Rebellion on the High Places

The enemy’s kingdom is a kingdom of apostates. It is then no wonder, one of his chief specialties is to turn the righteous against the Lord.

The enemy himself was once a angel of splendor if we are to take the traditional reading in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 as being about him:

12 “How you have fallen from heaven,

O star of the morning, son of the dawn!

You have been cut down to the earth,

You who have weakened the nations!

13 “But you said in your heart,

‘I will ascend to heaven;

I will raise my throne above the stars of God,

And I will sit on the mount of assembly

In the recesses of the north.

14 ‘I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;

I will make myself like the Most High.’

15 “Nevertheless you will be thrust down to Sheol,

To the recesses of the pit.

Isaiah 14:12-15

And Ezekiel describes him as

“You were in Eden, the garden of God;

Every precious stone was your covering:

The ruby, the topaz and the diamond;

The beryl, the onyx and the jasper;

The lapis lazuli, the turquoise and the emerald;

And the gold, the workmanship of your settings and sockets,

Was in you.

On the day that you were created

They were prepared.

“You were the anointed cherub who covers,

And I placed you there.

You were on the holy mountain of God;

You walked in the midst of the stones of fire.

“You were blameless in your ways

From the day you were created

Until unrighteousness was found in you.

In our own time, the angelic ruling class are not below a rebellion.

In Psalm 2, the Psalmist describes the scene of angelic rulers plotting “against the Lord and against His Anointed.”

The kings of the earth take their stand

And the rulers take counsel together

Against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying,

“Let us tear their fetters apart

And cast away their cords from us!”

While I have yet to hear of a human council of all human rulers that gets together to consciously rebel against the rule of the Lord, this does fit an angelic picture of the world and its angelic ruling class.

In fact, the bible proposes that the human rulers of the earth have an angelic counterpart who represents them in heavenly realms and that even fights against angels like Gabriel when he is charged to give Daniel news.

When God prophecies about rulers to come after the Persian Empire, God portreys the scene as a battle of angelic kingdoms, each with a “prince” which has a human counterpart (ex. Alexander the Great).

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Eph VI:12

The New Testament reminds adherents to its teaching that the world’s highest forces against the truth are ultimately evil and angelic: they are rulers in high places that resist the truth.

The bible depicts as well the Gentile Angelic Rulers over the Christian Church as being corrupted toward the end of human history:

Behold then the kindness and severity of God; to those who fell [first century Jews], severity, but to you [gentiles], God’s kindness, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you [gentiles] also will be cut off.

Romans 11:22

And yet, did the Gentiles keep this charge? No just as First Century Judiasm took for granted their privilaged place of acceptance as “the people of God” so hath the Gentiles taken theirs for granted, and pride comes before the fall:

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, [fn]haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.

2 Tim 3:1-5

2 Timothy 3 essentially says the church will become worthless toward the end of time in the sense of church which is mainly outward and visible instead of inward and genuine.

And to whom does Jesus address the letters to the Churches in Asia Minor in Revelation 2-3? To the “anglos of the churches” - to the “angel” of the churches.

It is no wonder that if the angelic rulers over the Church are themselves affected by end-times deception and darkness, so that the church is indistinguishable from the world - yea, worse than it - that Jesus would describe such a time that “even the elect” having trouble in it.

So when the Lamb returns, he will not return with cushy words for the visible church.

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.”

Mark 13:31

&

“But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law to fail.”

Luke 16:17

&

Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them.

Rev 20:11

&

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.

Rev 21:1

And so those “Christians” who had the goodies of the world, yet lived graceless lives will be left hand people:

Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; 43 I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’

Matthew 25:41-43

I suppose I am writing basically every article on this blog over again by bringing up these texts.

I am just very tired of appearance-based Christianity, where the only thing that matters is looks, feels, and sounds. This type of Christianity is unfamiliar to the Lord. It is sad, then, that it’s the only kind one can find on the earth unless you go to the desert yourself…. away from lofty, prosperous, happy clappy christendom.

S.D.G.