God wants to alert us to the spiritual battle that is raging in the world today.
by Ralph C. Martin
Christ said
many challenging things to those who opposed him. Among the more challenging was his response to the Pharisees and Sadducees who demanded a sign to confirm his ministry: "You know how to read the face of the sky," he said to them. "Can you not read the signs of the times?" (Luke 12:54-56).The Lord directs this challenge also to those who follow him today. Do we know how to read the signs of our times? Are our eyes open to see, our ears open to hear, the message that God wants to communicate to us through the events of our day?
In recent years, "reading the signs of the times
" has often been taken to mean identifying ways that God is revealing himself in ideological movements.Ø
Some theologians speak of "a new revelational encounter with the divine in and through women's experience" or through struggles for economic justice, and even class warfare and revolution. They see God "breaking through the consciousness of humanity" to reveal himself anew in "liberation" movements.Ø
But many of these movements have shown hostility to Gods word. Finding "new ways of reading old texts" in light of such "signs of the times," some contemporary theologians conclude that the account of Adam's and Eve's sin is a patriarchal "myth," to be replaced by other "stories" born out of the women's movement. Others have concluded that "Jesus Christ alone was not enough" and that Christians must embrace Marxism in order to make their faith effective.These contradictions of God's word demonstrate that there is
no reason to assume that trends in modem culture are flowing in the direction of God's goals for mankind. They may rather be flowing against his purposes. Contemporary movements may indeed be "signs of the times," but often in the sense of manifesting the world's hostility to God's plans.Indeed, this reading of the "signs of the times
" seems increasingly appropriate in our day as the trappings of Christianity are stripped away and evil parades blatantly in our society. Today Paul's words in Romans ring out strongly: "The anger of God is being revealed from heaven against all the impiety and depravity of men who keep truth imprisoned in their wickedness" (1:18). This scriptural note of warning sounds more and more clearly amid the moral disintegration of our society.INVITATIONS TO REPENTANCE
The scriptural warning is reinforced by a drumbeat of catastrophes
through which God is signalling us about the profoundly dangerous courses that individuals and nations are taking as they desert his loving plan.Ø
With our modem scientific mentality, we are generally disinclined to see natural and manmade disasters as "signs of the times." Yet our reluctance is hardly the mentality of the Bible. Jesus himself commented on how God speaks through the disasters that he allows to befall us."At that time some were present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. He said in reply, 'Do you think that those Galileans were the greatest sinners in Galilee just because they suffered this? By no means. But I tell you, you will all come to the same end unless you repent" (Luke 13:1-5).
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Pilate's political terrorism was thus neither a meaningless addition to the list of the world's atrocities nor God's way of showing that the slain Galileans were uniquely or outstandingly guilty. However much God abhorred Pilate's cruelty and grieved for the sufferings of his people, he wanted the incident to stand as an image of the destruction that would come to all those who fail to repent of their sins.Ø
"Or," Jesus continued, "take those 18 who were killed by a falling tower in Siloam. Do you think they were more guilty than anyone else who lived in Jerusalem? Certainly not. But I tell you, you will all come to the same end unless you repent."Jesus interpreted disasters as an invitation to repentance. He used them to spur us to reflect on our lives and relationship with God, on the shortness of life, the sovereignty of God, and the certainty of judgment. I believe he extends this invitation to us as we witness such events in our own day.
EXPOSING MAN'S PRETENSES
In 1985 I taped some television programs at a studio in Alabama run by Mother Angelica, a Catholic nun. She shared with me her conviction that sin has reached such a point on the earth that God is going to exercise some sort of punishment for sin on a worldwide scale. God will not be mocked forever, she said. God is going to demonstrate that a man sows what he reaps.
