Christ reigns over all. For this purpose, Christ was revealed: to destroy the works of the evil one.
Now, we know that when Jesus was born, an angel appeared to the shepherds—a story a lot of people are familiar with at this time of year. The angel appeared to the shepherds and said:
I bring you news of great joy.
Unto you a Savior is born in Bethlehem.
Great news. But, you know, the world did not see it as great news. Remember when the wise men came to Jerusalem searching for the young child, the Babe? They went to Herod and said, “Where is He that is born King of the Jews?”
Herod was standing there representing the king of the Jews. He had been appointed by the Roman government as king over the Jews. He was an Edomite—not truly Jewish—but he claimed it. He was greatly threatened by that news, as were all the scribes and Pharisees whom he gathered with him to determine where this King of the Jews was to be born. Of course, they said, “In Bethlehem.”
So the world was not exactly excited about our Lord Jesus being revealed. There is no contradiction in these verses: there is great news of joy—He has come as our Savior—but, brothers and sisters, as has been said, He has also come for the purpose of destroying the works of the enemy, the evil one.
There is no way that He could have been your Savior, or be your Savior, unless He had destroyed the works of the evil one. That great epic battle on Calvary’s cross resulted in putting our enemy—His enemy, Satan—to open shame. It says He went into the depths of hell and took the keys of hell and death in great triumph over the enemy and all his forces.
Our Lord Jesus, it seems, was always in a battle. Even from His birth, Herod sent out his army to Bethlehem to try to find Jesus, even as an infant, a young Babe—certainly under two years old—and destroy Him. But the angel of the Lord came and warned Joseph that they needed to flee, and Herod was unable to achieve his purpose of killing Jesus.
When the enemy thought he had our Lord Jesus at Calvary, he discovered that in our Lord’s death there was triumph over all of the enemy’s works.
Brothers and sisters, remember our Lord Jesus when He was baptized and came out into His public ministry. He was immediately taken into the desert in a state of great weakness, and He had to face the adversary there in the desert.
The whole issue seemed to be that Satan wanted Jesus Christ to act on His own, without going to the Father, without receiving orders from the Father—to act in His own self to accomplish various things. Even the kingdoms of the world were offered to Him. But, of course, the kingdoms of the world are really not the enemy’s. He is just the adversary who has decided to squat on the earth—to be a squatter.
Well, that being said, I think y’all may remember that I have had two previous messages on this matter of warfare. My burden, brothers and sisters, comes from Ezekiel.
You remember Ezekiel was carried up on the mountain, and he looked down over the valley. What did he see? He saw a valley full of dry bones baking in the sun—the remains of a mighty army that had been destroyed. It appeared that there was no fight there, no fighting warriors left.
But Ezekiel spoke the word of God, and as he began to speak the word of God, the bones began to move. Flesh came upon the bones. Ezekiel prophesied to the wind and said, “Wind, come down into this valley.” The wind came, and the soldiers became awakened once again. The Spirit of God entered them, and they arose a mighty army.
That is the burden: that in this last hour, Jesus would raise up that mighty instrument—the instrument that will precipitate, brothers and sisters, a mighty war in the heavenlies, where Satan and his angels will be cast out of the heavenlies onto this earth. And woe to the earth, it says. These are the last days. It is a great epic battle that will occur.
The church has very much to do with it. The Lord needs His army. It is referred to as the overcomers in Revelation 12.
So that is the burden, brothers and sisters, in this last hour: that the Lord will raise up these feeble bones of ours that may have been dissuaded in the battle of life, in the warfare that we have experienced, in the wearing out of the saints, and in the attacks of the evil one on us individually and on the church corporately.
May He raise up that instrument by which He can precipitate this great battle in the heavenlies and clear the heavenlies of Satan and his forces. Well, that is the burden.
The first two messages were basically to awaken us to the spiritual realm. There is a spiritual realm—the heavenlies—with a lot of activity going on. In fact, the activity in the heavenlies determines what will happen on earth.
We need to be awakened to the fact that there is real spiritual warfare occurring, and that we are all involved in it. As soon as you are born in Jesus Christ, you are brought into this warfare, brothers and sisters, whether you realize it or not.
There is a great cosmic conflict going on between two great kingdoms. One kingdom is the kingdom of darkness and death, headed up by Satan. The other is the kingdom of light and life, headed up by our Lord Jesus Christ.
