War echoes the valley walls. The blood of warriors cries out from the soil, waxing cold the heart of the soldier, “vengeance!” Swords of skillful slayers slash through skin and air. Generals frantically painting the art of war. Strategizing, moving through plans and back up plans, attacks and counter attacks. A real-life game of chess with real-life consequences for losing.
We are at war. Since the turning of time, humanity has been at war. Every person that has ever taken a breath has been a victim of this war. You can’t see it with your eyes, hear it with your ears. It can only be seen with your heart, heard within your thoughts.
It’s the war of the ages. A war between life and death, good and evil, order and chaos, truth and lie, light and darkness. And we are at the center of it. We did not start the war, but we sure are the catalyst to it. We were not the reason, but we quickly became the prize.
Before the beginning there was God. And God created a place for Himself to rest, Heaven. Within Heaven, there was untold multitudes of angels of varying ranks, sizes, abilities, etc. Within the top tier of angels, the 1% of Heaven if you will, was an angel known as Lucifer. Lucifer is said to have lead worship in Heaven, one of the greatest (if not the greatest) positions there is. On top of that, his name means light bearer.
Side thought: There isn’t enough evidence to say for certain but with his name meaning light bearer could we assume that he did in fact bear the light of God? As earthly kings had cup bearers whose job was to solely hold and hand the king his cup, could Lucifer have been the one in charge of holding the light of God? Could this have been the reason he became so prideful? Seeing the light of God as a part of himself, as if he were the one emitting it?
Either way, what we do know is that Lucifer rebelled, and he was able to lead one third of the host of Heaven to rebel with him. He waged war against God Himself. Talk about pride! The faithful heavenly host prevailed against the revilers, casting them from Heaven to earth. The rebellious angels may have lost the battle in the heavenlies, but they continued their war against God, now on earth.
These fallen angels were now cut off, cast away, separated from God. They became separated from all that is good, all that is pure, all that is life. They began to lose their God-given identity. They became twisted, depraved forms of their once holy, beautiful statures. Being void of all that made them good and pure, they became the exact opposite, the antithesis, the antonym of their original nature. They became self-governing, selfish entities, bent on destroying all the works (creations) of God. Lucifer, who was once the leader of worship, the bearer of light had now become Satan (the Devil) leader of accusation, the bearer of darkness. Thus began the rise of the kingdom of darkness.
Out of all the works of God, we, humanity, are his most cherished, most loved. Created in the very image of God we were the image bearers of God on the earth. So, naturally we became the target of Satan and the fallen. His first plan? Separate us from God so we would no longer bear the image of God but rather bear the image of the fallen. Separate man from the influence/mastery of God so that we would become influenced/mastered by some other spiritual force, sin.
From the moment that Satan was able to successfully separate man from God that has been the goal of the kingdom of darkness: to separate and keep separate man from God. To steal, kill and destroy. To master, possess and lord humanity. To be the spiritual governing power of the earth with Satan seated as god.
The kingdom of darkness has no creative powers within itself, God alone is the creator. Instead, it imitates. It falsifies all things of Heaven and writes it off as truth. It deceives the nations, distorts reality and blinds the hearts of man from seeing the truth to where it is said of mankind, no one seeks God, no not one.
We are all born into this domain. And we all blindly follow the rules and the leader of this kingdom. The rules and expectations are simple and very much desirable; do what thou wilt. Do what you want, when you want, however you want because fulfilling our own desires, feeding our pleasures is our great reward in this life. We answer to ourselves. We self-govern making all truth relative. Good is turned to bad and bad is turned to good. We even reward stupidity with millions of views and hundreds of thousands of dollars!
This is the reality of all man unless something greater gets our attention; unless a light shines through the darkness and highlights a new path for us to take. And that is exactly what happened when Jesus came to earth. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, on them has the light shone. “
A new Kingdom had emerged alongside Jesus, to which Jesus made known to all when he proclaimed, “repent, for the Kingdom of God is near!”
Now that we have become aware of the light at the end of the tunnel what will we do? Continue to stumble around like people without eyes, taking the broad easy path of fulfilling our own desires and never finding or experiencing our real hope and purpose? Or will we take a step of faith toward this great light and see what’s on the other end of the rabbit hole.
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