I went back home pondering that. When I returned to the office, I found that my secretary had placed an article from Insight magazine on my desk, summarizing the year's catastrophes:
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"So many natural disasters ravaged so many . . . areas around the globe that 1985 will be remembered as the year that nature went berserk. . . . The most destructive of the year's hurricanes ravaged Cuba in November when the hurricane season is supposed to be over. President Fidel Castro called it the island's worst natural catastrophe of the century. Even worse were the May cyclone that killed some 2,000 persons in Bangladesh and the October typhoon in the Philippines. In north-eastern China, 1.2 million were left homeless because of the heaviest summer flooding in 30 years.Ø
"A string of devastating volcanic eruptions and earthquakes caused even more tragedy. A November eruption of molten lava from Columbia's Nevada del Ruiz volcano melted so much snow atop the mountain that a wall of mud buried 25,000 persons in the valleys below. The year's worst earthquake shook Mexico City in September, destroying hundreds of buildings and killing more than 7,000 persons. Another, in Chile, in March caused $1 .8 billion in damage, leaving one in eleven homeless" (Insight, Dec. 30, 1985-Jan. 6, 1986, page 64).
I couldn't help thinking how all those calamities exposed man's pretense of control over his own life. Nature on the rampage drives home our littleness and reminds us that it is God, not man, who is sovereign on earth.
THE BREVITY OF LIFE
Last year I went to Florida for an evangelistic rally. I happened to be in the vicinity of Cape Canaveral just at the time that the space shuttle Challenger was to be launched. Driving to the airport after the rally, I looked out the window and saw Challenger take off and then, after a few seconds, explode in midair. People stopped their cars and got out to look. They carne out of buildings to see. At the airport, television screens kept showing the space craft exploding over and over again.
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In some ways the space program is the epitome of technology, a symbol of mankind's reaching for mastery over the earth. As I looked at the television screens playing and replaying the Challenger explosion, it seemed to me that the disaster was also a terrible symbol a symbol of mans finiteness and the shortness of his life in this world.Ø
Over the last year, as the Chernobyl plant burned and the AIDS epidemic spread, I have sensed the Lord telling me, "There is something here to pay attention to." Whether or in what way God has caused these events, I do not claim to know. But clearly he has allowed them, and one reason he has done so I am convinced, is to warn us of his judgment. Like the Siloam tower, these disasters are invitations to repentance, demonstrations of God's sovereignty and of human beings' inability to save themselves. They are signs of the times: signs of how much the human race in our own day needs to turn to God.
We sometimes forget that one of the purposes of God's communication with us is to warn us. Yet that purpose runs throughout God's dealings with the human race.
He has given warnings to the human race in many ways throughout history through prophets, miracles, his Son Jesus, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, "signs of the times." His warnings show us the precariousness of our position in this world.
GOD SHATTERS OUR QUIET
Our position is precarious not only because our lives are short and uncertain, but also because we are caught in the midst of a relentless spiritual conflict. Indeed, warnings are given to alert us to this warfare.
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When worldly peace and prosperity lulls us into complacency, God's word shatters our quiet, telling us that two kingdoms are in conflict. Human life ends in one of two ways under the reign of Jesus Christ or under the reign of the prince of darkness and we must choose whom we will serve.
A spiritual battle, with real spiritual enemies, lies behind the difficulties we face in Christian life and mission.
We might prefer to ignore the personal, spiritual enemy who confronts us. But our reluctance to face this reality is one reason why God warns us about it so insistently. A twofold message of scripture is the personal evil working against the human race and God's action to break his hold. We cannot understand the interplay of good and evil in society and history unless we recognize that all aspects of the conflict are elements of a collision between two kingdoms, led personally by Christ and Satan.Ø
We are unequipped to deal with the evil we see around us
in the world unless we recognize that we face an actual enemy a personal, spiritual potentate, perverted and extremely cunning, who is consciously seeking to deceive and destroy people.Ø
We are not just dealing with ideologies, human ignorance, or social trends, which is to say, we are not just dealing with flesh and blood. We are dealing with supernatural powers (Eph. 6:10-20).Some of God's angelic creatures have rebelled against him
and in their rebellion have became twisted and perverted, filled with hate and jealousy. These distorted beings seek to tear down God's work and keep the human race from him. The New Testament tells us bluntly thatthey hold sway on earth: "We know that we belong to God, while the whole world is under the power of the evil one" (1 John 5:19).
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The evil personalities who exercise influence in this world draw the men and women who turn from God into a relationship with themselves. "The man who sins belongs to the devil" (1 John 3:8). Believing in Jesus and keeping his word joins a man or woman to Jesus; obeying Satan puts a person under Satan's dark power.Ø
While the leaders of the two kingdoms are both personal beings, they are in no way equal.q
One is creator, the other creature.q
One is perfect, sovereign, original, and complete; the other is limited and derivative but with great intelligence and power to influence God's creature, man.
