Word of Salvation – Vol.50 No.41 – November 2005

 

A Glimpse of Spiritual Warfare

 

Sermon by Rev J De Hoog on Daniel 10 (part 2)

Scripture Reading:  2 Kings 6:8-23

Suggested Hymns:  BoW 24a; 61; 438; 310:1,4,5

 

Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ…

The king of Aram is frustrated. He is at war with the king of Israel, but he has a very serious disadvantage. He can keep none of his war strategies secret! He decides something, and he says, “I will set up my camp in such and such a place.” But no sooner has he decided something than the secret leaks out. Every time he plans some secret new strategy in his campaign, somehow the secret gets out and the king of Israel is always prepared.

The king of Aram eventually comes to suspect that one of his own high officials is a traitor, a spy. You can read it in 2 Kings 6:11. “He summoned the officers and demanded of them, ‘Will you not tell me which of us is on the side of the king of Israel?’ ‘None of us, my Lord the king,’ said one of his officers, ‘but Elisha, the prophet, who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the very words you speak in your bedroom’.”

It’s a very amusing picture. The king of Aram can’t even think up a new strategy in the privacy of his bedroom without Elisha knowing about it and telling the king of Israel. Elisha doesn’t have an intelligence network, of course. He is a prophet of the Most High God, and God is revealing these things to him.

So the king of Aram issues a command to his secret service. Go and find out where Elisha is staying, and I will take an army and capture him. They soon learn that Elisha is staying at Dothan, about twenty kilometres north of Samaria. The king of Aram sends an army through the night to surround the little town of Dothan. Imagine the sight that greeted the townspeople the next morning! We read particularly about the reaction of Elisha’s servant in 2 Kings 6.

2 Kings 6:15 “When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. ‘Oh, my lord, what shall we do?’ the servant asked. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ the prophet answered. ‘Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’ And Elisha prayed, ‘O Lord, open his eyes so that he may see.’ Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”

“Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Here is a Biblical insight into the nature of reality that we need to grasp and keep in our minds. Things are not always as they seem. Human causes and effects, and so-called ‘natural’ causes and effects, are not the only forces that operate in the history of this world. If we could just pull back the curtains and look into the world of spiritual realities, we would see another world of spiritual personalities and spiritual warfare that most people know nothing about. We would see something of what Elisha’s servant was enabled to see.

Abraham Kuyper spoke about it this way. “If once the curtain were pulled back, and the spiritual world behind it came into view, it would expose to our spiritual vision a struggle so intense, so convulsive, sweeping everything within its range, that the fiercest battle ever fought on earth would seem, by comparison, a mere game. Not here, but up there – that is where the real conflict is waged. Our earthly struggle drones in its backlash.”

Daniel 10 takes us into that hidden world, that hidden world of spiritual warfare. And this chapter teaches us something about how we relate to this hidden world of spiritual beings and spiritual warfare. Last time we looked at Daniel 10 we saw that the warfare that is being waged is primarily conflict over the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Even in Daniel’s day, the spiritual forces of darkness are trying to stop that message getting to Daniel, trying to stop that message being recorded here in the Book of Daniel for the generations to come.

Let’s the consider further the spiritual warfare that has gone on and that continues behind the scenes of human history. Let’s think first about the identity of the warriors in the conflict recorded here.

The messenger who comes to Daniel with the explanation of the revelation that Daniel has received is truly an impressive figure. Verse 5, “I looked up and there before me was a man dressed in linen, with a belt of the finest gold round his waist. His body was like chrysolite, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and his voice like the sound of a multitude. I, Daniel, was the only one who saw the vision; the men with me did not see it, but such terror overwhelmed them that they fled and hid themselves. So I was left alone, gazing at this great vision; I had no strength left, my face turned deathly pale and I was helpless. Then I heard him speaking, and as I listened, I fell into a deep sleep, my face to the ground.”

