For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh
(for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds),
casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God,
and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
Fight the good fight of the faith, lay hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast called.
—1 Timothy 6:12
Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.
—2 Timothy 2:3
Lord, we have already entered into Your presence, and we have worshipped You and praised You. Now, Lord, very simply, we want to take that anointing which is ours for the speaking and for the hearing, that You Yourself may be able to reach us with Your Word and deposit something in our hearts.
Save us from our own speaking and our own hearing, Lord. Be with us and upon us, that we shall know that ministry of Your Spirit which will help us, Lord, not only to hear Your Word, but to be doers of it.
Lord, we commit ourselves to You with thanksgiving, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
As you have already heard, we have been talking about this whole matter of spiritual warfare. We began last night to deal with this subject, and I really do not want to go back over what we have already shared. I believe it is on tape, and I imagine that you are able to get that tape, because each of these times, in one sense, I hope by the grace of God, will be able to take a step forward.
But I will say something about the world situation, looking at it from another angle almost. We are born, as believers, into a battle. The first thing we have to realize as a child of God is that the conflict and the battle we are in is much bigger than us.
It is not something peculiar to us or to our circumstances, but something that you and I have been born into, because the Word of God tells us that this world lies in the evil one. We cannot be delivered from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s dear Son without some turmoil and upheaval somewhere.
We cannot meet together and share our faith and life in Him—our salvation that is from Him—without there being some kind of antagonism or opposition in the very atmosphere. We are born into a battle.
It is a very good thing for us, very early on, to understand that we are absolutely safe and absolutely secure in this battle, provided we use what the Lord has given to us. If we learn to put on the whole armour of God, take the weapons of our warfare which have been given to us, and allow the Lord to discipline us, harden us in the right way, and train us up, then we have absolutely nothing to fear in this battle.
This battle is truly the Lord’s battle. And if it is the Lord’s battle, then the end is absolutely secure. The question is whether you and I are going to be in that victory or not. That is the big question—the million-dollar question.
We, in particular, in this generation, are privileged beyond, I think, any other generation to be living in a time for which patriarchs and prophets and kings and apostles have longed to see. We are living in a time in which we have actually seen before our very eyes the physical, literal fulfilment of God’s prophetic words.
We are living on the very threshold of the coming of the Messiah. The patriarchs, the prophets, the kings, and the apostles all longed to see this day, but they died in faith, not actually receiving the promise—that is, not seeing it begin to be fulfilled.
It is an enormous privilege that is yours and ours—not something to be fearful about, but something to praise the Lord for. But at the same time, this privilege brings with it a solemn responsibility.
Our Lord Jesus warned us not once, but again and again and again, that the last phase of world history would be fraught with particular and peculiar problems and difficulties. He told us there would be all kinds of false prophecies, false prophets, and movements that were partly truly Christian and partly utterly counterfeit, claiming to represent the Lord Jesus and His Word.
All these things we are beginning to see before our eyes. Therefore, it is of tremendous importance that you and I should learn how to war, as it is put in the book of Numbers, “the warfare of the service”; how we can really fight this good fight of faith and lay hold on the life eternal to which we are called, not only personally but corporately.
In these last days, everything is ripening. The tares are ripening, the wheat is ripening; everything is moving to its determined end—the harvest of evil and the harvest of good. It is all apparent, and there are all kinds of things that have to be fulfilled in our day and generation.
However small a number it is, God has to finally complete His purpose concerning the body of the Lord Jesus: building us up and bringing us, in days of turmoil, error, confusion, and even weakness, at least to a place where we are overcoming by His power and grace. That requires spiritual warfare.
It will not take place unless there are those who are true intercessors, those who can travail, as it were, in the travail of God’s Spirit, to bring about such a fulfilment of God’s purpose.
There is a gospel of the kingdom which is to be preached in all the world for a testimony to all nations before the end comes. Therefore, we must expect that the powers of darkness will do every single thing in their power to frustrate that preaching of the gospel of the kingdom in all the world.
Those powers of darkness will seek, in one way or another, utterly to destroy any possibility in some areas of the world of that gospel of the kingdom being preached. Therefore, you and I have got to learn how to war the warfare of the service so that that purpose of God, revealed by the Lord Jesus, can be fulfilled.
This fulfilment will not come unless you and I learn how to be involved in prayer warfare. I do not have any doubt that a company such as this, meeting in the simplicity with which you meet, will be unable to stay together unless there are those who can war the warfare of the service.
