The Great Angelic
Conflict
March 22, 2004
Every dark and evil character created to evoke
fear in readers and moviegoers is only the devil's shadow. No
battle scene from the Lord of the Rings compares with the
ferocity of the angelic conflict. Even the dreaded Borg, of Star
Trek infamy, is assimilated by the devil and his army of demons.
The masses slaughtered by Hitler and Stalin represent only a
fraction of the lives destroyed by Satan.
Throughout the Bible men are urged to fight the
enemy, do battle, and wage war. We've not been placed in a
spiritual Disneyland and told to "have fun." By birth we've
entered a battlefield. By rebirth in Christ we've enlisted in
God's army as warriors of light.
Abraham's nephew Lot learned this lesson on the
evening the two angels appeared in his presence and told him to
gather his family and get out of town because God intended to
destroy the city of Sodom. High on a mountain Moses realized he
was involved in a spiritual battle when the angel of the Lord
appeared to him in the flames of a burning bush and informed him
he had just been recruited to take on Pharaoh and release the
Hebrew slaves. Gideon lacked spiritual vision until the day the
angel of the Lord interrupted his life and sent him to battle
the Midianites, idolatrous people who were oppressing the
Israelites. The stories could go on and on. Each of these men,
and others, fought in the power of their God against forces
empowered by Satan and his demons.
Today the conflict is spiritual and the war is for
your heart--the core of your being that serves as the center of
your intellect, emotion, and will. The enemy wants to capture
your affection and direct your plans. He seeks to destroy you
and your family. If you lose this war, not only is strategic
ground lost, but even worse, you align yourself with the enemy.
No weapon of the enemy has worked better than the
barrage of propaganda that hammers away at our thinking and
convinces us we're not warriors. It urges us to kick back and
watch the world pass by like a parade. Such passivity reeks of
danger. It's a vampire that sinks its fangs into our neck and
redirects our loyalty to the dark side. It sucks out our
spiritual lifeblood so we're drained of God's power.
We must wake up. We can no longer deny the reality
of the angelic conflict in which we're combatants. We have an
enemy who hates us and seeks our destruction. As God's warriors
we must live as though nothing else matters compared with
knowing him and fighting at his side. We must discover the
secret of masculine strength that's rooted in Christ.
(Taken from my new book: Six Battles Every Man
Must Win, (Tyndale, p. 12-13--released April 04)
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