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Battle beyond the stars

 


Daniel 10:14

 But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia.

 

Thought for the day – Battle beyond the stars

When I was a teenager, I went away on a camp for young leaders. It was run by Scripture Union and we were looking at Nehemiah for leadership skills. Anyway, on the Saturday afternoon I was outside  reading, when I looked up and saw this enormous figure standing next to me. And I mean enormous, he was taller than some of the trees and as I looked around the campsite, I saw every person there had their own. It was of course a big angel and I couldn’t help but be blown away by that brief look into the spiritual realm.

Today’s verse from Daniel reminded me of hat day. And as I was researching today I came upon this quote from Biblical Scholar Ronald Wallace: ‘We are indeed given a remarkable revelation of the communion of heaven and earth in the cosmic conflict. In addition to be messengers, the angels are patrons and guardians of communities, nations and individuals on earth.’ From his commentary ‘The Message of Daniel.

I appreciate it’s easy to get lost in the speculation about angels. But they are there in the conflict between the forces of heaven and those angels that fell for the lies of Lucifer and rebelled against God. Those same fallen, rebellious angels that seek to destroy the people of God, represented by the battle between the Prince of Persian and the angels Michael. Why do they want to destroy the saints? Because they hate God and they know their fate. A fate we do not share because of the gift of love and grace we received when Christ went to the cross for us. I thank God for the protection offered to us by God through his servants the angels. They are our fellow created beings who have the privilege of seeing the face of God. Something we will one day share.

This blog post is part of the Walking the Way Podcast series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material.

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