There must be those who can win a way through for men and women to grow up in the Lord; for division to be put aside, factions to be destroyed, and the roots of opposition to the finished work of the Lord Jesus to be removed and not allowed to build up. It requires spiritual warfare.
If your children are really going to come into a real experience of the Lord—not second-hand Christianity, but original, direct relationships with the Lord Jesus—and grow up in a world that will become increasingly pagan and demonised, they will require people who can war the warfare of the service on their behalf.
I could go on and on, but the fact of the matter is, here we are in an unbelievable situation. We have seen, for instance, in this last year, the most sudden and unexpected events take place in this world.
Nobody could have realized a year ago—and nobody did realize—that these events were so near to being fulfilled, and that suddenly whole areas of the world would begin to take on a different complexion. I think of what has happened in Eastern Europe.
For some forty-five or fifty years, that whole area had been in the grip of a monolithic demonic power. It had murdered millions in its seventy-two-year history, committed millions of people to incarceration camps, forced labour camps, and mental institutions, banned the preaching of the gospel, destroyed Christian work, and prevented Bibles from being printed, at least in contemporary language.
Then, literally within this last year, something happened in Eastern Europe that has confused many believers. It began in Poland, spread to Hungary, then Bulgaria, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. Suddenly, within three months, this whole area, which had been in the grip of monolithic darkness for some fifty years, was free.
Tonight, you can have an open-air meeting in the streets of Warsaw or Budapest. There is a committed, observant Catholic Christian Prime Minister of Poland. If you had said to me a year ago that this would be so, I would have laughed in your face. I would have said, “You must be nuts. It is impossible.”
If you had told me that the Hungarian Communist Party would vote unanimously to dissolve itself, I would have laughed. But it happened. Václav Havel, a born-again believer, is now President of Czechoslovakia. It is unbelievable.
Who would have thought that after seventy-two years of this demonic power—wherever it came, bringing suffering and bloodshed—the Kremlin bells, which had never been allowed to ring because of their Christian association, would ring in the new year?
Think of that. Or think of the Russian Orthodox Christmas Eve service, on January 6, being televised throughout the Soviet Federation in Russian. Can you believe it? It is unbelievable.
Now we find that Ukraine has declared that its law must take precedence over Soviet law. The Russian Federation, the largest republic in the Soviet Union, has said the same. Belarus has likewise come on record, voting unanimously that its law must take precedence over Soviet law. They want their own foreign department and service, and their own standing army.
Take Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Their national flags and national emblems had been banned for fifty years or more, ever since Stalin moved into those three little Baltic countries. Yet in the last year their national flags have been flying on every state building in their countries. It is unbelievable.
Take one other symbol: the Berlin Wall. We have lived in the shadow of that wall since 1961. The Berlin Wall, dividing that great city into two impenetrable halves, was the symbol of the Iron Curtain.
I had friends in Finland last fall who left in a car packed with Bibles in Russian and Estonian, packed with clothes and food for believers in Leningrad and Estonia. They went on Thursday and returned on Tuesday. When they left, the Berlin Wall was still in position as it had been for years. When they came back on Tuesday, it had been breached and was coming down.
They could not believe it. They thought, “It cannot be the Berlin Wall. It must be some other little wall somewhere that has fallen down.” But it was the Berlin Wall. Does it say something to you?
It means that the whole of our world is changing before our eyes with astonishing rapidity. In 1992, the twelve nations of the European Common Market will abolish national frontiers, tariffs, import and export duties, and customs barriers. This is unbelievable.
One hundred and fifty years ago, or even more, there were those who believed there would be a revival of what they called the Holy Roman Empire. In a book called Light for the Last Days, published in 1860, Edward Irving said, among other things, that 1917 would be an enormously important and significant date for the Jewish people, and that there would be a revival of the Holy Roman Empire.
First, there was the Roman Empire, covering the whole Mediterranean area, part of the Middle East, and much of Europe, centred in Rome. Then, when it fell, the Holy Roman Empire came in its place, in a much smaller area but also centred in Rome.
Every king, lord, duke, and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was subject to the Pope, who was called “king of kings and lord of lords” in the Vatican.
