Identifies the Angel Michael as a warrior angel who stands for the people of Israel and fights their battles on an unseen plane. It explores biblical passages in Daniel and Revelation where Michael is depicted as a chief prince who assists other angelic messengers and engages in warfare against demonic forces. The message highlights Michael's future role in protecting Israel during a time of great tribulation and connects this to the ongoing spiritual battles believers face, emphasizing the importance of prayer and the armor of God. The sermon concludes by underscoring that while human conflicts are visible, a greater spiritual warfare is occurring behind the scenes, with Michael playing a crucial protective role for Israel.
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I want to invite those of you that have only been out in the evening to come to the morning services as well, if you're able to do so. This morning we began a topic related to the Ten Commandments and talked this morning about how the Ten Commandments were given. Tomorrow we go to the subject of how the Ten Commandments were structured, and we will seek to answer some questions, among them Where in the Bible do you find the Ten Commandments? Two places. How do we know there are Ten Commandments and not eleven or twelve or eight or nine? How are the Ten Commandments divided on the two tables of stone?
Not likely five and five. We'll talk about that. And why is it the Roman Catholic children going to school? memorize somewhat different in the Ten Commandments than Protestant children. Why do the Catholics and some of the Lutherans number the Ten Commandments in a different way than the Protestants and Jews number the Ten Commandments? Not only a fascinating question but one of very great historical significance. That's in the morning sessions and they're held at nine thirty here in the chapel and they're about forty-five minutes in length.
Now Our evening series really started on Sunday night when we met Gabriel. And I announced the series would be Meet the Angelic VIPs. And there are not too many of them. There's only three I think that we know by name in the Bible and we'll come to Michael tonight. We saw that Gabriel is mentioned four times in the Bible. We have one of them yet to take up tonight. we saw that his position is in the throne room of God he described himself as one who stands in the presence of God meaning he's a very very high ranking angel not here is a guardian angel for us but someone who is positioned by God's throne and is sent on errands of delivering messages by God he may do other things but we're only told about his deliverance of message all four times in the Bible when he appears he is delivering a great message that has to do with either the times of the first or second coming of Christ.
The birth of John the Baptist and the birth of Jesus Christ. He came to make both announcements in Luke chapter one. And then in Daniel eight, he came to tell Daniel the meaning of a vision in which there was a horrible ruler who would defile the Jewish sanctuary, break up the sacrificial system, turn against the people of God, and who would stand against the prince of princes. We gave some interpretation of that prophecy and talked about an ancient king of Syria named Antiochus Epiphanes, a member of the Greek dynasty that ruled in Syria and did just those things in Jerusalem, sending tens of thousands of Jews into death, slavery, or captivity, desecrating the Jewish temple by offering a pig on the altar, and destroying the sacrificial system.
And he was the one who came along there in the time when the Maccabees rose up and fought against him and tried to drive him out, or his successors in those days. We also saw that, like many Bible prophecies, that one takes a jump onto the future. And even in the last part of Daniel chapter eight, it talks about the king of fierce countenance, Daniel eight, twenty-three. In the latter time, there will arise a king of fierce countenance and he would do the same sort of things and he would also stand up against the prince of princes now the Lord Jesus told us that there was a day there will be a day coming when the abomination of desolation will be set up in the temple in Jerusalem that phrase is a little awkward though familiar abomination well putting a pig on a Jewish altar was an abomination putting an idol on a Jewish altar is an abomination It desecrates, desolates or desecrates the sanctuary so that it's no longer usable until it's re-consecrated.