Who is this heavenly messenger? Is he the Son of God, before his incarnation as Jesus Christ 530 years later, come to tell Daniel what he himself will do in the future as God who takes on human nature? Perhaps he is. The magnificent description of the messenger is similar to the description of the risen Christ that John gives us in Revelation Chapter 1. It also has some similarities to the description of the vision of God that Ezekiel receives in Ezekiel Chapter 1. And the vision evokes from Daniel the same kind of response that Christ produces from John in Revelation 1 and that grips Ezekiel in Ezekiel 1 – he falls down at his feet, as if dead. In addition to all that, three times (vss 16, 17 & 19) Daniel calls this heavenly messenger “my lord”. Perhaps this messenger from God really is God the Son.

But there is some evidence that tells against this idea also. In verse 11, the messenger says he has been sent to Daniel. Is God the Son sent, or does he do the sending? Yes, the Father sent him into the world when he came here born of a virgin, born under the law, but in his pre-incarnate glory, is he a sent one? In verse 13, the messenger says he was resisted by the prince of Persia for twenty-one days, and it was only with the help of Michael that he was able to break through to get to Daniel. Can God the Son be withstood? Does he need the help of an angel like Michael to achieve his purpose? It seems unlikely.

In the end, we do not know if this messenger was God the Son or not; we simply are not told. However, more important than identifying the messenger, think about the effect this vision produces in a man like Daniel.

Daniel sees something of the glory and awesome majesty of God. His companions flee in terror. Daniel himself is overcome by weakness and falls into a trance, with his face pressed into the dirt. He then is touched and raised to his hands and knees, then to a standing but trembling position, then he is prostrate again and is touched again and enabled to voice his weakness, then touched again before he can finally even listen to the messenger! Something of the omnipotence and awesome glory of God is being communicated to Daniel through this experience.

This figure may be the pre-incarnate Christ, or it may be only one of his messengers. But can you imagine what it will be like on the Day of Judgment when the risen and glorified Christ does come back with all his holy angels, not just one of them? Some people are so blase about God. They might say, “Well, if God exists, when I see him, I’ve got a bone to pick with him. I’ve got a thing or two to say to God about the way he has been running things!”

How ridiculous! The New Testament tells us that when Jesus Christ appears, with all his holy angels, men and women all over the world will run into caves and holes in the ground, and they will ask the rocks to fall on them, so they can hide from the face of the Lamb. But no one will be able to hide. All who have rejected Christ will meet their Maker and their Conqueror – including Satan, the ruler of all evil – for God is his Maker, too, and his Conqueror in Christ. But all who have trusted in Christ will meet their Maker and their Redeemer, and they will rejoice with uplifted head.

Consider now the other combatants mentioned in this chapter. The prince of the Persian kingdom is mentioned in verse 13. Michael is mentioned in verse 13 as one of the “chief princes” and in verse 21 he is called “your prince” – Michael is the prince of Israel. The prince of Persia is mentioned again in verse 20, and then the prince of Greece also.

These “princes” seem to be powerful angels, good and evil angels. Each nation seems to have a “patron angel” to represent it. The details are not very clear. What is clear is that the conflict being presented here is, as Ephesians 6:12 puts it, “not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” And it is not just political conflict. It is conflict over the kingdom of God. The evil forces are attacking God’s people, and the prince of Israel, the mighty angel Michael, is involved in the conflict on behalf of God’s people.

The heavenly messenger who comes to speak to Daniel, whether it is the pre-incarnate Christ or not, is involved in this battle also. In verse 13 he says that the prince of Persia resisted him for twenty-one days and prevented him from coming immediately to Daniel. Then Michael came and helped our messenger, so that he could get through to Daniel. But verse 20 tells us that he plans to go and resume the struggle against the prince of Persia, and he will also have to fight against the prince of Greece, all with Michael’s help.

All of this sounds strange to our ears, and Daniel Chapter 10 certainly doesn’t give us enough information to be certain about the details of what is happening. But this picture in Daniel 10 helps us to understand some important sections of the New Testament.

The Hebrew word “prince” used here in Daniel is then translated in the Greek version of the Old Testament into the Greek word for “prince” (archon), which is then used in all four gospels and in Paul’s writings to describe Satan or evil spirit powers. For example, in Matthew 9:34 the Pharisees say of Jesus, “It is by the prince of demons that he drives out demons.”

