Background
Since he consumes and negates souls, this poses a threat to both Heaven and Hell. Both forces combined powers and, in the end, lost legions of angels and demons in the great war to subdue and ultimately imprison Urizen, since he is incapable of being destroyed. His size increases as he consumes souls and he has an ability to spread malice in the souls of man and release them of their inhibitions so that they might commit horrific deeds. Greenworld fears his very presence on Earth because his existence in the realm poisons the planet.
The real Urizen was the being which was worshipped by the cult. They were correct in how to bring about his return, but wrong about what he actually was. Like William Blake, they got most of the story wrong. He was not a force which would fill the void left by the war between good and evil. He was not the replacement stitch for the part of the great fabric of existence that was missing. He is one of the missing threads, along with the other Elder Gods who together brought balance to the universe. Urizen is one of these Elder Gods, a great deity that existed before Heaven and Hell which consumed souls, freed them of the wheel of life and death and perpetuated conflict as a means of cleansing the universe. The easiest way to maintain peace is to destroy those who create conflict or have them destroy themselves. Urizen represents balance in that he ends existence. This frustrated the upstart factions of Heaven and Hell and kept them weak. They needed souls in order to increase their ranks and Urizen was a direct threat to this need. As long as he was free to roam the universe neither side could gain an upper hand over the other. Thus they teamed together for the first time since The Fall and banished Urizen from this level of reality, the only thing they could do to him since he cannot be killed.
Read more about this topic: Urizen (comics)
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“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
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—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)