And that seems to be the idea that the Lord was talking about. And he said that when that happens, there will be the outbreak of a time of great trouble such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time no nor ever shall be. And that three and a half year period that follows the abomination of desolation is what the Bible calls the Great Tribulation. Terrible time to come on the earth. Now, we didn't go into that, but we did notice that Saddam Hussein fits that role in some remarkable ways. Not that I'm suggesting that he is that king of fierce countenance that will come. It's not impossible, but it seems very unlikely at this point.
that he is going to be because it looks like he's going to be defeated one way or another. But things can always change. You never quite know. Iran got into the war, something else. The whole situation could reverse rather quickly. But his terrible hostility to the Jewish people has to be noted. He hates the Jewish people. And even though it is not a Jewish country that he overran and conquered, every time he sends a scud missile into Israel... Many of the Arabs cheer and rejoice because while they may hate him, they join him in his hatred of Israel. At that point, I digressed last night and said I'm going to take a Sunday night, said I'm going to ask a different question, and I'm going to come right back to that point of Israel.
And I said, why are we in the Gulf War? Why are we there? And I went through a number of reasons. I said, not primarily for oil, because no matter who controls the oil, if the price gets pushed up too much, The demand will go down just like it did before, and the controller has got to have customers, so that's not the main reason that we're there. Then I said it was not democracy. Kuwait is not a democracy, neither is Saudi Arabia. Both are monarchies, so they're not dictatorships. They're not democracies. And then I said it was not for religious freedom. There's actually more religious freedom in Iraq than there is in Saudi Arabia. Well, there are no Christians permitted in Saudi Arabia. There are a lot of Christians in Iraq, and even the foreign minister of the country is a Christian, not an evangelical Christian, but nevertheless a Christian, which is unthinkable in the government of Saudi Arabia.
Tarak Aziz, I think, is his name. So we're not there for religious freedom, but we are there for the autonomy of an independent nation. That's why the United Nations band together. because a member of the UN was swallowed up by a bigger member of the UN and that just can't be allowed. You can't have that and have peace in the world. And of course this ties in with why the analogies are made to Adolf Hitler. And they said we made a terrible mistake of not stopping Hitler when he could have been stopped and brought on what Churchill called the unnecessary war because we didn't stop him when he started overrunning. other countries.
Remember, we did not fight the Second World War to free the Jewish people from the camps that they were put in. I think a lot of history is being rewritten today. You hear about the Holocaust over and over and over again, and you have to stop and pull yourself up short. And remember, we didn't even use that word in the Second World War. A Holocaust was a terrible storm. You go back into the Bible, it was a burnt offering. But That's a new word that came along later, and we didn't even know those concentration camps were there with their gas ovens. We really got into the war because of occupied countries. The second reason we're in it, I suggested, is the one that's not mentioned, which is the matter of world leadership.
A great nation has to act in the world to maintain peace and order and the balance of power in the world. Great Britain carried on that role for many years. And America has that role now and either has to put up or shut up about these things, has to get involved or withdraw behind our oceans and become isolationist and let someone else lead the world. And while George Bush never talked about this, I think it is a major reason why we're involved. And then he talked about security for the future. Stop him now before it's too late. Five, ten years from now, when he's got nuclear weapons and the much greater ability to deliver chemical weapons, it will be too late to fight him. And then the fourth reason, of course, is Israel.
And that's the reason the Democrats, some of the Democrats in Congress banded together with the Republicans against the Democratic leadership to pass the war resolution in favor of the president. Because these people, like Stephen Solars from New York, recognize that Israel is threatened and to let Saddam Hussein become the dominant figure of the Middle East was in effect to say goodbye Israel. It would not be able to survive if he got that kind of weaponry that he was going to be able to build up. So we come back to the matter of Israel again, the threatened nation in the Middle East. I'd like to suggest to you that in addition to what we talked about before, I think I just briefly mentioned there is a wrong focus that has existed in a good part of our interpretation of Bible prophecy over the past years in two areas, in particular.
One of them is there's been far too much emphasis on Russia. We've heard that and heard it and heard it until finally we've learned that Russia and the Soviet Union are not the same thing after all, and they're at odds with each other right now in the government. but we've learned a few new things. But if we get into the book of Daniel, the great prophetic book of the Old Testament, we don't find the Soviet Union or Russia there. The same thing in the book of Revelation. They do find Russia in Ezekiel. It does figure in prophecy, but it is not a major factor in prophecy. And yet some prophetic teachers on television and radio have so staked their reputation on Russia being the dominant political power of the last days that today they have to go on the radio and the television and say, well, all this business about Russia collapsing economically and letting all the captive Eastern European countries go, that's all just to fool NATO and to fool the Americans and they're really ready to go and invade Israel and they're all set to do this.
