Domains of War
Extract from "Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin: The Writing is on the Wall." To be published in Summer 2022
The first, the supreme, the most far reaching act of judgement that the statesman and the commander have to make is to establish… the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into something that is alien to its nature. - Carl Von Clausewitz, On War
Across this book will be sections focused on the Domains of War. They will range from historical to strategic to the unseen realms as we use war as one of the ways in which we analyze our turnings at the end of the Times of the Gentiles. The unique element I want to point out up front is that Israel as a nation was generally not a combatant contributor to war, across the 2,500 years of the Times of the Gentiles, until our present day in the 7th Turning of Western Civilization. Yet, perspectives on the unseen realms of war come from Old Testament war, prophecies, Psalms, and the wonders of creation in Genesis. My intent in these sections is to point out that across 7 Western Civilization turnings, we are in a war that straddles the unseen realms and the knowable spaces. Knowledge of wars in the unseen realms leap out of scripture from Genesis to Revelation. War in the knowable spaces seems much more physical and obvious as it ranges from swords and spears to Nukes and cyber war. Yet, they converge with effects reaching back and forth from the Knowable to the Unseen, in ways that shape history and victory or defeat.
I arrived at Balad AFB – called Anaconda by the Army – In January 2006. I had no clue but everyone at my data center construction site was watching their new Lieutenant Colonel to see how I would react to my first mortar or rocket attack. According to rumor, the last Lieutenant Colonel at my site mostly stayed in his hooch or a bunker after his first mortar attack. My site received rockets and mortars every three to five days, so it was just a matter of time. That first attack literally scared the hell out of me and I hit the ground. Then snuggled up to a curb, praying. Gatling guns on the roofs fired, trying to shoot them down but they kept coming. A group of contractors huddled by a concrete wall and screamed. I forced myself to get up and lead them to a bunker. Don’t think I was Mr. Brave or anything because after the ‘all-clear’ sirens, I had to go to my hooch and change my underwear. For leading scared folks to a bunker while mortars hit the ground, I got the stamp of approval. One of my NCOs asked me how I could do that. I said, “My life is in the palm of the Lord. If I’m suddenly absent from the body, I’ll be face to face with Jesus.”
My hands were still shaking as I said that, and I had to throw that pair of underwear in the trash. Yes, we received rockets and mortars every three days the entire time I was there. Again, I was not particularly brave. There simply was too much to do to let fear put me in a dang bunker the whole time.
War fascinates me as an old soldier. Not just the exponential lethality of war in our civilization’s 7th Turning with Cyber-attacks, tanks, infantry, remotely piloted vehicles, and airplanes in the framework of the knowable spaces of length, width, depth, and time present. I find fascinating parallels between war in the knowable spaces and war in the unseen realms.
War sucks. I know that from firsthand experience with combat tours in the Horn of Africa and Iraq. One afternoon six months later in June of 2006, after walking up and over a berm at Balad AFB in Iraq, I sat by the banks of the Euphrates River and wept.
Psalm 137:1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.
Sort of Biblical and pretty pathetic, but my daughter back in Colorado graduated from High School, that day. Meanwhile, I was deployed to Iraq building data centers, fiber backbones, and receiving rockets and mortars every three to five days. I noodled on a legal pad, thinking about writing books, war, and God’s word. A few hours later, I walked back up over the berm.
A young Army MP had just pulled up in a HMMWV and admonished, “Sir, there are snipers on the other side of the Euphrates looking to shoot people who wander over the berm.”
I thanked him and decided not to do that, again.
Up to this point, I want to stress something simple to put in words but complex in execution. For me, God created from eternity past all the way up to Day 7 in Genesis 1. Day 8 started humanity’s little 6,000+ year subset of God’s magnificent plan for us. He gave us freedom in execution of His mission for us to fill the earth and establish dominion. That was the beginning of human culture that commenced the shaping of worldviews. Jehovah’s challenge to us was to use the imagination and innovation He created in us, infused with His revelation, to build and form beauty. Yet, from the beginning, there was war in the heavens that extended to war on the earth.