When the Holy Roman Empire disappeared, the whole of Europe became independent sovereign states, fraught with jealousy, rivalry, and war after war. Two world wars came out of that area upon the whole world. We think of the Franco-Prussian War, the Napoleonic Wars, the First World War, and the Second World War—all fought over jealousies and rivalries between the different powers in Europe.
Now, suddenly, we are witnessing twelve states coming together for the first time in a union in which they are abolishing frontiers and the need for passports. Austria has applied for membership. I would not be surprised if Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland were eventually included.
Every one of these member states has had to sign the Treaty of Rome. Once again, we find in the very same area an enormous bloc of nations arising, which is going to be the most powerful, influential, and wealthy bloc in the world.
Now, are we being fanciful? Are we being crazy? Or are we actually seeing something happen before our very eyes that has enormous significance for the last phase of world history?
If that is so, where are the companies of believers who can war the warfare of the service? Where are those who can pray through the purposes of God for the nations and the purpose of God for His covenant people, His own? We need to rise to this challenge.
I said last night that we are nearer to a one-world government than we have ever been before. I honestly believe that in this next decade we are going to see the most significant and enormous steps forward toward world government.
This huge bloc in Europe is not too fond of the United States, and I believe there is a real likelihood of a trade war. If Japan were also to join them—and I believe that is a real possibility—then the North American continent could be isolated. An intelligent President of the United States would undoubtedly be tempted to forestall such a trade war with ideas of a world federation—a world government.
Consider also the possibility of war. Take the Iran-Iraq War: eight years of war, during which Europe and Japan, whose oil supplies largely came from that area, were shaken almost to their foundations. If there is any further possibility of such conflict, there will be a cry from many nations: “We have got to have a world government. We have got to have a world command force that can put down any such possibility of trouble.”
Then there is the ecological issue. Recently, there was an ecological conference in Scandinavia. The United States and the United Kingdom refused to sign an agreement on acid rain, to the anger of Scandinavian countries suffering greatly from it. Countries possessing rainforests refused to sign agreements on stopping the destruction of tropical rainforests, upon which much of our oxygen supply depends.
Japan also refused, at one point, to sign an agreement concerning factory fishing—the scooping up of everything on the seabed, most of which is thrown out dead while only a little is kept for consumption.
With the pollution of the seas, the pollution of the air, the destruction of the rainforest, and acid rain, the world will increasingly argue that it needs a federal government that can override national governments in the interests and well-being of the whole. We will only need a few more ecological disasters, and there will come a cry that we must have a world government capable of dealing with world problems on a worldwide scale.
That is where we are. It is such a terrible and almost sickening shock for many Christians to know that what they have believed for years might actually happen.
How interesting is that little part of Isaiah 21 which I quoted last night:
Watchman, what of the night?
Watchman, what of the night?
The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night:
if ye will inquire, inquire ye; turn ye, come.
—Isaiah 21:11-12
First of all, we want to get our eyes on the morning, not the night. We have a morning to look forward to, not a night. We have the day of the Lord to look forward to, not the night that we have to endure. Thank God for that.
But I like the word inquire. So few believers have an understanding of the times in which we live. So few believers will inquire of the Lord in the light of His Word as to what is really happening.
Then we need to turn. A lot of us are involved in the wrong things. Our priorities are not right. We are often looking in the wrong direction, bound up with the wrong priorities. We need to turn, get our priorities right, and move in the direction in which the Lord wants us to move.
Now, let us get back to this matter of spiritual warfare. That is the background for the whole thing. The first thing I want to say tonight about spiritual warfare is this: unless you and I have an essential revelation as to the spiritual nature of this world, we will never see the point of prayer warfare.
There is a kind of idea in Christian circles—now forgive me, you lovely old sisters, but let me just get this over—that prayer is left for old ladies. There is an idea that prayer is not something young fellows get into; that it would be abnormal to see a virile young man, full of life, getting into prayer warfare.
We somehow imagine that prayer warfare is not quite normal. You have to be a mystic, have your head in the clouds, and be a little eccentric. Then you can shut yourself up for hours in prayer.
But actually, we are all called to prayer warfare. Until the men respond to the call, the women can never fully come into their way, because in prayer warfare you have to have men in the forefront as well.
I am not saying that the sisters cannot pray. Please do not get me wrong. But there is a need for all of us to be in this thing together—young and old, men and women.
Why do so few people feel any call to pray? Why do they not feel that prayer is essential? Because they see this world basically as a world of flesh and blood, a world of time and sense. They do not understand that the most essential things in this world are what we cannot see.