Well, I just can't see that at all. I think that's trying to make the best out of a bad cause. I think it's better to recognize that that was a wrong focus. in prophecy. In the book of Daniel, the king of the north is not the Soviet Union at all. It's Syria, Assyria, Babylon. It's the country's north of Israel where Antiochus Epiphanes came from and raced down into the Holy Land to fight against the king of the south, which was Egypt, and they made that Holy Land the little football field in between them where they were battling back and forth all the time. The other place of wrong focus was Western Europe. And we did that because we looked at the Chapter two of Daniel, the great image of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, and then the revived Roman Empire.
And we said, now the revived Roman Empire must be like the old Roman Empire. And we think Roman Empire, we think Western Europe. And so people began looking for the ten kingdoms that would form the European bloc. And when they got to eleven, the whole shred of prophetic interpretation began to unravel. And I said to somebody not long ago that Turkey wanted to get in the economic community, and that would be the thirteenth country in it. And they had some reply to that. But the whole thing of finding the ten kingdoms in the European economic community has seemingly been a mistake.
And then we remember, of course, that the Roman Empire was not Western Europe. The Roman Empire was a Mediterranean Empire. Luke right around the Mediterranean. through Syria, through Babylon, through the Holy Land, down into Egypt, across northern Africa, into Libya. And when you see ten kingdoms starting to come together in that area, I think you can say maybe we're a lot closer than we thought we were. But I believe the proper way to understand these prophecies in the book of Daniel, and this is a little different than I understood them when I wrote that course, although I was coming very close to it, is to realize that the whole picture of the one, this great coming ruler that some people call the Antichrist.
The whole picture starts with Nebuchadnezzar and goes down through these Grecian kings who ruled in Syria and down through the Roman Empire and on into the future. And King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon is just as much a type of the Antichrist as was Julius Caesar or the emperors of Rome that fought against the Christians. so that the picture in chapter eight of a ruler from the area of Syria, Iraq, Iran, is very much an anticipation of this one who will come. And I believe that he will rise in exactly that area. And I'm reminded of the fact that Baghdad is only fifty-five miles from the ruins of ancient Babylon.
And I believe for years that some of the Bible prophecies indicate that Babylon is going to be rebuilt. that the Bible promised destruction of Babylon, total destruction, has never yet occurred. And the book of Zachariah talks about carrying something back to Babylon. And I think that we'll see that power restored someday, and it may well be that the revived Roman Empire will have its capital in Baghdad or Babylon or Antioch, where Antioch's epiphanies came from, where the Christians were first called Christians. I guess what I want to say is that we need to watch out for the tendency to find the fulfillment of Bible prophecy in current events.
A writer in the Chicago Tribune, the religion writer in the Chicago Tribune on the first day of February, that's just a few days ago, said every historical situation from the dawn of Christianity to the present has been fit by someone into end-time prophecy. He was quoting a man named Boyer. He gives some very interesting examples. You know, the matter of Antichrist has been interpreted down through the years. The reformers, the Protestant reformers thought, sure, it was the Pope. That was Antichrist to them. And back in the nineteen forties, when I first heard the gospel, it was Mussolini. because he was in Italy.
Now it turned out that Hitler was a bigger dictator than Mussolini was, so that interpretation unraveled after a little while. And then we get down to modern times, so you get all kinds of strange things. Here's one that he had in this article. Ronald Wilson Reagan, three names, each one has six letters, six, six, six. Now there you go. Some Republicans would not agree with that. And then some sharp-witted person says, If you take the alphabet and you assign the value of six to the letter A and then the number of twelve to the letter B and the number of eighteen to the letter C and so forth, adding six each time, and you take a word like computer and you give eighteen for the C and ninety for the O and so forth, and you plot it all out, lo and behold, it comes up to six hundred and sixty-six.
