Saturday, April 3, 2010

Judges of angels

During one of this week's services, I had some thoughts about evil spirits which I am going to tell you, despite knowing that some readers will print copies as proof of delusion.

Luckily, I believe the beatitudes, so damn the torpedos.

Darkness has been very apparent to me in recent weeks. I used to think it was just a product of nature and nurture, but over time, the personal particularity of evil has become more apparent. As a result, spiritual warfare has become an increasingly significant part of my prayer life.

While praying recently, I thought about 1 Cor 6:3, which says that we will be the judges of angels.

Think about what this means. Not only are we given the authority to cast out through the power of Christ. We are also to be judges.

Judges determine the outcome of the accused.

My understanding is that unlike humans, angelic beings are no longer being created. (Can't remember the biblical foundation for this, will have to dig it up.) Their numbers are therefore limited.

Imagine what would happen if all Christians began not only to pray against the evil working against their friends and family, but also to consign forces of evil to perpetual incarceration.

Would this help bring the kingdom to earth as it is in heaven?

Over time there would be fewer and fewer to wreck havoc in the world, and more and more people would be able to recognize the beauty and truth and light of God. Eventually there would be nothing left but beauty and life.

Like many of my thoughts, this is just a theory. But I like it, and am going to give it a try.

2 comments:

Ike said...

“. . . so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 5:21

In Romans 5:12-21, Paul “is not saying merely that we have life for a time, after which life ends in death; nor is he aiming to explain the fact of such death. . . . What he is saying is rather that all that we call life . . . lies under the dominion of death. . . . Death rules supreme in this world. . . .” But since the resurrection of Christ “the new aeon has become actual fact in our world. Christ stands at the frontier between the two ages, outdating the old and blazing the way for the new. . . . In the new aeon, which burst upon man with the resurrection of Christ, life has come to dominion still more mightily.”
Anders Nygren, Commentary on Romans, pages 22-23.
This life we live is not life. This life is a living death. This whole world is ruins brilliantly disguised as elegance. Christ alone is life. Christ has come, bringing his life into the wreckage called us. He has opened up, even in these ruins, the frontier of a new world where grace reigns. He is not on a mission to help us improve our lives here. He is on a mission to create a new universe, where grace reigns in life. He is that massive, that majestic, that decisive, that critical and towering and triumphant.
We don’t “apply this to our lives.” It’s too big for that. But we worship him. And we boast in the hope of living forever with him in his new death-free world of grace

Suzanne Marie DeWitt said...

And the beautiful thing is that knowing and loving Him makes this life so much more, here and now.