The War of all Wars

I was talking with Scott, our minister to adults at our church recently. Our conversation got off-track, and we started conversing about the unseen world that is described in places in the Bible. A little background is in order here.
Paul and Peter both talk about God delivering his people out of darkness and from the power of evil (I Peter 2:9 and Acts 26:18). This occurs when we become Christians, followers of Christ by the power and grace of God.
Paul in Ephesians chapter 6 talks of putting on the armor of God so that we may stand against the principalities and powers (world forces) of darkness (Ephesians 6:11-12). Other places in the Bible also allude to or talk about this unseen spiritual world in which there is great struggle between good and evil. It is this unseen world of the principalities and forces of darkness and the struggles that go on there that we were discussing.
It is interesting to note that R. C. H. Lenski in his commentary on Ephesians 6 says this about this struggle: “The darkness is not merely the absence of light; it is the absolute antagonism to light and thus denotes the fearful power that is hostile to god who is ‘the light’ and whose are the ‘children of light’ (Ephesians 5:8). From ‘this darkness’ and the dominion of these ‘world tyrants’ Christ has delivered us; hence their war is waged in order again to subjugate us under their tyranny.”
Scott and I were talking specifically about a passage in Daniel 10 where Daniel had received a vision, but didn’t understand it. He prayed, asking God for understanding (10:12). The entity that came to Daniel (evidently an angel of God) told Daniel that from the first day, he had been sent by God to Daniel, but had been delayed 21 days in coming because “the prince of the kingdom of Persia” was withstanding him. Although we don’t know exactly what was going on here, most scholars agree that what was being described by the angel of God here was a conflict in the unseen spiritual realm that prevented him from completing his mission as sent by God until Michael, another angel of God, came to his aid.
Just think of that for a minute. If the scholars are correct, here is an angel of God, given a mission by God Himself, yet was unable to fulfill it until given help by another angel of God. Can you imagine what kind of conflict that must have been to have prevented this angel from completing his mission for three weeks until someone came to help?
Scott and I also talked of Paul saying in the first Thessalonian letter (2:18) that he wanted to come to see the Thessalonians, but “Satan thwarted us.” What that consisted of we don’t know with certainty. But we do know that Paul wouldn’t have written this had it not been true…evidently, Satan somehow kept Paul from going back to these people. You may be able to think of other places in the Bible where the “principalities and powers, rulers of the darkness,” and so on, are mentioned.
I don’t know what you think, but there is enough in scripture, including the armor of God passage in Ephesians 6, that tell me that there is one hellish war going on in a realm we only glimpse faintly through the words of the inspired writers. I have to wonder if one reason we see things happen in our reality that seem to defy logic or explanation (mass killings, abuse, torture, etc) is that these are times when that war breaks through the barrier, so to speak, between the spiritual and the material worlds, and we see the results.
I don’t have the answers, and working with topics like this brings more questions than I originally had before I started. Yet, it is worth a look from time to time; if for no other reason than to understand that we don’t understand...we don’t know. We do know, however, that God loves us passionately, intensely, and forever. Ours is to return that love as best we can and know how, and to work just as passionately and intensely to bring God’s kingdom to every place we go and to every person we meet. For when we do that, we help in the great battle going on in the unseen realms…the war of all wars.