And this writer says, anyone who has ever suspected a computer of being more than an inanimate object can relate to that. Some of us can indeed relate to that. Big Brother, well, Antichrist may be going a little far for the computer. All right, let's go on now to Daniel chapter nine, and we will turn through some of these chapters here and get on to Michael, and we won't finish Michael tonight. But I've only got three angelic VIPs, and I've got the week to go, so I'm not going to rush it. I want to spend time on these valuable passages. Daniel nine, verse one. In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans.
Now, we've got Darius now, and we've got the Medes and the Persians have come in now. The Chaldeans or Babylonians have been replaced. A new empire has come on the scene. Verse two, in the first year of his reign, I Daniel, understood by books the number of the years concerning which the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. Daniel was studying the prophet Jeremiah. He discovered that Jeremiah said that Jerusalem would be desolate for seventy years. Daniel knew exactly when that happened because he'd been carried away from Jerusalem as a teenager by King Nebuchadnezzar. And now here he is almost seventy years later. well up into his eighties, studying his Bible and putting the numbers together and saying, in seventy years where somebody's going to go back to the Holy Land, let me count it out from the time we went when I got dragged away from there when I was a kid.
Well, you know, sixty-eight or sixty-nine years have gone by. We are almost there. And we are in the last days before this prophecy is going to be fulfilled. And so he set his face. to pray, to seek by prayer and supplication, verse three, with fasting and sackcloth, cloth and ashes. And he made a remarkable prayer, well worth your time studying this prayer of Daniel. It goes from verse three to verse nineteen. A prayer of contrition and supplication on behalf of his people Israel. Now we go down to verse twenty. While I was speaking and praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God for the holy mountain of God.
While I was confessing the sin of the people, now this probably went on for a number of days, you see, it was probably a lengthy thing here. And I was praying for them and praying for the holy mountain that is for Jerusalem. Verse twenty-one, yea, while I was speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, he calls him a man. We know him to be an angel from Luke chapter one. Even the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me at about the time of the evening oblation. Well, I don't know whether angels have wings or not. The cherubim that guarded the mercy seat did. But angels do fly. Gabriel flew.
As he don't walk along the ground, he's got to come across empty space there. And how they travel, I have no idea. but he had come from the throne room of God, traveling at a very fast rate, but nevertheless traveling, not instantaneously, he arrived to talk to Daniel. Verse twenty-two, he informed me and talked to me and said, O Daniel, I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding. Here's his role. Gabriel is always the messenger angel. Daniel, he said, I have come to help you understand what's going to happen. Now, this time there was no vision. to be interpreted there was no dream to be explained this time Daniel was going to get a straightforward prophecy of the future but he hadn't got it yet verse twenty three at the beginning of thy supplications the beginning of your prayers the commandment came forth and I am come to show thee for thou art greatly beloved now there does seem to be a time lag there it almost seems like the minute Daniel started praying God said Gabriel on your way But now Gabriel doesn't arrive for a while.
I'm guessing here, but when we get to chapter ten, we'll see that in the next journey, there was a very definite time lag. There was opposition. There was trouble along the way. He may have had that too. He doesn't explain here, although there does seem to be the suggestion that he hasn't made an instantaneous trip. He's been on the way for a little while. Verse twenty-three, at the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth, and I am come to show you, for you are greatly beloved, therefore understand the matter and consider the vision. Seventy-sevens are determined upon thy people. Now the word weeks in the King James Version is confusing because a week to us is seven calendar days, and that's not what it's talking about here.
The Hebrew word is heptads or sevens, and he says seven-sevens are determined. He's talking about years, never talking about days at all. Daniel was studying a prophecy of seventy years, and the angel comes with a greater prophecy, seventy-sevenths of years. Not a smaller prophecy. Not a prophecy of forty-nine days, or not forty-nine days, seventy times seven, seventy-four hundred and ninety days, but rather four hundred and ninety years. He's coming with a larger scope of prophecy than the one Daniel had started with. But it's going to cover the same ground as you read on in the verse Daniel's people and the holy city and the most holy place.
