Posted on 09/05/2020 8:46:23 AM PDT by metmom
"Be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might . . . . For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Eph. 6:10, 12).
Spiritual warfare can be intense, but God’s grace enables you to prevail against Satan’s attacks.
Through the ages Satan has accused, besieged, and battered believers in an effort to prevent them from living to the glory of God. He attempts to snatch the gospel message from a person's heart even before salvation occurs (Matt. 13:19). He bombards believers with false doctrine, trying to confuse and distract them from biblical truth (Eph. 4:14).
Martin Luther reported that his conflict with Satan became so intense that at one point it was as if he could see him. In anger over Satan's incessant attacks, Luther picked up his inkwell and threw it at him. It hit the wall with a resounding crash, splattering ink throughout the room. The stains remained for many years, reminding all who saw them of how vivid spiritual conflict can be.
You may not have experienced anything like the intensity of Martin Luther's conflict, but spiritual warfare is just as real for you as it was for him. You are in mortal combat with Satan and his evil forces. That's why Paul said, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against . . . spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Eph. 6:12).
"Struggle" in that verse speaks of life-and-death, hand-to-hand combat—the kind Jesus Himself experienced while on earth. He met opposition and persecution at every turn. The same was true of Paul and the other apostles as they dealt with Jewish religionists, heathens, sorcerers, and demon-possessed people who tried in vain to thwart their missionary efforts.
Satan's onslaughts may seem overwhelming at times, but don't be discouraged. See them for what they are: a defeated foe's last-ditch efforts to inflict damage on the conquering army. The Lord will strengthen and protect you, just as He has protected all believers before you.
Suggestions for Prayer
Praise God for being your protector and the source of spiritual victory.
For Further Study
Read Acts 4:1-22.
What kind of opposition did Peter and John face? How did they respond to the Jewish Council's order not to preach the gospel?
Studying God’s Word ping
Dear metmom
Thanks for the frequent encouragement you bring our way. Truly helpful. And appreciated!!
I’m glad it’s an encouragement.
I recently read a wonderful essay by Whittaker Chambers, entitled "The Devil" (1948), which appeared in Chamber's astounding book, The Ghosts on the Roof. It is comparable in many ways to C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters. I'd like to share some excerpts with you and your readers here:
"The Devil," said Satan, "Likes to have it both ways. And how the little monsters [we human beings] snapped at the bait! In less than a century I had undone the work of more than a thousand years and knocked the studs from under the religious culture of Europe. Why? Because Evolution explained the universe without Him. They wanted to get rid of Him. Then I knew the secret longing of their nasty hearts. Then I knew I had them.Here's the part I really love:"The rest followed as a matter of course: the growth of factories to supply the huge demand for material goods which were the only values secular man could really feel; the growth of cities and slums, the corruption by the cities of the countryside which in other times had been the reservoir from which exhausted cultures replenished their faith and forces; the inhuman industrial oppression of men, women and children whose dependence found expression in the inhuman horrors of communism, socialism and anarchism; the debasement of all standards of conduct and taste as God was forgotten and with Him the only absolute standard; finally, the world wars with millions of men dying by all the horrors conceived by secular genius. Consider for a moment the miracle of the flame-thrower; or the spectacle of a government physically destroying millions of people in whose interests it was created to govern. Do you doubt my triumph when you stop to think that the mind of man conceived the concentration camp? Then came the atomic bomb — my ultimate perversion of the highest powers of the human brain and scientific good for the purpose of total destruction."
"Poor Devil," said the pessimist.God bless you, dear metmom!"Poor Devil?" said Satan, plainly taken aback.
"Doomed by the dialective of creation continually to make new good out of old evil. For God, being perfect, would be incapable of further creation were it not for you who, by disturbing the equipoise of His perfection, restore to Him the necessity of new creation. In our time Arnold Toynbee has perhaps best formulated this great concept in his Study of History: In the language of Mythology, when one of God's creatures is temped by the Devil, God Himself is thereby given the opportunity to re-create the World. By the stroke of the Adversary's trident, all the foundations of the great deep are broken up. The. Devil's intervention has accomplished the transition from Yin [perfect stillness] to Yang [dynamic creative activity], from static to dynamic, for which God has been yearning ever since the moment when His Yin-state became complete, but which it was impossible for God to accomplish by Himself, out of His own Perfection." [i.e., What is perfect is incapable of improvement, even by the Perfect Being — arguably, this is the only limit on God.]
A shade of slightly malevolent annoyance crossed the Devil's face. "I have been watching the man Toynbee and his followers for some time.... [A]nd, as a trained theologian, I should like to challenge his proposition with a question: May not there be an end even to dialectics? What you and your dialectical friends may tend to overlook is the fact that I have brought man to the point of intellectual pride where self-extermination lies within his power. There is not only the bomb.... There are the much less discussed delights of bacteriological annihilation. And it is only a question of time until whole populations can be driven ultrasonically insane in time of war by sound which their ears cannot hear but their nerves cannot bear. It would be an amusing paradox if the babble of the cosmic argument were ended once and for all by an ultrasonic silence...."
