As William Shakespeare appropriately wrote in his play, “As You Like It”, “all the world’s a stage.” Did Shakespeare borrow that concept from scripture? It definitely seems that he did.
In 1 Corinthians 4:9, Paul states; “For, I think, God has exhibited us apostles at the end of the line, like men sentenced to death [and paraded as prisoners in a procession], because we have become a spectacle to the world [a show in the world’s amphitheater], both to angels and to men.” Amplified Bible
Paul alludes to the apostles lives, and by extension, all of our lives, as being on display before both our fellow man, as well as to angels, both unfallen, and fallen.
It is most certainly as if we are all playing characters, acting out scenes as we live out the days of our lives. Some days we play the villain, others the hero, some days the good guy, and others the bad. Day by day in the choices we are free to make, and even the thoughts we are free to entertain or dismiss, we reveal on which side of this cosmic conflict we are aligning ourselves. In the multitude of choices we have been blessed to be able to make we are agreeing that one party or the other is the hero or the villain. Yet both sides are actively lobbying for our allegiance, and actively persuading us to cast our “vote” with them. While one side encourages us to freely choose based upon principles of love and freedom, the other side though still unable to bypass our freedom of choice, uses compulsion, addiction, and temporary pleasures to seduce and entrap us.
God has created us as free moral agents. This he did at great risk, yet true love would have it no other way.
Not only are we actors in the grand drama, we are, and will be, jurors in deciding which party is the guilty party.
Do we live our lives totally for God’s glory in all that we do? Do we amuse or entertain ourselves with things that feed our lower sinful nature, or our higher, more noble nature? Do the things that break God’s heart break ours, or do we pass time in them, calling it recreation? Is it recreation or desecration?
So much freedom of thought and expression we have been granted by our Creator. Day by day in every way, may we work out our own salvation with the power of the Holy Spirit, and the assistance of heavenly beings. Instead of working out our own destruction with the assistance of fallen beings.
Indeed all the world is a stage. Other human beings, as well as both unfallen and fallen heavenly beings are observing our actions, and even our attitudes. May we choose God, and choose love today and every day until the curtain of our lives closes. At last may we know that all along the way, God’s way was the right way all along. There is both a macrocosm, as well as a microcosm of the “Great Controversy” playing out not only in the universe, but also in our own personal lives. The choice is ours to make.
We are only “dancing” on this globe for a short time. “Dance” as if you are dancing for the King of Kings, because you are. We want to hear the applause of heaven, not earth.
To read a digital version of the classic book on the battle between good and evil, “The Great Controversy” by Ellen White, click or copy and paste the following link.