And we go down to verse twenty-five. We have the foretelling of the first coming of Christ. Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem unto Messiah the prince shall be seven weeks and three-score and two weeks. That works out to a four hundred and eighty-three years. And you probably know that Sir Robert Anderson calculated that prophecy. as landing right on the day when Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem. It's a very complicated thing. And in the Daniel booklet there, I did a simple calculation that brings it up to the time of Christ. And that's all I was qualified to do because the whole matter of calendars and all that is involved.
But it is a prophecy that dates the first coming of Christ. It's amazing that even Isaiah fifty-three doesn't do that, nor the twenty-second Psalm. But here's a prophecy that tells... the number of years from one of these decrees by Artaxerxes until the coming of Messiah, Messiah the Prince. So Gabriel is delivering a message about the coming of Christ. Verse twenty-six, after three score and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off. He's going to die. He's going to be cut off. Isaiah says cut off from the land of the living. A distinct prophecy of the death of Jesus Christ. of the execution of Christ, if you will, the killing of the Messiah, because he wasn't going to die a natural death, he was going to be cut off from life, but not for himself, suggesting the great doctrine that's in Isaiah fifty-three of the substitutionary death of Christ.
And then after that, the people of the prince that shall come will destroy the city and the sanctuary, and that happened in AD seventy, the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple. Now, it's not the prince that shall come that would destroy the sanctuary in the city. It's the people of the prince, and there's that revived Roman Empire thing again. The prince himself would not come for many centuries. And when you get to verse twenty-seven, you have the coming of this prince that shall come. He shall confirm the covenant with many for one week, one seven-year period. This is where we get our basic chronology of a coming seven-year period.
that doesn't start with the rapture. I believe it starts a little after the rapture because I don't believe this man can be revealed until the church is taken out of the way. And then as soon as he's revealed, he will make a treaty with the Jews in the Holy Land, a seven-year contract of protection for them. But in the middle of that seven-year period, he will cause the sacrifices to cease. He will desecrate the temple. He will bring about, again, this abomination of desolation. The words are rather confusing in the last half of verse twenty-seven, but you'll see the word abomination there, and you'll see the word desolate there. And that's the idea that here's the midpoint of this great tribulation.
He's going to break his covenant, and he's going to open up that time of persecution that will come on the Jewish people. So there's Gabriel delivering that fantastic message. Now we go on. into Daniel chapter ten in the third year of Cyrus king of Persia now we've moved on a few more years here a thing was revealed unto Daniel in those verse two in those days I Daniel was mourning three full weeks Daniel got these revelations after times of fasting and prayer and here he'd been fasting for three weeks And in verse four, he tells us he's by the side of the great river Hidichel, which is probably the Tigris.
And he lifts up his eyes and he has a vision of a man clothed in linen. Now, I've done a very careful comparison of this with Revelation chapter one. It seems to be that he saw a vision of the Lord Jesus in advance of the incarnation, but the Lord appearing to him, very similar to the appearance of Christ in Revelation chapter one. Marvelous now. This is advance the progress of the book of Daniel that you move on from a dream given to a pagan king, Nebuchadnezzar, to Daniel himself having a dream in chapter seven, then Daniel having a vision in chapter eight and getting that interpreted, and then in chapter nine, Daniel getting a direct revelation from the angel Gabriel, and now he sees the Lord Christ himself.
There's a progress there. in the, not only the prophecies, but in how the prophecies are given. Verse ten, a hand touches him and set him on his knees because he was faced down on the ground now. And he said to me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto you, stand upright, for unto thee I am now sent. Now, is it the Lord still that's talking? A difficult question. I think it is. I think this is the Lord himself. that is speaking to Daniel. It is possible that it's another angel who is not named, but the progress of the book suggests that this is the Lord himself that's talking. There are some pros and cons to that. It's not quite clear.
