It's amazing how easy it is to miss something in the Bible if you don't read closely/carefully enough. I was reading Daniel when I came across this verse:

Daniel 10:13 - But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days; but, lo, Michael, one of the ohief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.

When I read it, I at first didn't realize that it was implying that the spiritual powers attached to Persia were influencing Cyrus in a manner that was prejudicial to the interests of God’s people. But that's apparently exactly what it means. So I started doing some research on it to learn more and here's some of what I found.

It's been said by some that perhaps no single verse in the whole of the Scriptures speaks more clearly than this upon the invisible powers which rule and influence nations. Spiritual beings carry out God’s purpose in the natural world (Exodus 12:23; 2Samuel 24:16) and in the moral world (Luke 15:10), so it only makes sense that they do in the political world as well. To be clear, the angelology of Judaism is a very complicated, not to say confused, subject. By the time of Daniel's writing though, they reached the idea that every race had its guardian angel

To wit, we see this view being expressed in Deuteronomy 32:8, according to the Septuagint, "He set bounds for the nations according to the number of the angels of God." To a similar purport is Eccles. 17:17, "To each of the nations he appointed a leader, and Israel is the portion of the Lord."

So, from this chapter in Daniel we not only learn that Israel had a spiritual champion (Daniel 10:21) to protect her in her national life, and to watch over her interests, but also that the powers opposed to Israel had their princes, or saviours, which were antagonists of those which watched over Israel. The “princes” of the heathen powers are devils, according to 1 Corinthians 10:20.

If you're interested in this topic, the doctrine of the ministry of angels is taught in Psalm 34:7; Psalm 91:11; Psalm 96:5 (LXX.); Isaiah 24:21; Isaiah 46:2; Jeremiah 46:25; Jeremiah 49:3. Further passages in the New Testament bearing upon the question are 1 Corinthians 8:5; Colossians 1:16.

Scripture is full of "rabbit holes" to dive down into if you just read close enough. That said, in our "disenchanted" culture, it's easy to overlook just how significant this rabbit role is and what implications it has for when we try to understand what's going on in our current day and age. I hope you found this as interesting and sobering as I did.