The Great War Behind All Wars:
Satan’s Hatred Against Allah
When the patriarch Jacob (Ya’coub),
the son of Isaac (Ishaq), was fleeing alone from home, he lay down to
sleep one night as a weary pilgrim in a dangerous place, and his heart
was oppressed by a sense of fear and guilt. The gracious God gave him a
dream which came as a wonderful breakthrough into his human
understanding. He was not alone!
As he lay sleeping on the ground at
Bethel with a stone for a pillow, he saw a ladder stretching from where
he was, up to heaven, and there were angels ascending and descending on
it.1 Thus for the first time in his life Jacob saw beyond the
shadows of this world into the reality of heaven’s nearness to us.
These angels are constantly working for believers, taking their prayers
up to heaven and bringing back gracious answers. Without divine
revelation, we could never know what is going on, and we would miss out
on the fantastic blessings that lie unseen all around us. This ladder
connects heaven above with the believer below.
The war behind all wars is the attempt
of Iblis (Satan) to cut that ladder from heaven to earth so that the
world is left in darkness and loneliness. Those who are thus cut off are
aptly described as "aliens, … and strangers from the covenants of
promise, having no hope, and without God in the world."2
Satan cannot actually cut the ladder itself; but he can throw a cloud of
darkness over the truth, so that for the world the ladder might just as
well not be there.
This Satan (Iblis) is described in the
honoured Qur’an as the angel who "was puffed up with pride, and
became of the number of unbelievers."3 He falsely accused
Allah, saying, "Thou hast seduced me." His hatred of Allah led
him to say that he would fight a war against him: "I will surely
tempt them to disobedience in the earth, and I will seduce such of them
as shall be thy chosen servants."4 It is he who has
"sown discord between … brethren."5
No intelligent person can doubt that
there is a Satan, the source and continuer of evil in the earth. There
is no evil in Allah, "Lord of the worlds, the Beneficent, the
Merciful."6 Although Allah is the Almighty One, he does have
an enemy who will oppose him until the final Day of Judgment.
Man needs to understand the nature of
this great conflict between Satan and Allah, and how the evil angels of
Satan (evil jinns) work to foment trouble in the earth. It is
impossible to have a clear understanding of life today without grasping
the reality of this great war behind all wars, for this invisible
conflict vitally affects every human being living on planet earth.
This mysterious war actually began in
heaven |
