God's 3 tests for His angels

The Primeval Struggle

By Terence J. Hughes

In the Apocalypse of St. John we read, "Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman, adorned with the sun, standing on the moon, and with the twelve stars on her head for a crown. She was pregnant, and in labor, crying aloud in the pangs of childbirth. Then a second sign appeared in the sky, a huge red dragon.... Its tail dragged a third of the stars from the sky and dropped them to the earth, and the dragon stopped in front of the woman as she was having the child, so that he could devour it as soon as it was born...a male child...the son who was to rule all the nations with an iron scepter.... And now war broke out in heaven, when Michael with his angels attacked the dragon.... The great dragon, the primeval serpent, known as the devil or Satan, who had deceived all the world, was hurled down to the earth and his angels were hurled down with him" (Rev. 12:1-10).

What are we to make of this vision, and how is it connected to the celebration of the Gospel of Life revealed by Jesus Christ and the struggle against the Culture of Death that stalks the earth in our own day?

The answer may be found in Volume One of The Mystical City of God, the Divine History and Life of the Virgin Mother of God, manifested to Mary of Agreda, proclaimed a Venerable Servant of God by the Church. She received this private revelation from Jesus Christ while she served as abbess of the discalced Franciscan nuns in the Convent of the Immaculate Conception in Agreda, Spain, from 1625 until her death in 1665. Ordered by her superiors, she wrote down this history twice, from 1637 to 1645 and from 1655 to 1665, both times reluctantly, believing she was unworthy. By the order of five popes -- Innocent XI, Alexander VIII, Clement IX, Benedict XIII, and Benedict XIV -- it was repeatedly subjected to the closest scrutiny and declared authentic, worthy of devout perusal and free from error. It has been published in over sixty editions in ten languages.

Chapter VII of Book One (in Volume One) is an account of the creation of "Heaven for angels and men and Earth as a place of pilgrimage for mortals." Hell, with material fire but originally uninhabited, was located in the center of the earth.

"The angels were created in the empyrean heavens and in the state of grace by which they might be first to merit the reward of glory." They were purely spiritual beings in a state of probation, not seeing their Creator "face to face." The probation consisted of three tests, each administered in an instant, since the knowledge of angels is intuitive, not worked out over time as we gain knowledge. The tests consisted of the intuitive reactions by angels to knowledge infused into their minds by God. Among the angels, Lucifer was conscious of "being endowed with greater gifts and greater beauty of nature and grace than the other angels." This made him vulnerable to "a most disorderly self-love."

For the first test, "they received a more explicit intelligence of the being of God, one in substance, triune in person, and they were commanded to adore and reverence Him as their Creator and highest Lord, infinite in His essence and attributes." All obeyed the command, most with perfect charity and joy, but Lucifer obeyed because "the opposite seemed to him impossible," and his pride dimmed the original perfection of his nature. He owed his existence to someone infinitely greater than he. Even so, Lucifer passed the test. He obeyed.

In the second test, God informed the angels that He would create beings lower than themselves, men with immortal spiritual souls infused into material bodies formed from the dust of the earth. "In order that they too should love, fear, and reverence God...the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity was to become incarnate and assume their nature, raising it to the hypostatic union and to divine Personality." Then God commanded the angels to acknowledge the incarnate Word of God as both God and man, and to adore Him as God-man, infusing the angels with knowledge that it was both just and reasonable for man to be elevated above them in this way. Most angels were overjoyed that God's love could raise such lowly creatures to such an exalted status, and gratefully obeyed the command.

But Lucifer, in his pride, rebelled against this command. He argued that, since both angels and men were created beings, it should be an angel -- i.e., himself -- who became incarnate, angels being higher than men. It was beneath the "dignity" of God to so lower Himself by joining the Word of God to such an inferior part of His creation in this way. Lucifer disguised his pride by feigning concern for God's omnipotence. He was able to infect many other angels with this attitude, offering, as a temptation, to make angels masters over men and leading mankind to God.

