The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels

For centuries, September 29 has been set aside as a minor church festival for St. Michael and All Angels. This day is also known as “Michaelmas.” It is a day for Christians to specifically thank God for the angels He has sent to guard us in all our ways (Psalm 91:11).

The appointed Epistle lesson for the Feast of St. Michael is from Christ’s Revelation to St. John: “There was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down– that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him” (Revelation 12:7-9).

This angelic war between St. Michael and God’s angelic host versus Satan and his demonic forces is not medieval fantasy. This is no fairy tale. This is a historical fact.

The Christian artwork through the ages displays the violence and divine victory pictured in Revelation 7.

The Lord kicked Satan out of heaven. God called upon Michael and his fellow angels to be his enforcers. The devil became a trespasser on God’s property, and the holy angels were the military force who made sure he left. Satan is pictured as a dragon. He is not like the dragons we think of with wings and legs. He looked more like a great serpent. “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals God had made” (Genesis 3:1). The ancient serpent and his evil band of angels did not want to go quietly. It became necessary to boot them out by force. So there was war in heaven, a titanic struggle between the hosts of heaven and the hosts of hell. Jesus witnessed their demise, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18).

That’s great news for us. It means the forces of evil cannot defeat the forces of good. However, the defeat of Satan and his expulsion also means some bad news – at least for the time being. “He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. … Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short” (Revelation 12:12).

Satan is filled with furious anger against God. He knows he has a limited time before Judgment Day ends all his wicked activity forever. So he is busy. He attacks ferociously as a dragon – overseeing the beheading of Christians in Muslim countries; tearing apart the sanctity of marriage with laws that permit homosexual marriage; chuckling as people sacrilegiously pray to God thanking him for legalized abortions; urging on the atheists and unbelievers who verbally abuse our Christian college students. Satan can attack head-on with mass chaos, anarchy, bloodshed and moral decay.

But Satan also masquerades as “an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). He may take the pressure off you, allow everything to go smoothly for a time, and allow you a sense of health, peace and happiness. As things are going so well, you feel less need for prayer, less urgency for studying the Scriptures, and less commitment to worshiping God.

Satan may have been kicked out of heaven, but he is alive and well here on earth, in our nation, in our lives. Satan’s end game – whether it is a full frontal attack, whether it is slight irritations or whether he appears as an angel of light – is the same. It is to distract you from Jesus Christ and his salvation.

Satan is a furious dragon who works to steal you and your children away from the Good Shepherd. He wants to devour you like a lion consuming his prey. Satan sends a shiver down your back to terrify you or send one up your leg to seduce you.

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There is a war going on. There is a spiritual fight for souls that is being fought. As Christians, we are squarely in the middle, caught between heaven and hell here on earth. But that’s why this festival of St. Michael and all angels is so important. It reminds us that Satan and his minions have been conquered – not with gold or silver, or moneybags or knapsacks, not with guns or tanks or even flaming swords. “[The angels] overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony” (Revelation 12:11) Satan has fallen. He has been struck down by a lamb on a stick – Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God on a cross. Dragons should easily defeat lambs, but not when the Lamb is the Son of God! The wounds of the Lamb mortally wounded the dragon.

The ancient serpent hung from Eden’s tree and set a trap for Adam and Eve. All of humanity has fallen into that trap. In order to release humanity from Satan’s trap, the Son of God became flesh to set a trap of his own. Entering the dragon’s domain and seeking to plunder his lair, the Son of God made himself bait. The old evil foe saw the Son of God made man and coveted Christ more than any other trophy he had won. Lucifer wanted to throw Christ down from heaven’s throne and regain his place in heaven. So the pride-filled dragon pursued the humble Lamb. He stirred the Romans’ bloodlust. He deceived the Jewish priests with power. He seduced the people with mob justice. He sought the death of the Lamb.

Lambs are easy prey for dragons. Dragons are all too easily consumed with pride. Thus the Lamb of God was betrayed, captured, arrested, tried and nailed to a tree.

It was all too easy. Satan took the bait. The Lamb was sacrificed. The Son of God was crucified and in one short day, in a matter of hours, all that the dragon had worked millennia for, came crashing down around him. Satan became the loser! Jesus, the murder victim, was the Victor! The head of the serpent was crushed (Genesis 3:15)! All dominion, power and authority was wrenched out of Satan’s hands and put into the nail-scarred hands of the Christ (1 Corinthians 15:24)! In one moment, as Christ breathed his last, the gates of Hades were slammed shut and the gates of heaven were thrown wide open! In a split second, like lightning falling from heaven to earth, Lucifer was cast down, beaten down, put down by the cross of Jesus Christ (Isaiah 14:12)!

The war against Satan has already been decided. But still the devil and his minions battle on. They daily attack our home, our school, our church, our nation in attempt to win you into hell. But in these daily battles against Satan, sin and self, we get to use the same weapon that Michael and his angels used the first time Satan was cast down. We use the blood of the Lamb to overcome the forces of evil. The blood of the Lamb is our certainty. The blood of the Lamb is our encouragement. The blood of the Lamb is our glory. The blood of the Lamb is our salvation, our power, and our authority. “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ.”

When Satan tries accusing us of our sins, we remind him that we have been forgiven by the blood of the Lamb. When we get tired because of the constant drone of the battlefield, we are nourished for the fight of faith by the body and blood of the Lamb. When our combat here is complete, and the angels carry us to rest in paradise, it is the blood of the Lamb that allows us to enter heaven’s gates (Revelation 7:14). There we will join with the martyrs and saints, the cherubim and seraphim, to worship the Lamb who has cast down the dragon.

Check out the website for Paramentics and Ian’s fantastic video on the creation of his image of St. Michael and All Angels.

God’s angelic host continue to defend us from the wrath of the dragon and his demons. Martin Luther described:

We Christians should have the sure knowledge that the princes of heaven are with us, not only one or two, but a large number of them, as Luke records that a multitude of the heavenly host was with the shepherds.  And if we were without this custody, and God did not in this way check the fury of Satan, we could not live for one moment.”

Again, Dr. Luther wrote:

That the entire world is not a mass of flames, that all towns and villages are not lying in a heap of ruins, we owe to the working and doing of the good angels.”

Therefore, we should rejoice and take comfort in their service as an expression of God’s nurturing care and defense for us. God not does protect us with tame cherubs or dainty spirits. He deigns to protect us with His competent and commanding angelic army.

Thank you Lamb of God for the archangel Michael and his angelic host. Because of their warfare on our behalf, we are safe.