Genesis says of the serpent the figure of the devil in the garden of Eden that "it was the most cunning of all God's creatures" (3:1).
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Jesus and the writers of the New Testament clearly saw the conquest of these distorted spiritual powers as a central purpose of his mission. His coming brought to a climax the hostility between the human race and these deceiving and murderous personalities. "It was to destroy the devil's works that the Son of God revealed himself" (1 John 3:8).
Jesus carne to do combat with Satan. He fought him in his temptation in the wilderness. He fought him when Peter tried to turn him from his mission. Above all, he fought him on the cross (see John 12:31-32).
SATANIC DOUBT
It is invaluable to discover an enemy's plans
. God in his mercy has revealed to us some of the strategy of our enemy. Its first element is to cast doubt on God's word."Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals that the Lord God had made. The serpent asked the woman, 'Did God really tell you not to eat of the trees in the garden?' " (Gen. 3:1).
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Satans strategy is to get people to doubt that they have heard God correctly to doubt whether God has spoken at all. "Did God really say that?"This approach has been used with incredible success for thousands of years. Today the same voice is whispering to millions of men and women, including many Christians. "Does God really care about personal sexual morality? Does he really have time to be concerned about the little details of your life? Did God really say that?"
SATANIC DECEPTION
When doubt is insinuated, people are vulnerable to deception
. This is the second element of the strategy."The woman answered the serpent . . . 'Of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God said, "You must not eat it, nor touch it, under pain of death." ' Then the serpent said to the woman, 'No! You will not die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil'" (Gen. 3:2-5).
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This is the central deception: "God didn't say that. God is not reliable. God doesn't have your interest at heart. It's not true that if you sin youll die. In fact, if you sin, you'll find fulfilment. You'll be a free, autonomous person. You'll get out of the narrow ghetto you've been living in all your life and join the mainstream."Ø
Many are listening to this voice today. The voice denies the truthfulness of God's word and, therefore, his goodness. Satan is telling us that God is out to deprive us of fulfilment, to rob us of experiences we deserve, of experiences we cannot be happy without. Satan is whispering that we will lose out if we are faithful to God and his word.The third element of the satanic strategy
is to lead us to deny responsibility for our wrongdoing."The Lord God called to the man .. 'Have you been eating of the tree I forbade you to eat?' The man replied, 'It was the woman you put with me. She gave me the fruit, and I ate it. Then the Lord God asked the woman, 'What is this you have one?' The woman replied, 'The serpent tempted me, and I ate' " (Gen. 3:9-13)
The devil seeks to inspire us to pass the blame
for our wrongdoing. I wouldn't have done these things if God hadn't arranged for me to be born in New York City ... if my father hadn't been an alcoholic if I hadn't been under such pressure if I hadn't been so lonely. But to the degree that we deny responsibility for our actions, we close off the way to repentance and forgiveness.UNWITTING AGENTS
In the intelligence community
, each side tries to "turn" the other side's agents. Americans try to "turn" Russians, to make them treacherous to their Soviet leaders and useful to the United States. The Soviets try to turn Americans.Ø
In the war between the two kingdoms the enemy is trying to "turn" people and make them his agents, double agents. He has had some success. There are people in our midst who are working for the enemy. They may not think of it that way, but it is, in effect, what they are doing.Ø
Jesus referred to this reality when he said to the religious leaders of his day, "The father you spring from is the devil" (John 8:44). Without realizing it, they were carrying out Satan's wishes.Satan rarely manifests himself directly
. Most of the time he works through people who have been deceived by his lies, whose hearts have been turned, even though they may not consciously realize whom they have aligned themselves with. He works through what scripture calls plausible liars (1 Tim. 4:1), people who seem reasonable, who have credentials, who use deodorant.Ø
Thus there is a link between the de-Christianising and secularising forces we face in modem society, on the one hand, and spiritual powers and principalities on the other.Ø
It is not given to us to understand the link or to know how it works. But it is important for us to recognize that such a link exists, because it means that our organizing and writing and political action and the rest are not by themselves adequate responses to the obstacles we are facing. Spiritual weapons must be brought to bear.ATTRACTIVE PACKAGING
A few months ago in a local newspaper's Sunday supplement
there was an interview with Helen Gurley Brown, the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine. The article's introduction explained that "the real attraction of Cosmo is such articles as 'Sexual Surrender,' 'Having a Ball with Mr. Wrong,' and 'The Bliss of Semi-public Sex.' The appeal is fantasy, unrestrained desire, and Brown holds herself up as living proof.Ø
"Life is kind to Brown, but she finds her age less so. Says her husband, 'I think she'd fly to Romania to be implanted with goat's glands if she thought it would make her look younger.' Brown has always admitted she was too selfish to have children. . . . 'Our attitude toward sex has changed. The emphasis used to be reducing guilt it's all right to sleep with men which was a pretty radical idea 20 years ago. Now, I think everyone knows that.' . . . Over the years the Cosmo Girl [has been] decidedly pro-choice on abortion" (USA Weekend, Oct. 1985).We see here a deliberate effort to encourage people to sexual immorality. Cosmopolitan's attractive packaging makes the appeal seem plausible, but the promise is a satanic lie.