The things we cannot see with these eyes, feel with these hands, or hear with these ears are the things that are most important. That is why we have this in the Ephesian letter:
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
—Ephesians 6:12
What are these principalities? You cannot see them. You cannot touch them with these hands, nor hear them with these ears. You can hear Mao Tse-tung, Stalin, Lenin, Ayatollah Khomeini, Colonel Gaddafi, or the New Age movement, and stop there. You may think it is merely flesh and blood, merely some strange cult.
But when we realise that this world is essentially a spiritual world, then we realise that behind Islam is a principality; behind Marxism is a principality—a spirit, a spiritual power. Not merely an “it,” but a person: an angelic force with intelligence, a highly intelligent created and fallen being.
Behind humanism is a principality, a world ruler of this darkness. Behind Satanism, obviously, there is such a power. I could go on and on, but what I am trying to say is this: only when God touches the eyes of our hearts and opens them, and for the first time we see through flesh and blood to what lies behind, do we become intercessors.
The moment you and I understand that this world is a spiritual world, only then do we see that the only way to influence it is by spiritual means.
When people get together and realise that they have a youth work which is as hard as nails—young people come and go, but nothing happens; they do not come on fire for the Lord, they are not filled and anointed with the Holy Spirit—then they begin to ask, “What can we do with the young people?”
They say, “We will have table tennis. We will have swimming parties. We will have tennis, golf, or whatever else.” Thank God for those things, but we can keep the young people only at that level.
If only there were people who could get behind the scenes and deal with the principalities that are holding down that youth work and stopping a breakthrough. The same applies to children. You can teach and teach and teach, and nothing seems to go in.
I was in Sunday school for two years, and in that time I managed not to learn one single thing. I came out not even knowing the Lord’s Prayer. Of course, I had never read the Bible. I had to go because my sister wanted to go, and my mother said, “You have got to take her.”
I thank God for one or two people who spotted this big-eyed, dark-haired boy and his even bigger-eyed, dark-haired sister, and prayed that God would break through and save us. In the end, He did, in the most remarkable way.
Do you see that prayer warfare? Sometimes there is a spirit of division in a company, and it just rumbles on and on: division, contentiousness, and a party spirit. We think, “Oh, there is a problem here. So-and-so has this problem; the other one has that problem.”
Until suddenly we begin to realise: this is a spiritual thing. There is an enemy at work here, and he is seeking to destroy this whole work. We can preach until we are blue in the face, have all our meetings, and sing our songs, but that party spirit will go on until it has destroyed the whole work of testimony unless there are people who learn how to pray through, identify what is destroying the work, and deal with it in the name of the Lord.
This is spiritual warfare.
One of my friends once had a great evangelistic crusade in Finland. He was a very gifted evangelist, truly gifted. They went through the first three days, and not a soul got saved. The heavens were like glass.
They had the choir, the singers, and the preaching of the Word. It was all absolutely right, yet no one got saved. Suddenly, on the fourth night, it occurred to him. He said to his interpreter, “Let us get behind the platform and fall on our knees and ask God to be merciful to us.”
Those two got on their knees behind that platform. I knew both of them; one of them is now with the Lord. As they prayed out of their hearts—not head prayer, but heart prayer—pleading with God for the thousands of people filling that great sports stadium, there was still a heaviness. It was like glass.
They cried, “Lord, You must do something. You must do it.” The Lord said into his heart, “There is a spirit that has come in and has said, ‘Thus far, and no further.’”
In that moment, they shared it with one another and said, “We can, in the name of the Lord, break the power of this thing.” They identified that power in the evangelistic campaign and dealt with it in the name of the Lord.
That night, thousands of people were saved. Every night thereafter, people came to the Lord, and it became a huge work that affected the whole town in Finland. This man became, obviously, an intercessor.
He learned what he used to call the biggest lesson of his life. You can preach and preach, work your hands and fingers to the bone, and nothing happens. But when two people get on their knees, seek the Lord, and the Lord reveals something to them, then—because they are responsible for that situation—they have authority before God to deal with it in the name of the Lord.
How do you explain it? The same people, the same choir, the same singers, the same preacher, the same interpreter, even the same collection. The night before, nothing; then suddenly, a breakthrough. The next night, and the next night, until thousands had found the Lord.
A few minutes of prayer changed the whole situation. It was not merely sentimental prayer. It was war. It was spiritual warfare.
