Hell and Heaven

The Christian Bible's Book of Revelation describes a "war in heaven" between angels led by the archangel Michael versus those led by "the dragon", identified with "the devil and Satan", who are defeated and thrown down to the earth. Revelation's "war in heaven" has been compared to the idea of fallen angels and possible parallels have been proposed in the Hebrew Bible and Dead Sea Scrolls.

Modern Bible commentaries, in general, view the "war in heaven" in Revelation 12:7-13 as an eschatological vision of the end of time or as a reference to spiritual warfare within the church, seeing it as "not (as in Milton's Paradise Lost) the story of the origin of Satan/Lucifer as an angel who rebelled against God in primeval times."[3] Some Christian commentators have seen the war in heaven as "not literal" but symbolic of events on earth.

In John Milton's (1608–1674) Paradise Lost, a war in heaven follows the rebellion by Satan and other angels before the Fall of Man. A third of the angels are hurled from Heaven, including pagan gods such as Molech and Belial.

Some scholars discern the concept of a war in heaven in certain Dead Sea Scrolls, namely, the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, also known as the War Scroll (1QM and 4Q491-497), the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, Song 5 (4Q402), and the Melchizedek document (11Q13).