Brothers and sisters, when you accept Jesus Christ, your eyes are opened. The lord of darkness can no longer blind you, because your eyes have been opened by the Lord Himself. He translates you out of the kingdom of darkness, which you were living in and probably did not know it, and brings you into the kingdom of light—the kingdom of the Son of His glory.
That is the kingdom that we are in today. That is the kingdom that we need to be concerned about in our lives, that the Lord may have His full eternal purpose accomplished. We are all vessels. We are called to a heavenly calling, brothers and sisters, not just a life of trying to please ourselves.
The church is greatly involved in this battle. The church is the eternal, chosen instrument and vessel through which the absolute sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ is to be manifested and administered: the absolute authority and kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the absolute victory accomplished at Calvary’s cross.
That is the purpose of the church. Once we were blinded under the prince of the power of the air. Scripture is very clear on that. But we have been translated into His kingdom.
We have been sharing on this matter of spiritual warfare. In the beginning, it was just to show us that we have been translated out of one kingdom and brought into another, and that there is great warfare because of it. Secondly, we shared on the nature of the kingdom and the nature of the warfare, as Satan was expelled from the glorious eternal throne to the air around the earth.
What I have come to this morning is one of the great principles of warfare. Who was that Chinese guy—Sun Tzu? Is that right? He was the one who wrote this book on warfare. Anyway, one of the great principles is to know your enemy.
This morning, I want to talk a little bit about that—not to really focus on the enemy. Our whole lives cannot be focused on him. They are to be focused on our Lord Jesus Christ. But we need to be aware of our enemy.
Just some Scriptures. 2 Corinthians 11:14 says:
For Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
And 2 Corinthians 11:3 says:
But I fear, by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his craftiness, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
Another verse says to bring every thought into captivity. Brothers and sisters, last time we shared about Eve, the garden, and the fall in the garden. It started with just a simple thought of the enemy that he put into Eve’s mind:
Hath God said, Ye shall not eat of the fruit of the trees?
Of course, she said no. She tried to correct him, and she took the bait. She took the bait, and she started debating with the enemy. The enemy finally convinced her that the Lord was holding back something from her—that He really did not want her to be like Him.
She could be like God by disobeying God and taking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That seems contradictory, but she was deceived into thinking that she was really doing good.
Think about that. She actually became convinced that she was doing the right thing under God’s headship. He just twisted some words. Beware of twisted words, brothers and sisters.
The enemy can put these little thoughts into your mind: “Does God really love me? Is there really a God? My life does not seem to be too great right now. Where is this God, this all-loving God?”
All these little thoughts that the enemy puts into your mind are intended to distract you and draw you away from God Himself. More importantly, they are intended to get you to disobey God and become rebellious.
The enemy was able to do that with Eve. We remember that Eve went to Adam, and she convinced Adam that he needed to take of the forbidden fruit.
Now, the word of God is very clear. I think it is in James that it says Adam was not deceived. He loved Eve so much that he could not let go of her. He knew that he would have to do that because she had rebelled against God.
If he obeyed God and did not take of the fruit, he would lose Eve. He just could not handle it. His soul was more tied to her than to the Lord.
He kept Eve, but he lost the dominion that he had on this earth. Remember, I shared that God had given Adam dominion over this earth. That was his charge. But when he sinned and fell and purposely disobeyed God in a rebellious spirit, brothers and sisters, the dominion that God had given him was taken from him by Satan.
Satan stole it. He did not have a right to it, but he took it. We know that it took Jesus Christ coming to regain that dominion. Brothers and sisters, this is what is at stake.
Our enemy is so deceptive. Even the most spiritual of men through the years—if you read church history—have sometimes been deceived. Do not think that any of us is beyond deception, because he is very, very shrewd.
This thing in Corinthians has been on my heart: that he beguiled Eve through craftiness, so that your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. Paul was concerned that just as Eve had been deceived, we might be deceived by that same craftiness—that our minds might be deceived.
That is where I am going, brothers and sisters. This gets very practical in our personal lives and in our church life. Through the years, on numerous occasions, I have had a brother or sister come to me and say, “Jerry, are you mad at me?”
Now, I tell you, it is very unusual for me to get mad, and I am thankful for that. I look at them and say, “What in the world are you talking about? I am not mad at you.”
They say, “Well, the other day you passed right by me and you did not even look at me.”
Brothers and sisters, we just take that as an everyday occurrence, do we not? Just natural. It is not always natural. It is the enemy trying to divide us. He puts that little thought in your mind that Jerry does not like you.
Or maybe I go by somebody who is in deep need that morning. Something is going on in their heart, but I do not recognize it. I do not say anything, and they come up to me and say, “Jerry, do you really care about me? You have not said anything to me lately.”