My dear friends, what I am trying to say is this: here it is in Ephesians, but we often look upon it as Grimm’s fairy tales. We say, “Well, that was Paul’s culture. Two thousand years ago, that was their way of thinking. It is all fairy stories—goblins and spirits and all that kind of thing. We do not have those things today in this marvellous modern age in which we live.”
Really? It is our own destruction if we do not see that we have the same powers at work, even more than two thousand years ago, speeding up all their activity because they know their time is short.
Look at 2 Corinthians 10 again:
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh
(for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds),
casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God,
and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
—2 Corinthians 10:3-5
What are these strongholds that are being cast down? What are these fleshless weapons of our warfare, mighty through God—mighty in the presence of God? In other words, they only operate in the actual presence of the Lord.
You cannot take these weapons merely as a technique or a methodology and use them. You can only use them in the power of the Lord’s Person. He has to be directing you, leading you, inspiring you, and covering you.
No one is ever going to get involved in prayer until they see what I am talking about. Never. It is because we do not see these dangers, these spiritual forces, that every work in the history of the church has, in the end, become institutionalised, crystallised, and died.
We are no exception. It will happen to us unless we learn this very simple lesson.
Do you remember that amazing story of the Hebrew prophet Elisha? The king of Syria was so upset because every time he laid an ambush for the Israeli army, somehow they found out and destroyed his commandos.
He called his whole cabinet together and said, “I am not going to let one of you out of this room. I want you to own up. Someone here is spying.” They replied, “No, my lord, O king; but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber.”
The king said, “Who is this prophet Elisha, and how does he come into the picture?” They told him that everything he said in his bedroom, Elisha heard by the Spirit of God.
So the king sent down his elite troops to Dothan, to surround Elisha and bring him in. They came by night and laid siege around the hill where poor Elisha was fast asleep in bed.
Elisha’s servant was a young man. He got up early in the morning to make breakfast. He was cooking whatever they had—it would not have been ham or bacon—and he looked out of the window and saw movement.
He looked out another window, and another, and saw the Syrian army all around. He rushed to the old prophet and cried, “Alas, my master! how shall we do?”
Elisha could have said, “Sit down. I am going to give you a heavy word on spiritual warfare. Do you not understand that the powers in heaven are much more powerful than the king of Syria?” He could have gone through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, and battered the poor man into the ground with a great Bible study.
But he prayed a short prayer:
The Lord, open his eyes, that he may see.
—2 Kings 6:17
That is a short prayer, straight from the heart and to the point: “Lord, open his eyes.” In that moment, the Spirit of the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and suddenly he saw the whole mountainside filled with the hosts and armies of the Lord. They were more than the Syrians.
Do you think they were there before? Do you think that the opening of Elisha’s servant’s eyes changed the situation? Not at all. Those armies of heaven were already in position. Elisha’s servant just could not see them.
That is what happens with so many of us. We just do not see. We do not see the spiritual forces. We neither see the Spirit of the Lord at work nor the spiritual powers of darkness.
If our eyes were opened, then certainly we would understand: this is the Lord’s battle. We cannot fail in this battle. This is the Lord’s battle.
You know the end of the story. Elisha prayed for the Syrians to be smitten with blindness, and they were all blinded. Then he led them down to the king of Israel. It is the most amazing story.
We get into situations that we make far more complicated by our intelligence. We say, “What is happening in the world? What is happening in the fellowship?” Our minds begin to work, and we weigh this up, and then something goes down and we put something else in, then it goes up again, and so we get more and more into a mess.
We do not know how to deal with it. We become depressed, and we wonder why the Lord is not around or why He does not deal with it. Yet a few words of prayer can change the whole situation.
That is what I mean by the essential revelation that is required. Now I would like to go on to a second thing: the divine goal in this battle.
What is the divine goal in this battle? It is good in a war or a battle to know what is the Lord’s end, what is the Lord’s goal. Please listen carefully, because this is so simple that you are going to miss it if you do not listen.
The divine goal in this war is to win it.
It is simple, really, is it not? All God’s aim in this whole war is that it should be won. But let me let you into another secret. The greatest problem in the Lord getting to His end in this war is not the demons, the spiritual forces, the principalities, the powers, the world rulers of darkness, or the hosts of wicked spirits in the heavenly places.