The. Devil's voice grew less harsh, and he dropped his hand to his side in a gesture of weariness. "Goodness," he said, "is a perpetual benediction, the seed within the minute husk which is the promise of summer, the unmultiplied image of the harvest. Not to know goodness is not to understand creation. In no way is my mark more clearly felt on the modern world than in the death of the creative imagination.
"And yet it is at this very point that man, the monstrous midget, still has the advantage on the Devil: he suffers. For at the heart of all human suffering is the anguish of the chance that the creative seed of goodness, that little flash of inward light, however brief, may not perpetuate itself, that a man can leave this life, this light, without communicating that one cell of himself which is real. [This} is the seal of his divine commitment — this suffering which I cannot feel because of that light which in me is dark. Intellectually I can understand it since, by my origin, I share the intellect of angels. But I cannot feel it or I would not be the Devil. That is the source of my frustration and root of my rage against the breed. That is why I shall never cease working to entangle man in evil until the world becomes one universal graveyard whose lifeless peace is broken only by my shriek of triumph as I plunge into a deeper pit than Hell. For only One knows better than I that should I succeed in making man destroy himself, I will destroy myself with him, having destroyed my function. It still lies with man to make the choice (after all, the filthy beetles have free will): a skeleton beside a broken wall, on a dead planet purged of all suffering because purged of all life; or Him, with all that entails. Personally...I have never felt my chances to be so good."
...sheepish. You've been including me in comment s for the last few months and I've missed them. Mea culpa. If I actually knew Latin I'd add a variation on *maximus* there.
As penance allow me to say I actually finished Don't Let The Science Get You Down Timothy & enjoyed it. Some of the broad sweep of knowledge reminded me of William Lane Craig.
Now, back to the point of this post. Have you tried reading the essay Problem Picture in Dorothy L. Sayers's The Whimsical Christian?
Covers the layperson's misunderstanding of what science is and its limitations, particularly to the sociological...
Sayers was only an English major or whatnot, but the fact she incorporated racemic mixtures of optically active organic molecules into a mystery novel, back in the 1930s, even before molecular mirror symmetry had been identified as the cause of optical activity, was *very* impressive.
All the best to you, thanks for writing!
Whittaker Chambers confirms this in his short story, "The Devil," which I excerpted earlier on this thread, with additional details:
"Martin Luther himself has described how, when he was translating the Bible, the Devil often appeared and debated with him the proper interpretation of the Hebrew text. On one occasion Luther hurled an inkstand at him. It missed the Fiend but left. a mark which can still be seen on the wall of Luther's cell in the Wartburg."There's no question in my mind that the Fiend exists; and not just because of Luther's testimony.
He is also extraordinarily active at this point in history....
I pray daily for a spiritual reawakening in America, that God may heal this land.
Read up on some of the Catholic saints and mystics.
Much more than Luther; and backed up by independent witnesses.
Hi greywhiskers! I'm so glad you enjoyed Timothy!
RE: Sayers. I'll have to check out The Whimsical Christian. Just because she was "only" an English major doesn't mean that she is incapable of discerning what science is and its limitations. Indeed, probably it's the case that she is an English major that enables her to see this. [I may be biased in this: I'm a double major in English and philosophy]
Science is extraordinarily limited in what it can know about reality because its method deals only with material things. It either ignores — or outright denies — all things spiritual. And thus it undermines itself at the outset — for scientific inquiry, the creative imagination, and logic itself are NOT material things. They cannot be accessed or evaluated by the scientific method.
And yet the spiritual things are what lay back of the surface reality that science explores, are what finally constitutes both science and reality.
The main inspiration for writing Timothy was the desire to help Christians especially not to feel "outclassed" or rendered "stupid" by science and its claims.
In it own sphere of expertise, science is unparalleled. But it sees only the surface of reality. And the deeper it probes that reality, the more it sees that "matter" itself is but a useful abstraction, a mental construct, and not the ultimate root of reality. (see quantum theory)
Thanks so much for writing, greywhiskers — it's great to see you again!
Indeed. I don’t doubt it.
Have you seen this?
The Return - NATIONAL AND GLOBAL DAY OF PRAYER AND REPENTANCE
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3870761/posts
I don’t remember if I told you about it.
“Have you seen this? The Return - NATIONAL AND GLOBAL DAY OF PRAYER AND REPENTANCE”
Funny you mention that. I only learned about it on an OAN ad an hour or so ago. Mike Lindell and Alveda King were two of the people in the ad.
Franklin Graham is supporting it.
There are some good names affiliated with this event.
It starts Friday evening, around sunset, I guess. Kind of follows the sabbath.
IIRC, Occupy White House was scheduled to start on the 17th and last until election day, so the two groups will be in Washington at the same time.
That will be very interesting because we know this is a spiritual war and when these two spiritual forces meet on that weekend, my guess is that anything could happen.
I’m going to be following it the whole time there’s stuff scheduled.
Have you heard if RSBN will be covering it?
I have no idea.
We don’t even have a TV hooked up yet. I do want it hooked up so we can watch, but it’s going to have to be live streaming.
We are NOT paying extortionate cable bills for a TV we never watch.
You don’t need cable or satellite to watch RSBN. Just a smart TV, which are cheap now.
WONDERFUL NEWS metmom! The answer to my prayers.... I’ll be attending, and will spread the word.
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