These spirit powers are very real. They were involved in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, using human agents. They are still at work today in many different ways. But the New Testament adds a very important new truth to this whole picture. Here it is. Colossians 2:15, “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

When Jesus was hanging on the cross, in those hours of darkness, a cosmic battle was being conducted. It was the great and climactic battle. The conflict that we read about in Daniel 10 is one of the earlier skirmishes in this battle. When Jesus came to the world, the amount of demonic activity on the earth increased dramatically. Satan himself came to the earth to tempt the Son of God and to divert him from his purpose. But Jesus was faithful all the way to the cross.

Then on the cross of Christ, that great battle reached its zenith. All the sins of all of God’s people were placed upon Jesus that day, and Satan, the Accuser, the Deceiver, accused Jesus of all those sins. He threw everything he had against the Son of God hanging on that cross. But see the result of that terrible climactic battle! Colossians 2:15, “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

On the cross, the forces of evil were disarmed, they were publicly exposed, and finally defeated. As Hebrews 2:14 puts it, “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” Notice. By his death on the cross, Christ defeated him who holds the power of death, and freed all his people from the fear of death. 1 John 3:8 puts it this way: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.”

We have an account of this climactic conflict in Revelation Chapter 12. Just as Daniel takes us behind the scenes and pulls back the curtain just a little bit so that we can see into the heavenlies during Daniel’s time, so Revelation 12 pulls back the curtain just a little bit so that we can see what happened during Jesus’ time.

Revelation 12:1-9, “A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth.” (The woman about to give birth is the people of God, the child about to be born is Jesus Christ, the dragon is Satan, that ancient serpent, the devil.)

“The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.” (Remember Herod and the murder of the babies in Bethlehem? Herod was Satan’s agent, seeking to destroy the child.)

“She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron sceptre. And the child was snatched up to God and to his throne. The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days. And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down – that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole earth astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.”

What Revelation 12 gives us here is a behind-the-scenes look at what happened when Jesus Christ was born, lived on this earth, died on the cross, rose again on the third day and ascended to heaven to the place of all authority at the Father’s right hand. While Jesus was walking this earth, Michael, the prince of Israel in Daniel 10, was waging war against the serpent, against Satan and his angels. It was the greatest conflict of them all; it was the climax of the spiritual warfare in the heavenly places.

But when Jesus died on the cross and then on the third day rose from the grave, and then ascended to the heavenlies, he had defeated death, he had taken away the power of sin, he had saved all his people. And the devil was defeated, and he and his angels lost their place in heaven and were cast down to the earth.

Can Satan still appear in heaven before the throne of God, to accuse God’s people as he accused Job? No he cannot. He has lost his place in heaven. Jesus Christ has won the victory. In Daniel 10 we catch a glimpse of spiritual warfare in the heavenly realms. In Revelation 12, we realise that the great climactic battle of that ongoing warfare has already been fought, and it was won by Jesus Christ when he rose from the dead. Hallelujah! The great end time battle has already been fought and won!

Revelation 12 goes on. Verse 10, “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: ‘Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before God day and night, has been hurled down’.” The kingdom of God has come; the victory belongs to Jesus Christ.

Now this doesn’t mean that the conflict is entirely over. It doesn’t mean that Satan has gone off to sulk in the corner. See how Revelation 12 continues. Verse 12, “Therefore rejoice you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows his time is short.”

He is filled with fury. He knows his time is short. But like a snake in its death throes, he continues to writhe in fury against the church. The rest of Revelation 12 makes it clear that he is doubly furious, and is attacking the church with all he can muster. But the Chapter also shows that he cannot finally succeed, and that the church will be kept safe. Of course! For as Jesus said, not even the gates of Hades can prevail against the church.

[Pause]

We need to return to Daniel 10 one more time, to learn from it some principles of the way in which we are involved and should be active in the spiritual warfare that continues even today. But today, be encouraged! In Daniel’s day, the warfare in the heavens was fierce, and as we have seen, it was a war against the gospel of Jesus Christ. The spiritual forces of evil did not want Daniel or the church universal to receive the message of Chapters 11-12. But God prevailed, and we have that message now recorded for us in this book. And much more, we have recorded for us the final outcome of that great warfare. Jesus Christ has won the victory. So be encouraged and be strengthened to stand in his power.

Amen.