The War Above
God and Satan assign powerful angels to influence rulers and nations. Behind the scenes of international events rages supernatural conflict invisible to human eyes.
We know this fact from the book of Daniel. When the Jewish prophet Daniel struggled because God revealed Israel would experience trouble for a prolonged time after the Babylonian Captivity, God sent a heavenly being to minister to him.
That being began to come to Daniel on the first day of his struggle; but an evil angel (the prince of the kingdom of Persia) detained him 21 days until Michael, one of God’s chief angelic princes, came to help him. The heavenly being was sent to give Daniel an understanding of what would happen to Israel in the latter days (Dan. 10:1–17).
He told Daniel that, after revealing to him what God had prewritten concerning the future, he would return to fight against Satan’s prince of Persia again. Then he would fight against the prince of Greece. Thus, when Medo-Persia would fall to Greece, the prince of Persia would be replaced by another evil, angelic prince—the prince of Greece, whom Satan would assign to that new kingdom of world dominion to influence its policies against Israel (Dan. 10:18—11:1).
The angel indicated that he and Michael, God’s angelic prince assigned to Israel, are supernatural beings who oppose such evil angels as the princes of Persia and Greece.
Thus Daniel 10 gives us a brief glimpse into an area of reality of which most humans are unaware.
