Call to War!

I am always amazed at how God leads me to certain books for a certain time period in my life.  William and I have been fasting/praying for our neighborhood, the city in general, the ministry God has given us, and we feel the Spirit rising up for a great work here.  We are warriors for Christ (Is.9 , II Cor.10:3, I Titus 1:18, Eph. 6) and this is battle time!  I just read a book by Mark Andrew Olsen called The Warriors – funny how I read this first before reading the first book in the series called “The Watchers” – God knew I needed to hear the “The Call to War” (p. 309) and be reminded that I am not just the ‘armor barer’ to William, but I too am a warrior.  We are running out of time – the final phase of this battle is upon us.  Jesus is returning very soon and the enemy seems to have the upper hand, but we win in the end!

From Mark Andrew Olsen’s book “The Warriors”, from Bethany House, published in 2008

A Call to War, 1350 the last Templar burned alive

Long-rumored and prophesied Summons to War

The stillness and solitude of this place have sharpened my sight and allowed me a wondrous revelation.  I have been shown things of which most mortals know but a glimpse.  I have beheld the battlefronts of a vast and ancient war.  I may be called a soldier, yet in the face of this war I know nothing, I am less than a spectator.  This is a war beyond all things, beyond all conflicts, beyond time itself. 

Do not be deceived, for although my words may bear the ring of legend, they describe truth of a supreme order.  Truth so monumental that by comparison the reality of our present travails, the urgency of our earthly Crusades, are as trifling as the grains of salt upon these nearby shores.  Truth of such magnitude that it could alter the course of a conflict which has engulfed heaven and earth since the dawn of history.  Here is what I witnessed.

I saw, long ago, so far in the past that it happened before the first human being, the birth of the blackest betrayal in the annals of divine history.  A breach so grievous that the Word itself speaks of it only in the most fleeting of sidelong glances; brief, almost abashed references seemingly reluctant to stray too near their subject.  A treachery so monumental that I could somehow sense its aftermath continuing to echo across the millennia, resounding like a frightful echo into eternity.

I saw a greatly different age altogether.  A time when the veils between dimensions seemed more transparent and porous than today.  An era whose citizens moved freely between the realms of flesh and spirit.

The inhabitants of this distant past lived in a state of joy unknown by any created being before or since, for they served Yahweh, the great I Am, the divine Creator of all that is.  I saw them, surrounded His throne in gatherings wider than the broadest ocean, a sea of spirits quivering before His love like banners in a coastal gale.  I heard Him laugh with pleasure.  I heard His thunderous voice call them angels, even then.

And I beheld their leader: a being so luminous and beautiful that even in my vision I found it difficult to gaze upon his face.   I spied the day the Archangel gazed upon his own beauty and something foul birthed deep within him.  A tiny warp formed in the fabric of emotion.  He swooned at his flawless form and a spark of pride ignited.  I watched it flame into ambition, then jealousy.  The angel forgot the source of his beauty and light, and began to covet the very throne of Yahweh.

In one instant, evil was born and given form in this being, the angel Lucifer.  Yahweh’s favorite remade himself into His scheming enemy.  I saw a shadow creep into a kingdom of pure light and begin to spread.  A rebellion grew where once only bliss and harmony had reigned.   Whole legions of angels joined Lucifer’s revolt; that much I saw.  I almost turned away from the wretched sight of angels twisting into demons as they relinquished their angelic bodies and embraced the foulness of Lucifer’s hate.  Why they sided with a created being, one of their own, over the supreme power of the Almighty may never be known.    But they took up spiritual combat against their brethren with the intention of overthrowing the Most High. 

We humans were not told enough to describe the ensuing war in any detail.  I myself was shown battlefields stretching from one edge of the sky to the other, filled with whole legions grappling in the most desperate and vicious combat I have ever witnessed.  But like any man, I know little of its true history, only that it was a war more terrible than any afflicting this earth.   I know that it raged through the heavens for vast swaths of time and consumed countless numbers in its wake. 

And I do know its ending, or at least that of its first phase.  Lucifer and his fellow conspirators were defeated.  I watched them plummet through space with their growls of rage echoing across the heavens, ejected from the sight of Yahweh and banished from His presence forever to an exile here on earth. 

All this took place before human history ever began.  It is vital to remember this, for from our own finite perspectives we humans tend to cast ourselves as the central players on the stage of history.  The truth is that our race’s current travails comprise at best Act III of this sweeping, celestial drama.  A saga which is less about us than about God and a war which has not yet ended, although its outcome has been won at a great  price.  And the period I just described was merely Act. I.

Act II we know well from the Word, for it concerns the great sacrifice Yahweh made to cleanse our race of the enemy’s stain.  He made himself one of us, then in that Person paid the supreme penalty to reconcile us to himself.   But here is the wondrous fact I learned about Act III.  Even though victory is assured, humanity rises to play a breathtaking part in its winning.

I saw a black day dawn, many long years after this one, a day of immense threat and shadow when the deepest of evils forces God’s people to rise above their ignorance and shallow faith.  A day when they unite to hone the gifts and powers with which God has endowed them.  A day of warfare and victory.  I saw human Warriors becoming a fighting force for Yahweh the likes of which the world has never witnessed.  On that day I saw men and women alike wage war with not merely the carnal weapons of steel and wood, but those of the Spirit, wielding armaments of prayer and supplication, of submission and love.  I saw these fighters soar beyond any notion of valor and glory ever known in my benighted age.  I saw God pour out upon them a power unknown since those very first acts of the early apostles.

Mark my words.  This was not prophecy.  It was vision.  I saw it as bright as daylight, as clear as the walls that surround me now.  I only pray that God will preserve these words for the day when eyes worthy of their import are led to find them.  So to the finder of this stone, and the next beholder of these words, I commend thee into the service of the Almighty.  I pray for you even these many years hence, and I charge you to keep watch for that day of unbearable evil.  For if you are reading these words, that horrid day must be either night or already upon you, and you must be one of those anointed to gather these Warriors together.

So hurry from this place and beg the Lord to form you and His people into Warriors worthy of the fight!