Spiritual Warfare
If you think about it, contemporary Christians are waging war against the same enemies the early church fought with. These immortal enemies we war against have been refining their tactics over the ages, while we, as mere mortals, are having to pass the torch from generation to generation. This is why the Apostle Paul urged the church in Ephesus to strive for “Mature manhood,” which represents the whole of man, not merely the intellect. Paul said it is “So that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Eph. 4:14). The “Deceitful schemes” Paul referred to are not a randomized series of events, but structured, logical, and systematically adhering to one grand demonic plan. A plan based purely on deception by the “Ruler of the realm of the air” (Eph. 2:2). This should not surprise anyone because he earned his rule in the beginning using deception by twisting God’s word into layered half-truths (Gen. 3). All warfare is based on deception and this is something Christian’s must understand to orient themselves to our present situation. Increasing our understanding would ultimately reorient our theological positions and religious affections, which then necessarily effects how we live out our theology moving forward. To explain, I will present where we’ve been deceived, the current state of the battlefield, and how we should move forward.
The goal of deception in war is to manipulate the perspective of your opponent and this can be done by various means. For one, this can be accomplished by convincing your enemy that there is no active war. You can gaslight and manipulate them to believe that they are the issue, all while you are innocently seeking “Peace,” “Coexistence,” “Equity,” and so forth. We can equate this to the “Myth of neutrality,” which has most Christians by the throat. To which, as of today, Americanized Christianity is on its last breath. To gain this advantage in war, all the demonic forces did was convince the Christians that truth is subjective and that tolerance is their greatest virtue. So, on one hand, Christians have placated postmodern relativism to the point of radical tolerance of unlawfulness in the public sphere under the banner of the 11th commandment that says: “Be Nice.”
In addition to the establishment of a tolerant church, the same Christian’s have also bent the knee to modernity’s skepticism of the spiritual. They have adopted the belief that we live in an impersonal, mechanistic universe. In our perceived superiority of scientific knowledge and understanding, we have thoroughly disregarded that the spiritual realm exists. This has resulted in the neglect of the existence of dragons, that is, the demonic forces the Bible warns us about (Eph. 6:10-12; Luke 8:30; 1 John 4:4; 1 Cor. 10:20-21; James 4:7; John 10:10; etc). With the left hand weighed down by the boulder of modern scientific thought and the right hand occupied with the glass jug full of the captured winds of postmodern relativism, a large portion of Christians are, for all intents and purposes, rendered combat ineffective.
Furthermore, As G.K. Chesterton reminded us that we, from childhood, are ingrained with the knowledge that spiritual monsters are real. And so, we are taught the Bible and fairy tales so that we come to know that the spiritual monsters can be killed.[1] The other goal of deception, which is a hallmark of special forces units, is to make your enemy feel as if you have the advantage in numbers, weaponry, tactics, and terrain. So, for the Christians who have not quite bought into the deceptive philosophies of post-enlightenment thought, there are others who have become ensnared in another aspect of the deceitful scheme. Even if the existence of spiritual malefactors are acknowledged, Christians have been led to believe that we can’t kill them. The belief is that Satan has the numbers, weaponry, tactical advantage, and so he will ultimately win on earth. If the saying “you will live out your theology” is true, then it’s safe to blame the seeds of pessimistic eschatological frameworks that were sown in American thought for over a century. This blame is justified by the ripe fruit of abdication that pervades the American church today. If things are going to get worse, indeed they must according to their system of belief, why pour resources and effort into the public sphere to influence culture and politics? Why fulfill the Great Commission? Consequently, Christianity has consistently been withheld from the public sphere for far too long. Christianity has been turned into an inner, relativistic experience that can only be expressed within church walls on Sundays while we wait for Jesus to rapture us into the sky. This is an utter misrepresentation of the Christian religion (Acts 1:10-11). The foundation to the Apostles preaching and ethical conduct was the Lordship of Christ that was established upon his resurrection-ascension to his throne in heaven, and today, we have Christians who aren’t quite sure if Christ is reigning yet (Eph. 1:20).