But he says, I've been sent to you. That would mean it's not God the Father, but it could be the Lord Jesus. Verse twelve, he said, Fear not, Daniel, from the first day that you set your heart to understand and to chasten yourself before your God. Your words were heard, and I am come for your words. And the very first day that you set yourself to pray, your words are heard, and I have come in answer to that. Verse thirteen, but the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days. That is, I got resistance. I was blocked for twenty-one days in battle against the prince of the kingdom of Persia.
Now this begins here. in Daniel to unravel, to open up to us little blimpses into the angelic realm. The picture that you get as you go on through these chapters is that behind all the earthly monarchs there is an angelic, rather a demonic force, a satanic power standing in the background trying to control those countries. So the prince of the kingdom of Persia here is not the shah. of Iran, not the earthly king, but rather the satanic power that was behind the monarchy in those days. I have no doubt that there is such a power assigned to the United States.
But when a president acknowledges God in prayer, that power is not able to control, but God is able to answer and step in. And Satan is always trying to control these governments, but we need to pray for our leaders that they'll be subject to God and not to these enemies. So here's an enemy. Remember, Cyrus is the king of Persia in verse one, but Cyrus is not the one that opposed the coming of the Lord here. It's the prince of the kingdom of Persia, the satanic power behind the throne. And he withstood the coming of the Lord for twenty-one days, and the Lord got help in the middle of verse thirteen. Lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me.
And I remain there with the kings of Persia. You get the picture of some sort of angelic warfare that gets developed further as you go along in the Bible there. Resistance. And I don't know how angels resist each other or how they resist the Lord here. And how Michael came to his rescue. Now, to help him. Now, not his rescue, but to help him. Now, some would say, well, this couldn't be the Lord because... because he wouldn't have needed help from Michael. Well, that's true. He wouldn't have needed help from Michael, but the Lord doesn't have to have any kind of angelic help. But he does accept it. He did in the Garden of Gethsemane when an angel came to strengthen him.
So it may well be that Michael has come to help him in this case, and he accepted the help. And the very fact of Michael coming, does that mean that the person being helped is a lower level than Michael or does it mean that he's a higher level, that Michael is sent because it's his own leader that's receiving opposition? Can't answer that. And our subject today, though, is Michael. And so we note that Michael is sent to help out in this matter. And then in verse fourteen, the speaker says, Now I am come to make you understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days. Now you see here that Michael is not the messenger here. Somebody else is delivering the message. Michael turns out to be more of a warrior.
You go to the end of the chapter. Verse twenty. The speaker is still speaking. The one I think is the Lord. Then said he knowest thou why I come unto thee. And now I will return to fight with the prince of Persia. When I am gone forth, lo the prince of Greece shall come. Here you've got some sort of an angelic unseen warfare going on in the background. And there probably is the same type of thing going on today over in the Middle East. verse twenty one but I will show thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth and there is none that holdeth with me in these things but Michael your prince and nobody's standing with me in this I'm all alone as far as all these angelic forces go except for Michael your prince your prince now Michael is the prince of Israel he's not the prince of Persia or Greece or these other forces he's the prince of Israel so now that the actual prophecy runs all through chapter eleven here the details of the future that are revealed to Daniel.
And we'll skip over all of that. And when we come to chapter twelve, we have come to the middle point of the tribulation period. At the end of chapter eleven, this revelation of what the future is, has come to the time of the breaking of the covenant. And chapter twelve verse one now is a prophecy now. It's not what Michael was doing back then, but it's what he's going to do in the future. at that time shall michael stand up the great prince who standeth for the children of thy people now there's a very clear identification there of michael who was later called the archangel as being the the angelic warrior who represents the nation israel and stands behind the scene and probably since Israel is human too, is not always able to influence the government the way he might like to.
But Michael is the one in the background, the protector. And he will really step into his role at the middle of this tribulation and the middle of verse twelve. And there will be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time. And at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And so there goes the prophetic message. There will be this great time of trouble that the Lord Jesus later talked about since never was such a time of trouble before. And the people of Israel will finally be delivered in that day. And Michael will be in the heart of the battle.