GREED USING LUST
From an article recently on MTV
: "Violence, the occult, sadomasochism, rebellion against authority, drug abuse, promiscuity, and homosexuality: these typical themes surface in video after video. . . . Titles like 'Suicide Solution,' 'Necrophilia,' and 'Dancing in the Sheets' aim directly at the teen market.Ø
And the video images are as strong as the lyrics are explicit: rape, lesbian encounters, knifings, the works."
There's a false puberty in the elementary schools these days," the analysis continues. "By fourth, fifth, and sixth grade, kids are already talking like teenagers. They're already forming oppositions to their parents" (The National Catholic Register).Ø
Here we see greed using lust to corrupt our young people, to turn them against their parents, to lead them to rebellion and unrestrained desire, sometimes to lead them consciously and explicitly to the prince of darkness.The demons' "teaching ministry" through "plausible liars" is having success among young people inside the churches as well as outside.
RELUCTANT TO SPEAK OF HELL
More serious
even than deceptions at work in American society at large are deceptions within the churches.Ø
If the churches do not preach the gospel, how will men and women find the path that leads to life?Ø
An article in the New York Times a few months ago described the ministry of a Christian clergyman, the Rev. William A. Doubleday, to AIDS victims in New York City:"Those suffering from the disease, he says, may struggle at various times with feelings of shame, sinfulness, rejection, depression, and anger. One patient, he related, once said, 'If I give up my homosexuality, perhaps God will save me.' Others ask why they are suffering so terribly or if God is punishing them for their sin.
"Rev. Doubleday said it was always important to deal sensitively with such questions so as not to contribute to a loss of faith. His response to the young man who wanted to make a bargain with God and give up homosexuality was to tell him simply, 'God loves you as you are.'
"Many are also terribly frightened, not so much of death, he says, but of the pain of dying. Some worry about the fiery torments of hell they believe they will face after death. To such people, Rev. Doubleday counters with biblical images of an afterlife where there are no tears or pain...
"While there is hardship to the work, there are also great rewards, the chaplains say. Rev. Doubleday recalls a drug user with AIDS who was convinced that his disease was a punishment for sin. But as he lay dying he told the pastor, 'I used to think that God was punishing me with this disease, but I decided he must love me very much if he sent me a friend like you.'"
We cannot rely totally on what is reported in the press
, and we may hope that Rev. Doubleday's ministry to the people dying of AIDS was more comprehensive than what was reported.Ø
But one does get the impression of a reluctance to say that the wages of sin is death; a reluctance ever to say that God loves you but hates the things you're doing,Ø
to say that while immoral activity can lead to suffering now, the worst pain as some of the AIDS victims apparently perceived is the fiery torment of hell.Ø
More than affirmation and optimism are needed: repentance, the forgiveness of sins, reparation, and a changed way of life.What a tragedy if the truth of where salvation lies and how to enter the kingdom of God was withheld by Christian leaders from people who desperately need to know it. What an achievement for Satan.
SMOTHERING THE GOSPEL
Yet there is such a suffocating of the gospel today. In many sectors of the churches the picture of the universe that scripture gives us is narrowed, and many of the most important things that God has revealed to us are eliminated.
