, and (4) imitates his example (Matt. 10:24;
Luke 14:26, 27, 33; John 6:69).
Note that disciple is the root for the word discipline. Disciples discipline themselves first; by tempering their own characters; bridling tempers, lusts, basically childish & egotistically driven urges we all are familiar with. He gave many, many examples of these, using his own life as an example, the most compelling of teaching techniques. Paul did not just "talk the talk", he also "walked the walk" urging consistently those he communicated with to gain strength from his own witness & example.
He firmly did away with such notions as "he who has the gold rules" replacing it with the Golden Rule.
He compared & contrasted the worldly governing laws with the Law of Heaven. He came before rulers & authorities both within the synagogues & villages & cities where he traveled to witness these teachings suffering much persecution for doing so, nonetheless staunchly persisting to the end to consistently preach the gospel truths he had been endowed with. He was the writer who set the stage for the final Revelations John the Revelator followed with in the final book. He defined the key players.
The key players then as now, & forever, world without end are ANGELS & humans. With other assorted spirits, ghosts, demons, elementals, gods, & charlatans in the great final Play. Think of Paul as your cosmic stage manager. Behind the scenes, has the whole script, prompts the actors with their lines & knows the whole play, line by line by heart.
If we were to look at Paul's script today it would have notes penned in the sides of the well worn script he often referred back to which would go something like this;
CAST
ANGELS-(Latin angelus; Greek aggelos; from the Hebrew for "one going" or "one sent"; messenger). The word is used in Hebrew to denote indifferently either a divine or human messenger. Essential functions; as MESSENGERS
HUMANS-"You have made him (man) a little less than the angels" (Psalm 8:6).
Imagine if you will now, as we go through Paul's side notes about the Angels, that you are receiving the order of a heavenly postal service, like our own United States Postal Service. In Heaven, as on earth, in America, the business of delivering important messages is vastly complex, necessitating many, many workers who are highly organized to deliver a service & group of products for the governed. On earth the USPS, in Heaven, the Angelic messenger service.
In Heaven as on earth there is a need for management & order. The Supreme Deity GOD is the head honcho in Heaven. Often referred to as Our Father, but variously known by many, many other names, numero uno is GOD.
In the Heavenly Order there are offices, the names of those in those offices, as well as distinctions & divisions, just like the postal service.
Angels, equally with man, are created beings; "praise ye Him, all His angels: praise ye Him, all His hosts . . . for He spoke and they were made. He commanded and they were created" ( Psalm 148:2, 5; Colossians 1:16-17)
Both angels & humans were SPOKEN into being.
It is as messengers that they most often figure in the Bible, but, as St. Augustine, and after him St. Gregory, expresses it: angelus est nomen officii ("angel is the name of the office") and expresses neither their essential nature nor their essential function, viz.: that of attendants upon God's throne in that court of heaven of which Daniel has left us a vivid picture:
I behold till thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days sat: His garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like clean wool: His throne like flames of fire: the wheels of it like a burning fire. A swift stream of fire issued forth from before Him: thousands of thousands ministered to Him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before Him: the judgment sat and the books were opened. ( Daniel 7:9-10; cf. also Psalm 96:7; Psalm 102:20 ; Isaiah 6, etc.)
This function of the angelic host is expressed by the word "assistance" (Job 1:6; 2:1), and our Lord refers to it as their perpetual occupation ( Matthew 18:10). More than once we are told of seven angels whose special function it is thus to "stand before God's throne" (Tobit 12:15; Revelation 8:2-5). The same thought may be intended by "the angel of His presence" ( Isaiah 63:9) an expression which also occurs in the pseudo-epigraphical "Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs".
NOW, lest you think you have an accurate picture of this celestial scene, I caution you; a throne has more than one meaning.
YES, throne does mean a very nice chair for a royal ass if you will, or derrier for the more sensitive & discreet reader, but throne is itself ALSO the term used to IDENTIFY one of the many offices & types of angels GOD spoke into being.
This is where the Spirit will help you now. Instead of picturing a chair in the center of heaven, you may picture instead a Heavenly Messenger of the highest order in the GOD squad. A Throne. An Angel. A very important & authoritative one in the celestial management chart. In the center of the council. WITH Christ.
The Key Personages, the center of the circle of countless beings as the judgment commences.
The distinction of good and bad angels constantly appears in the Bible, but it is instructive to note that there is no sign of any dualism or conflict between two equal principles, one good and the other evil. The conflict depicted is rather that waged on earth between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of the Evil One, but the latter's inferiority is always supposed. The existence, then, of this inferior, and therefore created, spirit, has to be explained.
And I will explain it as we go along this month. For today, since we apparently have six more weeks of winter ahead now, to contemplate some of these things, let me introduce you to the King of the Angels, one Jesus Christ, the Queen of the Angels, His Mom ( a throne), the bride of Christ, (His bride), & the Chief Prince of the Angels, Archangel Michael.
These are the MAIN characters in the scripts Paul is holding. A King, a Queen, a Bride, & a Prince. Heading up the Majority of Angels in the whole play; exactly two thirds of the angels. All are Angels of Light. These are the Chief COoperating officers.
Their Adversaries: the evil angels. Only one third of the multitude in this highest of dramas. Chief Adversary; satan.
These folks, are the divine entities battling it out right now. With YOU in the middle. A Human Being, endowed with the ultimate divine gift; CHOICE; LIBERTY, FREEDOM TO CHOOSE.
This is NO DRESS REHEARSAL now either.
All the world is a stage & we are ALL players on it. Thanks, Shakespeare!
More to come...
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