I will tell you immediately who it is: it is you and me. We are unbelievable. Normally, we spend our time shooting in the wrong direction. Very often, we spend our time shooting at one another. We are the Lord’s biggest problem.
The Lord’s goal in this whole war is to win it. Now listen very carefully: the Lord Jesus has already won this battle and sat down at the right hand of God.
This battle is won. You remember when the Lord Jesus said, “Now is the prince of this world cast out.” We sometimes think, “Cast out? He is cast out? What kind of casting out is this?” We see the Kremlin, Islam, humanism, and all the problems we have in our fellowships.
We say, “Where is this enemy cast out?” But the Lord Jesus is not actually fighting. He is seated. He has finished His work.
Let us look at Colossians 2:14-15:
Having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us: and He hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross;
having despoiled the principalities and the powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
I love the meaning of this word in the Greek. An older rendering says that He stripped principalities and powers naked, making a show of them openly and triumphing over them through His cross.
This is a picture of a triumphant hero returning to Rome in the days of the Roman Empire. Behind his chariot came all the kings and lords whom he had taken in battle. They were stripped naked. This was the picture Paul used.
He saw the Lord Jesus as the absolute Victor, with all those principalities and powers chained, as it were, to His chariot. They were finished.
Look also at Hebrews 2:14-15:
Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same;
that through death He might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;
and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
He has brought to nought him who has the power of death. In other words, the Lord Jesus has made the work of Satan absolutely nothing—nought. It does not matter how many times you multiply nought; it ends in nought.
Jesus has won this victory. Think also of Psalm 110:
The Lord saith unto my Lord, Sit thou at My right hand,
Until I make thine enemies thy footstool.
—Psalm 110:1
Throughout the New Testament, that Messianic psalm is applied to the Lord Jesus, fulfilled when He ascended to the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Let us get this clear again. God’s goal in this war is to win it. The Lord Jesus has already won the war and sat down.
It is our job to appropriate the absolute victory of the Lord Jesus and to realise it in earthly situations. But we cannot do it unless we see it.
Once we have seen it with the eyes of our heart, then it is not merely saying, “Lord, be victorious; Lord, be victorious.” Spiritual warfare is when we move in and say, “If the Lord is the Victor, He is Victor in this situation.” We can name the specific situation—the relationship, the problem, whatever it is.
We can say, “Over this problem, Jesus is Lord.” That is declaration. That is proclamation.
Every time you have the Lord’s table, whether you realise it or not, it is such a declaration. You are declaring to all the invisible powers: “Jesus has won the victory.” That is why Satan hates the Lord’s table.
Baptism is exactly the same. It is a declaration that Jesus has won the victory. He put away one whole old creation and brought into being a new creation; He put away the old man and brought into being a new man. Is that not wonderful? It is a proclamation, and the enemy hates it.
Do you begin to understand why Ephesians says that God “made Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all”?
You may say, “Do not be silly. He is not head over all things. You cannot say, if we were living under the Kremlin’s rule, that He is head over the Kremlin.” Oh yes, He is. When the Lord says, “Your time is finished,” the Kremlin will disappear. When the Lord says that Marxism in China is finished, it will be finished. When the Lord finally speaks the word concerning Antichrist, He will slay him with the breath of His mouth.
That is the absolute victory of the Lord Jesus. He has placed all things in subjection under His feet and given Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body.
Where is the body? Between the head and the feet. All things are under His feet, and He is head over all things to the church. Do you begin to understand?
Go back to Ephesians 6:
Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might.
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
—Ephesians 6:10-11
Stand. It does not say, “Fight forward.” It says, “Stand.” Then later it says that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand.
Why does it not say, “Go forward”? Why does it say, “Stand”? Because He has placed all things in subjection under His feet and given Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body.
Stand where? In Him. Withstand in Him. Having done all, stand. Do not leave your position in Him. Do not leave that place of abiding in Him. That is where the victory is.
In that position, declare the will of the Lord. Declare the Word of the Lord. Be specific; do not be general. When God gives you a word concerning a specific situation, use it.
Listen to this word again:
And withal taking up the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one.
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
with all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit.
—Ephesians 6:16-18
We know that this book is authored by the Holy Spirit. I believe that with all my heart. This is objective truth, even if I do not understand it all. It is inspired, accurate, and the operative Word of God.