The third test cemented this rebellion among the angels. God revealed that His Son would become incarnate man by being born of a woman, just as all men are born of women. The angels were ordered to revere this woman as superior to them -- as "Queen and Mistress of all the creatures," angels and men -- for God was to be clothed with her flesh in her body, making her the Mother of God. Assembling the angels, Lucifer retorted, "Unjust are these commands and injury is done to my greatness; this human nature which Thou, Lord, lookest upon with so much love and which Thou favorest so highly, I will persecute and destroy. To this end I will direct all my power and all my aspirations. And this Woman, Mother of the Word, I will hurl from the position in which Thou has proposed to place her, and at my hands the plan, which Thou settest up, shall come to naught."

One-third of the angels joined Lucifer in this rebellion; but it was Lucifer and they who were hurled down to earth, as recorded in Revelation 12. One archangel, filled with love for God, beseeched Him to allow him to rally the other angels with the battle-cry, "Who is like God?" God granted his request, confirming his name, Michael, meaning "Who is like God?"

All this happened before mankind was created. Lucifer watched warily as Adam emerged from the dust of the earth and saw Eve closest to Adam's heart, "taken from Adam's rib," as the Woman he must overcome. He succeeded in seducing Eve and, through her, Adam, making a woman the vehicle for stripping mankind of the primeval state of grace. Thus were our first parents expelled from the Garden of Eden, and Lucifer fulfilled his threat to thwart God's plan for mankind.

God chose from eternity the humblest of His creatures, Mary Immaculate, to shame the proud. Humility is the essence of love: humble obedience even to suffering the most degrading death. Her Divine Son, unjustly crucified between two criminals, endured the scorn of those who hated Him, all for one purpose alone: to unite mankind to His Eternal Father in Heaven. In His last gift to mankind He gave us His beloved mother, the Mother of God (Jn. 19:26-27).

This is why the Culture of Death targets women. This is why the female reproductive system is attacked by contraceptive drugs and contraptions. These assaults are directed not just against a woman's reproductive organs, but her whole body, her mind, and her soul.

This is why Planned Parenthood lies and deceives women, even young girls, with promises of liberation from childbearing. It is to prevent God's plan for salvation by eliminating children, first by contraception, then by aborting children who are conceived anyway, and ultimately by sexual practices that preclude children. We are being taken down a road that ends with whatever degrades us the most. Such is Lucifer's hatred of mankind.

In His mercy, Our Lord has sent His Mother to alert us, first through a poor peasant girl in the French Pyrenees (at Lourdes) in the 19th century, and then through three poor children in Portugal (near Fatima) in the 20th century. One was a century in which a lie spread through Europe, calling itself the Enlightenment (Lucifer means "Light Bearer"). It led mankind away from God and took us into a century in which mankind engaged in global genocide from beginning to end, starting in the heart of Christian Europe. All this to prepare the way into a 21st century in which all mankind would join Satan in Hell, negating God's plan to lead mankind to Him in Heaven.

All this because of the intense hatred of man by Lucifer, the Adversary, "a liar and murderer from the beginning," who cannot tolerate our occupying the places in Heaven bathed with God's eternal love that he coveted for himself from the dawn of creation. He is the author of the Culture of Death that closes around us. The Woman opposes him. It is women who bear each generation of mankind. It is women who must be crushed, degraded, and abused in every way, taking away from us the one gift God withheld from His angels, from Lucifer: the ability to cooperate with Him in the very act of creation. Angels cannot beget angels.

Before the three tests God applied to His angels, He made known to them the existence of Hell: "They were enabled to see eternal reward and eternal punishment, the perdition of Lucifer and of those that would follow him. His Majesty showed them Hell and its pains. They saw it all...so that, before falling from grace, they were clearly aware of the place of their chastisement." The forces that promote the Culture of Death are hell-bent on destroying mankind -- and themselves with it -- as was their master before them. They have chosen their reward: "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven!"

The Mystical City of God in four volumes is available from TAN Books & Publishers, P.O. Box 410487, Charlotte, NC 28241; www.tanbooks.com.

Terence J. Hughes is a professor at the University of Maine. He and his wife have taken two dozen sexually abused women into their home, all but four of whom were pregnant. He has been imprisoned in six states for peaceful sit-ins at America's "abortion Auschwitzes." The foregoing article by Terence J. Hughes, "The Primeval Struggle," was originally published in New Oxford Review (July-August 2009), pp. 42-45, and is reproduced here by kind permission of New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706.