The Battle is Under Way…
The Second Eternal Truth brought to us comes like a broken message over the radio or an urgent e-mail from a distant country telling us that some great struggle or quest or battle is well under way. May even be hanging in the balance.
When the four children stumble into Narnia, the country and all its lovely creatures are imprisoned under the spell of the White Witch and have been for a hundred years.
In another story, Jack and his mother are starving and must sell their only cow.
Frodo barely makes it out of the Shire with his life and the ring of power. In the nick of time he learns that Bilbo’s magic ring is the One Ring, that Sauron has discovered its whereabouts, and that the Nine Black Riders are already across the borders searching for the little hobbit with deadly intent. The future of Middle Earth hangs on a thread.
Darth Vader just about has the universe under his evil fist when a pair of droids fall into the hands of Luke Skywalker. Luke has no idea what is unfolding, what great deeds have been done on his behalf or what will be required of him in the battle to come. Sitting in a sandstone hut with old Ben Kenobi – he does not know this is the great Jedi warrior Obi-Wan Kenobi – Luke discovers the secret message from the princess, This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.
Again, this is exactly what the Scriptures have been trying to wake us up to for years. Wake up, O sleeper . . . Be very careful, then, how you live . . . because the days are evil (Eph. 5:14–16).
Or as The Message has it: So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!
Christianity isn’t a religion about going to Sunday school, potluck suppers, being nice, holding car washes, sending our secondhand clothes off to Mexico.
This is a world at war.
Something large and immensely dangerous is unfolding all around us, we are caught up in it, and above all we doubt we have been given a key role to play. Do you think I’m being too dramatic?
Consider the tale in Daniel 10.
Something has happened that Daniel does not understand. We can relate to that. We don’t understand about 90 percent of what happens to us, either. Daniel is troubled. He sets out to get an answer. But three weeks of prayer and fasting produce no results.
What is he to conclude? If Daniel was like most people, he would be headed toward one of two conclusions: I’m blowing it or God is holding out on me.
And he would be dead wrong.
On the twenty-first day of the fast an angel shows up, out of breath and explains to Daniel that God had actually dispatched him in answer to Daniel’s prayers the very first day he prayed – three weeks ago. (There goes the whole unanswered prayer thesis, right out the window.) Three weeks ago? What is Daniel to do with that?
No, Daniel hasn’t blown it or was God holding out on him. Rather, the angel was locked in hand-to-hand combat with a mighty fallen angel, a demonic power of dreadful strength, who kept him from reaching Daniel for three weeks, and he finally had to get Michael (the great archangel, the captain of the Lord’s hosts) to help him break through enemy lines. Now I am here, in answer to your prayer. Sorry it’s taken so long…
There it is – Eternal Truth Number Two – this is a world at war.
We live in a far more dramatic, far more dangerous story than we ever imagined. The reason we love The Chronicles of Narnia or Star Wars or The Matrix or The Lord of the Rings is that they are telling us something about our lives that we never, ever get on the evening news. Or from most pulpits. This is our most desperate hour.
Without this burning in our hearts, we lose the meaning of our days. It all withers down to fast food and bills and voicemail and who really cares anyway? Do you see what is happening? The essence of our faith has been stripped away. The very thing that was to give our lives meaning and protect us – this way of seeing – has been lost. Or stolen from us.
Notice that those who have tried to wake us up to this reality were usually killed for it – the prophets, Jesus, Stephen, Paul, most of the disciples, in fact. Has it ever ocurred to you that someone was trying to shut them up?
First, things are not what they seem. Second, this is a world at war.
Now for the most stunning news of all…
(Waking the Dead by John Eldredge, p 29–32)