But please understand me: you cannot simply throw the Bible at the devil. Some Christians think all they have to do is find a verse and hold it at the enemy. My dear friend, the Holy Spirit has to take this book and make a passage, a promise, or a statement living to you in connection with a particular situation, until you know, “This is the Word of the Lord.”
How often I have seen people healed, and others not healed. In my experience, those who were not healed often had much emotion, noise, and hullabaloo. But in every case where the Lord has sent forth His Word, He healed.
He sent His word, and healed them,
And delivered them from their destructions.
—Psalm 107:20
When the Lord speaks an actual word to an actual person, there is power within it to fulfil the purpose of God in that life. No Word of the Lord ever falls to the ground. No Word of the Lord is void of power.
So shall My word be that goeth forth out of My mouth:
it shall not return unto Me void,
but it shall accomplish that which I please,
and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
—Isaiah 55:11
Therefore, you and I have got to get to know our Bibles. We have to memorise our Bibles and study our Bibles, because then the Holy Spirit has so much more material to use.
As you are on your knees, He can bring into your heart a word which is there. You may not have read it for weeks, but in your memory the Spirit brings back the Word of the Lord. In that moment, you know, “This is the word.” When you share it with others, they know it as well. Now you have the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.
This is the only offensive weapon mentioned in Ephesians 6. Everything else is defensive. This sword of the Spirit is the short Greek sword used for finishing off the enemy. It is not very nice to talk about, but it was the weapon used to finish the battle.
My dear friends, if only we could learn how to fight this fight of faith and deal with these principalities and powers, some of your family situations would change overnight. Some of the problems with your children would begin to yield. Some problems in our fellowships would yield before the power of God.
Business situations, family situations, personal situations, fellowship situations—even sometimes national situations—will yield before such prayer once God leads us in the right way.
When the head has gone over the line, the tail has won. We may be two thousand years behind our Lord’s ascension. We may be truly the tail, right in the very last days of the last part of the age, but we have won because the Head has already sat down, and we are the body of our Lord Jesus.
We have to learn that in some situations we must inquire of the Lord. We cannot just rush in. This is what often happens in Pentecostal or charismatic meetings—please forgive me; I have the greatest love for charismatics and Pentecostals. But sometimes, a few minutes into the meeting, everyone is on their feet, binding the enemy.
I sometimes feel there is a cackle from hell: “Oh dear, you think you bound me.” If the enemy were bound and there were a great breakthrough, I would be thrilled. But often it does not happen. The heaviness remains just as great.
We are called to resist the devil, and he will flee from us. But you cannot simply jump into a battle and fire your gun in all directions. You have a Commander-in-Chief, and you have to be absolutely subject to Him.
If He says, “Lie low,” then lie low. If He says, “Keep your head down,” keep your head down. Get your gun ready, but do not fire yet. Then, when He says, “Fire,” you fire—not in the opposite direction, but where He tells you to fire.
It is all so sensible, is it not? Yet in our prayer meetings we are firing all over the place. Everyone is shooting in every direction, and sometimes we take potshots at one another in the meantime. Then we wonder why we have spent an hour in prayer and nothing seems to have happened.
We do not seem to understand that we have a Commander: the Lord of hosts, the Lord of the armies. He expects us to keep our eye on Him. He expects us to listen for His command.
That is why we first need to inquire of the Lord: “Lord, what is Your strategy? What is Your explanation of this problem that we are facing? Give it to us.”
This is what a true word of knowledge is about: when God reveals to us the facts of a situation. A true word of wisdom is when we are shown what to do with those facts—how to handle them.
When God reveals something for the first time, there comes into your heart a strange sense: “The Lord is going to do this.” He gives you the Word of the Lord, and then with that Word we can touch a situation, and something really happens to it.
My dear friends, I think that is enough for tonight. I will end on this point. When it comes to this kind of prayer—not every kind of prayer, but this aspect of prayer—it is a spiritual military operation.
You have to run it like that. It has to be operated like that. It needs every one of us who is a soldier to be absolutely subject to our Commander.
It is very simple, but we are such an ill-disciplined lot. We find it difficult. We have problems with seeing, problems with hearing, and problems with moving. We have spiritual eye problems, spiritual hearing problems, spiritual arthritis, and spiritual rheumatism. It is quite unbelievable.
That is where we need the Lord’s healing—in all these areas—so that we can move.
We will say more tomorrow about some of the practical things, but I want to tell one more story that may bring it home. Some of you will have heard this, but I think it is the best way I can bring it home.