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One gets the impression from many Christians today that Christianity is a mere preference something that can enrich our lives but which does not make a decisive difference. Nothing seems to hangs on how we respond to Jesus Christ, because everybody will be saved anyway: "We're all good people and God's a good God."Ø
But that is not the complete picture that scripture gives us. When the disciples asked Jesus whether many would be saved, he answered, "Broad and wide is the way leading to destruction, and many are there who are going that way, but narrow is the gate that leads to life and few there are who are finding it" (Matt. 7:13-14). It was not a response designed to alleviate concern for men's and women's eternal destinies.The enemy would like us to think that the way to heaven is broad and wide
and most people are travelling it. But, in fact, people cannot drift into the kingdom of God by following the trends of contemporary secular society. To lead people to believe that they can is to become a spokesman of satanic propaganda.FINAL CHOICES
The New Testament tells us that at the end of history
the warfare between the two kingdoms will reach a climax.Ø
Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians that at the end of time a restrainer will be removed and the "lawless one" will be revealed in all his lawlessness (2 Thess. 2:7-8).Ø
The power of evil that has been working beneath the surface throughout history will come out into the open. Evil will be loosed in a final, radical way in the world. Satan will go about deceiving men and women to the full extent of his power, bringing to ruin those who are destined to ruin, "who have not opened up their hearts to the truth in order to be saved" (2 Thess. 2:9-10).The warning here
consists in both the revelation that Satan's efforts will increase and the reminder that we destine ourselves to ruin by closing our hearts to the truth of the gospel, by rejecting the invitation to repentance and forgiveness that God offers in the person of Jesus Christ.In 2 Peter we are told: "In times past there were false prophets among God's people, and among you also there will be false teachers who will smuggle in pernicious heresies. They will go so far as to deny the master who acquired them for his own, thereby bringing themselves swift disaster. Their lustful ways will lure many away. Through them the true way will be made subject to contempt" (2 Peter 2:1-2).
Certainly we see the true way being made subject to contempt today
. People who seek to follow the narrow way of the gospel are called fundamentalists, rigid ultraconservatives. Husbands and wives who remain faithful to each other in difficult marriage situations are mocked. Parents who do not think it is fine for their children to be formed by the music or television industries are scorned as quaint and backward.Ø
Second Peter continues, "They will deceive you with fabricated tales in a spirit of greed, but their condemnation is not laying idle all this time." God is nor mocked. Christianity is nor a game. Those who find peace with God through faith in Christ and obedience to him will enter perfect blessedness. Those who turn from God's way and turn others from his way will suffer the consequences for eternity."IMAGES OF FINAL JUDGMENT
Second Peter speaks plainly to us today
:"Did God spare even the angels who sinned? He did not. Nor did he spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah as a creature of holiness with seven others when he brought down the flood on godless men. He blanketed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in ashes and condemned them to destruction, thereby showing what would happen in the future to the godless.... These are all examples of how the Lord can rescue the good from the ordeal and hold the wicked for their punishment until the day of judgment, especially those who are governed by their corrupt bodily desires and have no respect for authority" (2 Peter 2:4-10).
The expressions of God's judgment in human history
are images of the final destruction of the wicked. The punishment of the generation of Noah, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Jerusalem after the coming of Jesus foreshadow the finial judgment.Ø
Jesus' prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, which was fulfilled a generation after he spoke it,Ø
is mingled in the gospel accounts with his prophecy concerning the destruction of the world and the end of time (Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21).Ø
This has been a puzzle for scripture scholars: which verses refer to the destruction of Jerusalem and which refer to the destruction at the end of time? But I think the two are mingled for a purpose.Ø
Guided by the Holy Spirit, the evangelists saw a relation between the two events. The destruction of Jerusalem foreshadowed the full reality of God's judgment on human wickedness that would be delivered at the end of time.Thus Jesus offered the destruction of Jerusalem as a picture of what, as 2 Peter says, "will happen in the future to the godless."