Now the last passage, Daniel twelve, verse one. I'm sorry, Revelation twelve. That was Daniel twelve, one. Revelation twelve, verse seven. I'll be brief with this, but I do want to tie it in because the flow fits together here. Revelation twelve, verse seven. Now we're in the New Testament. Revelation twelve, seven. And there was war in heaven. Star Wars. The real Star Wars. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels.
Now remember that the book of Revelation is also, for the most part, a vision. John sees the vision. And he sees in his vision that up in heaven there's a great battle going on. And he sees a dragon, as he sees many animals in the book, just like in Daniel, he sees this great dragon... And he sees a man, a human, or an angel in this case, Michael, fighting against the dragon. And each of them has a whole army with them. Michael has angels, and the dragon has angels, and they might have looked like little animals, or they might have looked like angels. I'm not sure how they looked in the vision. It's not explained. But they're having a battle in this vision, and the dragon is losing the battle.
And so in verse nine, the great dragon was cast out. Now at this point the vision is interpreted that this dragon is the old serpent from the Garden of Eden, the one that came into Eve in the Garden of Eden, the reptile that came in there. That's the dragon and called the devil and Satan who deceives the whole world and he was cast out to the earth. Now it's not it anymore, not the dragon, but now it's changed to the devil. He's cast out to the earth and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, now has come salvation and strength and the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ. For the accuser of our brethren is cast down who accuse them before our God day and night.
You see the shift that's taken place in a vision. A vision is like a dream. You know, it can make transitions and all of a sudden the dragon is turned into a person. And the person is the devil. And it's the devil, not the dragon, that gets cast out. And he's the one who was up there accusing the brethren before God. And now he's not going to have access to heaven anymore. And it says in verse twelve, therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea. For the devil has come down to you, not the dragon, but the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, very angry. For he knows that he has but a short time. And then the vision goes back to the form it had before. When the dragon saw that he was cast under the earth, he persecuted the woman who brought forth the male child.
That was Israel that brought Christ into being. And so the woman now in the vision is given two great wings of an eagle, and she's carried away into the wilderness so that she is protected there. And the serpent casts out a, now in verse fifteen, the dragon has become the serpent. He's cast out of his mouth. a flood of water to try to drown her, but she's protected and so forth. Well, that's the same picture in imagery of the Lord. He says, when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, and let him who is in the province of Judea flee into the wilderness, for there will be great tribulations such as never was, but unless the days were shortened, nobody would be spared, but the days will be shortened so that you'll be able to survive those days.
That's the prophetic picture, and for our purposes tonight, in Michael, who is a warrior angel. He is the one who stands for the people of Israel, and he fights their battles for them on that unseen plane, standing up for them and protecting them. There is one more passage about Michael in Jude chapter seven, and we will take that tomorrow night as our beginning point. And I would remind you in conclusion that the sixth chapter of Ephesians tells us that our battles are not with human beings, but we also are battling an unseen enemy, warfare on a spiritual plane.
That's why prayer is so important in the whole matter of spiritual battles and winning souls. Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and the power of his might put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wilds of the devil, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. There is an unseen battle going on, an unseen enemy, and we can't fight that battle, but we can pray. And so the passage talks about the armor and then ends up saying, praying always, taking the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and praying always.
May God bless to us his word. Shall we close in prayer? Father, as we get these little glimpses into areas of reality that are almost unreal to us, we thank you for telling us that there is an angelic realm out there. There is an angel, Gabriel, and there is an angel, Michael. And there is the dragon, the enemy, Satan, and there are innumerable hosts of angels, and that when we think we're fighting our battles alone here, we have no idea what's going on in the heavens. We have little idea, Father, of what's going on in the Middle East in the unseen realm.
We can hear the news report, but CNN never tells us anything about the angelic realm and what are the great powers battling behind the scenes. and what Michael is doing today to protect the people of Israel. Father, we pray that we might be a praying people and a people who know that when we talk about heaven and the afterlife, these things are just as real, and we'll see the Lord Jesus someday. We thank you for our salvation, and we pray in his name. Amen.