I was brought up in a company, when I was first saved, that really had zeal and fervency. That is a good thing in prayer. They prayed from the heart, but it was all over the place. We fired our ammunition in every direction spiritually, you can imagine.
Someone would conduct us on one of these world tours, from country to country around the world. Someone else would lump every single item that had been mentioned into one long ten-minute prayer, exhausting every possibility. It was quite something.
Then I went to Egypt. On one occasion, I became ill, which I believe was of the Lord. During my recovery, missionaries in Ismailia said that I should go to Port Said, where there were two old missionaries. I had already heard about them.
They gave me a lecture. “These missionaries are two women who have served God for years, and you must not shock them. You must be very good, because they will straighten you out the moment you open your mouth.”
So I went to stay with these two amazing old ladies. They were retired missionaries, but they said that missionaries do not retire. They remained in fellowship with the Lord’s people and were associated with T. Austin-Sparks.
I began to see the most amazing thing. One of them, whom I called Auntie Kathleen, would answer the phone and listen carefully to news from various places. She would say, “What is the situation? I have a pencil and paper here. Tell me.” Then she would take it down and say, “Alex and I will pray about it.”
There would be another phone call, perhaps from Algiers, concerning something else. Then letters would come. At the breakfast table, they did not discuss everything, but I could gather that there were situations in various places which they were carrying before the Lord.
On one occasion, there was a phone call concerning a situation in Aswan. They said, “Now we are going to go to the Lord, and we are going to ask Him how He would have us pray.”
Those two got on their knees, and I got on my knees. I heard them begin by praising the Lord. Then they asked, “Lord, how do we pray for this?” They rustled in their Bibles. These women were unbelievable—like walking Bibles. They knew the most obscure verses in Obadiah and Nahum.
Suddenly one would find a verse and say, “Look at this, Alex. I think this is the Lord’s Word.” She would quote it, and Alex would say, “Praise the Lord, that is it.”
Then they prayed. To me, as an eighteen-year-old boy, it was like two people operating a great gun with helmets on. They swung the gun round and began to fire in the direction of the enemy. Then they would stop, and one would ask the other, “Do you think there is more?” The other would say, “Not yet.” Then they would go on again.
Finally, they were both praising the Lord. I learned more with those two old sisters than I had learned in years in any other prayer meeting.
I had already thought it was a duty to go to the prayer meeting because I was in a company of believers that believed prayer was a priority. The pastor used to say, “You can go anywhere else, but keep Monday evenings clear because that is the prayer meeting. That is the most important meeting in the life of this fellowship.”
But it was still ineffective. There in Port Said, I learned that this world is a spiritual world.
I am not saying that everything those two marvellous sisters prayed for happened immediately. There were some things they prayed for for years that did not happen in their lifetime. They are both in the presence of the Lord now.
But there are things I have seen answered—prayers they prayed in Port Said thirty years ago or more. I am seeing them today fulfilled in Israel, for they prayed very much for the different towns and cities of Israel.
What I learned from those two was that this world is a spiritual world, and that if you will only put yourself under the leadership of the Commander, then you can go into this battle and actually see things happen.
May the Lord help us to learn something of these lessons, because I believe it could transform so much in the life of any company of God’s people.
I travel all over the world, and one of my greatest joys is sometimes to be with servants of God on the front line—in places like Borneo, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand—where you are really up against occult forces and spiritual powers.
One of the most wonderful things is to find servants of God who have learned how to be together and how to pray things through.
May the Lord help us. I do not have to remind you that Margaret Barber spent a large portion of her life in prayer ministry with another sister, and out of it came that whole work connected with Watchman Nee.
I do not have to tell you that old Miss Cowman in India, with another sister, spent a large portion of her life in prayer in India, and out of it came that work connected with Brother Bakht Singh throughout India.
This is not a fairy story. This brings us to the very heart of everything in the work of the Lord.
If you and I could understand it, we would hear again the words of the apostle Paul:
Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.
—2 Timothy 2:3
Lord, we want to commit ourselves to You because we need You, Lord. We need the eyes of our hearts opened, so that for the first time we understand. We know these things; we do not merely know about them. We know them. We know You.
Lord, I can only pray that prayer of Elisha: open the eyes of every one of my brothers and sisters in this place this evening. Open their eyes, Lord, to see that You are with us.
Lord, we commit this to You in prayer with thanksgiving, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.