Union with Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God

by Rankin Wilbourne

throughout the book of Revelation, there is a correspondence between an unseen spiritual war and the visible conflicts on earth. The happenings on earth are understood in terms of an ongoing spiritual battle between the victorious Christ and the spiritual powers that still challenge his reign and rule. All this may sound fantastical to us, yet it is not too hard to imagine that behind some of the injustice and evil we see today, behind unjust and tyrannical regimes, behind sex trafficking and the pornography industry, behind totalitarian oppression, persistent racism, child soldiers, and horrific evil stand not only a few isolated bad seeds but real, albeit invisible, powers of darkness. You can dismiss this as primitive and superstitious, the relic of an outworn mythology. But as poet Charles Baudelaire once said, “This is the devil’s greatest trick, convincing people he doesn’t exist.”