Look back at the first two verses in Genesis. Implied is a massive dispensational Gap between verses one and two, massive war in the heavens, and perhaps the fall of Lucifer. For us, that war stretches 2,000 years from the first day after creation to the chaos of the flood and the kingdom order of the Ark and rescue of 8 souls. As an old soldier, that war REALLY gets me curious. Understanding war in the knowable spaces and the unseen realms are part of setting the stage for understanding the beginning... and its effects on our day. It reveals to me a God who is WOKE (The only one who is). This war extends from eternity past before Genesis to the finite end described in the Scary Bits in Revelation. At a minimum, you might question my sanity, but in our war sections I’m going to step back and forth between the Domains of War in the Knowable spaces and the Domains of War in the Unknowable and Unseen Realms.
This explains why I stopped being a pedestrian consumer of the Bible, walking down plain, nice little Churchy Bible story sidewalks and Sunday School coloring books. We will converge the Bible and History, discovering that war in the Knowable Spaces and the Unseen Realms frame every step of Western Civilization. Being a comfortable, well-adjusted consumer of the Bible gets an Opposable Thumbs down.
My challenge in these Scary Bits, as we converge the Bible and History, will be to NEVER Fear your own Bible! That challenge comes from Michael Heiser’s Unseen Realms,[1] and I picked it up to continue in this book. Just two verses into Genesis 1, then out through chapter nine and the flood, I hope y’all can see that the Bible is a peculiar, mysterious book. Don’t make the mistake of presuming it’s a collection of nice stories and morality plays.
The Bible is a Mosaic of God’s Love that straddles time, language, history, culture, geography, and people across Genesis to Revelation in the knowable spaces, and the Unseen Realms.
Psalm 82: 1, 6 God has taken his stand in the divine council Among the gods he passes judgement You are all gods, sons of the Most High, all of you.
Michael Heiser’s laydown of Psalm 82 fascinated me deeply. Summarizing Michael’s words; The author of this Psalm reveals the voice of God as He declares there are other gods of the supernatural besides the God of Israel, and there are other Sons of God besides Jesus Christ. These other gods, “sons of the most high” in Psalm 82, serve the God of Israel in a divine council. According to the 38th chapter of the book of Job, before the world was created and the earth first brought forth life, they were there. When God withdrew their inheritance as lords over earth and gave the planet to mortals, they were there and were obedient… for a time.[2]
Demoted to watching the affairs of humankind, they observed the human creature, witnessing the transmission of the divine image from generation to generation, a potentially endless succession of the right to rule. They gained knowledge of human weaknesses, proclivities, susceptibilities. And so, it was that the Watcher Angels began to crave what they lost. In the time of Jared, 400 years after Adam’s creation, they descended from Heaven to Earth… to seek their own dominion and succession, in imitation of God. From the time of Jared on, they arrived on earth in celestial flesh and mingled their seed with the seed of women, bringing forth a dynastic line of immortal gods cloaked in mortal flesh. They wanted to take back what they thought was there’s… the earth. They would rule the earth as it should have been from the beginning, and humanity would bow to them as their gods. The Maker, filled with outrage, betrayed by them, exiled them to the abyss, sentencing their bastard sons to death in the Great Flood.[3]
Before their extermination, the divine half-breeds were known by men as Nephilim – Giants in the Greek – but that was a poor translation, relying on just the physical. After the Great Flood slaughter, their disembodied, immortal spirits were called Shedem, demons. I do not think the fallen angels are demons. Just their half-divine, half-human offspring. The Greeks called them demi-gods.
I think this is important because once the Nephilim died in the flood, they became Shedem (demons) and like their fallen angel fathers, ageless, free, uncontainable, and angry. I think there are at least nine billion of those former living half divine / half angel spirits / demi-gods making war on God and humanity.[4] Condemned to roam the earth after the flood, the Fallen Watcher Angels and their Shedem offspring hordes make plans, watch, and wait. Jesus understood and warned His listeners that the watchers would return – and in a manner so cunning that even His own followers would be deceived.[5]
Matthew 24:24 For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.
[1] Heiser, Michael, Unseen Realms (Available on Amazon)
[2] ibid
[3] Ibid
[4] Robert Morris in his, Genesis Record, used UN population models to theorize that by the time God closed the doors of Noah’s Ark, there were 9 billion souls on the earth.
[5] Ibid