Christians need to recognize that the Christian life is war. We are battling sin, the curse on creation, the culture, heresies that arise from within the church, and the demonic realm simultaneously. Depraved humanity does enough on their own, but it is also guaranteed that the demonic realm has their hand in many of the battles we face (Eph. 4:14; Eph. 6:12; 1 Cor. 10:20). Therefore, we have a responsibility to know what the mission is and how to “fight the good fight” (Eph. 6:1-19; Matt. 28:18-20; 1 Tim. 6:12). There is no soldier, special forces operator, or general who would ignore lessons learned in battle, good or bad, from previous wars, operations, and training missions when preparing for a war. This is because you must learn from those who have gone before you, know the history of the war, orient yourself to your place in it, all while studying the enemy before you can engage in warfare successfully. Then you take what you have learned, tested, and applied in battle and pass that information on to those who come after you. The gear, technology, and opponents may change, but the foundational principles and tactics of war remain, even in spiritual war. The culture, the attacks on Christianity, and the political landscape may vary and increase in complexity, but the foundational principles and truths remain the same for Christians today as it did for first century Christians.
To begin our quest to move forward, we must start with where we came from to orient ourselves to where we currently are. Church history and the history of western civilization are one in the same, for you cannot study one without the other. Together they are the history of the Kingdom of God becoming fully manifest on earth, which means it is a history of spiritual warfare. Getting Christians to willfully ignore their history is another significant deception successfully employed by our enemies, which is something government education has facilitated quite remarkably over the past century. Like the special forces operator and military general, Christians have an obligation to study and know sacred history because that is over two thousand years of lessons learned that is missing in our operation planning. This understanding is missing outright and so the majority of Christians today cannot rightly orient themselves to the spiritual war raging around them. To make things worse, the majority of self-proclaiming Christians don’t really understand what they believe theologically. This means we have a long way to go; however, we have the means to respond. Christians must “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” so that we can grasp the full meaning of the Great Commission (2 Pet. 3:18; Matt. 28:18-20). Therefore, we must understand His person and work deep in our bones and study His Word diligently. For that is our foundation and our playbook. Additionally, we must learn from the great minds and thinkers who have built upon the foundation that was laid by the Apostles over the centuries, which is all available to us today at our fingertips. Not only the Apostles and Christians over the past two thousand years, but the great secular minds of history and the classics have much to offer us in this war. This is because all truth is God’s truth, and we need to be trained in discerning between what is right and what is wrong. We then take all the knowledge, understanding, and wisdom into the public sphere now and then pass that on to the next generations so that they can fight the enemy from a better position. We are to render to Caesar that which contains his inscription and render to God that which contains his image; you, your wife, your children, and your church body. And that starts now.
To conclude, we should expect that the Devil would seek to strengthen his rule through deception, for that is how he got it (Gen. 3). Moreover, that is why the Apostle Paul warned us about it. The most detrimental blow to the schemes of the Devil would be a people exceedingly educated in the Word of God. Learning truth and proclaiming truth, especially by young minds, is what will demolish the Devil’s grand scheme because they can bring the necessary change to ensuing generations. The carnage of the educational deception by means of evolution, impersonal forces, anti-Christian curriculum, and modern teaching philosophies is fully manifest today. If you add up the various means of deception above, the educational carnage, and a weak and passive church, you get the culture we see today. We got the culture we deserve and so we must acknowledge where we’ve been deceived and repent of it. We need servants of the living God who consistently cultivate wisdom and the virtues of love, boldness, honor, and integrity with Christ at the center of everything they do. Who understand that the church has been given a mission to disciple the nations, which means to enculturate them into distinctively Christian nations, because they are Christ’s promised inheritance (Matt. 28:18-20 cf. Gen. 1:26-28; Ps. 2; Ps. 82:8). Moreover, it is God, through the Apostle Paul, who promised that the church will be the means by which it occurs. Paul wrote to the church of Rome that “The God of Peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Rom. 16:20, Emphasis mine). In other words, God is going to use the church to crush Satan just as Jesus promised to Peter when he told him that the gates of hell will not withstand the church (Matt. 16:18). So, Christian, rest in these promises and the fact that there will be no end to the increase of Christs government and faithfully labor to reclaim the theological, cultural, and institutional terrain that has been lost. (Isa. 9:7). As Cornelius Van Til wrote of taking over education, “We begin more and more to realize that we should declare our independence once for all… we have a definitively imperialistic program. No mere Monroe Doctrine will suffice. We are out to destroy-albeit with spiritual weapons only and always-all our competitors. We do not recognize them as equals but regard them as usurpers. Carthage must be destroyed.”[2] The same mentality applies to the culture.
[1] Chesterton, G.K. (2003). Tremendous Trifles. The Project Gutenberg. Retrieved from https://gutenberg.org/files/8092/8092-h/8092-h.htm
[2] Berkhof, L., & Van Til, C. (1990). Foundations of Christian Education. Philipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company. 116.