WARNINGS SUFFICIENT
God has been generous
in revealing himself and warning us of the conflict of kingdoms we are in and of the consequences of our choices. If men and women fail to hear him, they cannot completely escape responsibility.Ø
Paul writes, "The whole world can know of God's divinity and of his existence through perceiving the creation" (Rom. 1:20). The psalmist says, "The heavens declare the glory of God" (Psalm 19:1-4).For those who want to see and hear, the heavens and the earth, God's handiwork, declare his greatness and wisdom. There are prophets and apostles. The signs of Noah, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of the Israelites' punishment in the desert, of Jonah, of the tower of Siloam, of the slain Galileans, of the destruction of Jerusalem all are speaking to us still. "These things all happened as a warning for us . . . written down to be a lesson to us who are living at the end of the age" (1 Cor. 10:6,11).
KNOWING THERE'S A WAR ON
Why is it important to know that we are in a war
? To know that there is enmity between the offspring of the woman and the offspring of the serpent? That Jesus Christ has come to do battle? That Jesus Christ has come to destroy the works of the devil?Ø
A wartime mentality shapes how we live. We see the necessity of vigilance, of leading the kind of life that the Lord will find pleasing on his return. We see the need to make a wartime effort: now is not the time for rest but the time for fighting and work.Ø
Priorities become clear. The purpose of this life is for us to come into and grow in a saving relationship with Jesus Christ and to help others do that too. Our assignment is to help as many people as possible get free from the rule of the prince of darkness, to throw down as many strongholds of Satan as we can, and to liberate and hold as much "territory" as we can.Ø
"Territory" once liberated is not held automatically. Scripture says, "At the end of the test [of Jesus] in the wilderness, the devil went off to return at an opportune time"(Luke 4:13).The devil returns today where he was defeated yesterday. He returns to our families at an opportune time, to our churches and communities. In the West we see whole nations that have considered themselves Christian being snatched away from Christ by the enemy who has returned at an opportune time. In this situation courage and aggressiveness are required of us. Jesus said, "the kingdom of God suffers violence and the violent bear it away" (Matt. 11:12).
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The righteous indignation of the psalms should become our own. It is right to be angry with the anger of God at those who are leading the little ones astray. Jesus said, "It would be better for those who lead the little ones astray that a millstone be put around their necks and they be thrown into the sea" (Matt. 18:6). We need not be timid when, in our churches, our congregations, our parishes, the little ones are led into sin by false teaching.We need to take on the armour and the weapons that God gives us and engage in spiritual combat, to live a fervent Christian life dose to God, praying always, evangelising, reaching out, taking the offensive, using the word of God as a weapon to cast down the works of Satan (see Eph. 6:10-20).
The weapons of our warfare are not merely human
."For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We demolish sophistries and every proud pretension that raises itself against the knowledge of God. We likewise bring every thought into captivity to make it obedient to Christ" (2 Cor. 10:3-5).
Thus we need power from on high to wage the battle we are in. God wants to give us power to wield the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God We are to speak the word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit so it will divide bone and marrow, soul and spirit, unmasking the enemy, and exalting the Lord Jesus Christ and bringing people to him.
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Many of us would prefer to ignore the ferocity of this battle. We would prefer to declare neutrality.Ø
But it would be a false hope to think that our neutrality would be respected for long by the devil. Moreover, to be neutral in this battle is to be of no help to our Lord Jesus Christ, no help to our brothers and sisters in Christ, no help to a world which is perishing. Indeed, not to fight is to abet the cause of the enemy.Ø
To stand by while the devil is going about like a roaring lion and devouring our fellow human beings even if we think we ourselves are safe is not worthy of those called disciples of Christ (see 1 Peter 5:8).The wonderful thing about fighting in this war is that we know that the Lord Jesus Christ has already won the victory. He has gone before us. He is with us and for us and in us and above us and below us. Because of this, our fighting is joyful fighting. Psalm 149 urges us:
"Let the faithful exult in glory,
let them sing for joy on their couches.
Let the high praises of God be in their throats
and two-edged swords be in their hands,
to wreak vengeance on the nations
and chastisements on the peoples,
to bind their kings with chains
and their nobles with fetters of iron,
to execute on them the judgment written!
This is the glory of all his faithful"
What a glorious thing to sing the high praises of God with joy, and to carry the two-edged sword of his word in our hands, as we live and work with Jesus amid the present conflict of kingdoms.