Brothers and sisters, we have to be so careful in the body of Christ. These little thoughts are often put into our minds by the enemy. He uses our self-centeredness and our self-consciousness against us.
You know, at the Lord’s Table, the enemy says to you—I guarantee he does—“You are not worthy to say anything this morning. You are not worthy to open your mouth in praise to the Lord. Dare you.”
Every one of us has had those kinds of thoughts. Brothers and sisters, they are from the enemy. We need to recognize that. How limited our worship often is because the enemy has put these kinds of thoughts in our minds.
“Well, I do not feel like I am old enough, or spiritual enough,” or whatever it may be. Well, brothers and sisters, I confess: almost every Lord’s Table, I try to worship the Lord, because how can we not open our mouths?
That is just me. But I also understand that some of us are very reserved and do not tend to say much, and that is okay. But, brothers and sisters, how can we go for months and years and never offer up praise?
I am not trying to condemn anybody. I am just trying to say, do not stay under the weight of the enemy’s accusations and the thoughts that he puts into our minds. We need to be set free. The Lord Jesus came to set the prisoner free.
Do not be imprisoned by your thoughts, particularly thoughts that tend to divide us from other brothers and sisters.
We need to be careful. One of the real dangers we have in thinking about this is that it is easier for us to see one another’s faults than it is to see one another’s goodness—to see the life of the Lord in one another.
It is just easy to pick up on the faults. I think it is because we are so faulty ourselves. I do not know, but it seems that way.
Over the years, there have been a few saints who just could not enter in, because when they looked around, all they could see was, “This person—I know that person. I know what they are like.”
It happens, brothers and sisters. The enemy does not want us to fellowship. He does not want us to worship corporately. He does not want us to pray corporately. He is on the attack.
We cannot let every thought just run through our minds, because sometimes they stick. That is why we need to bring our thoughts under subjection. When we get thoughts that we know are not of the Lord, we need to actually reject them.
I do that. “Well, I know that is not a right thought. I reject it.” Do not let it stick. It will come up again—guaranteed.
He comes as an angel of light. That is the way he is. It is not like he is coming and saying, “Hey, look, I am Satan.” He is not going to do that.
He is going to come and say, “Look, you know…” I could not help but think about this one. A brother or sister comes up to me and says, “Jerry, wasn’t that sharing last week by Brother So-and-So so good, so great?”
What do you hear? What do I hear? I could say, “Yeah, praise the Lord. That was great.” Or the enemy comes in and says, “You know what she is really trying to tell you? She is trying to tell you she does not like your ministry. That is what she is trying to tell you. And really, you are not that good, and you should not be sharing.”
Do not think those thoughts do not come, because they do. But you cannot let them stick. Something is said to us, and we interpret it totally differently from what the person intends. It happens, brothers and sisters. Be cautious.
Be aware that your enemy comes as an angel of light. He may even convince you that your thought is from the Lord. He comes as an angel of light and tries to corrupt our thinking.
Also, in coming as an angel of light, he comes hidden most of the time. You go to work and think your real problem is your boss—that he is just unreasonable. Sometimes they are. But Kenny is not here today, so I cannot say that of my brother at all. Not at all, really.
But that happens in our lives. I know I have had some bosses that way—very unreasonable, wanting to change everything that I thought was being done the right way. These are routine things that happen in our lives.
It could be, brothers and sisters, a sickness that you have. You think, “Boy, if I just did not have this sickness, I would be okay.” All I am saying is that the enemy often hides behind these things to get you away from believing and trusting in the Lord.
Even in our sicknesses, we have to trust and believe in Him. We can even challenge some of these things. I have had some interesting experiences in preparing these lessons.
One morning, I woke up intending to get into the Word and prepare what I was going to share, and I just felt sick. The thought came to me, “Is this real?”
I said, “The word of God says, ‘Test the spirits,’ does it not? Not all spirits are from the Lord.” So I said, “Okay, Lord, if this is a real sickness I have this morning, I will take Your grace. But, Lord, if it is not, I am just not going to accept it.”
Within ten minutes, it was gone. You just cannot accept everything. Now, there are natural sicknesses. If you stay out in the cold air and wind, most likely you are going to get the sniffles. If you stay out in the sun too long, you might get sunburned. If you overeat, you are going to get heartburn.
So I am saying that not everything that happens to you is the enemy. But neither can you just accept things naturally in your lives.
Okay, I need to go on. 1 Peter 5:8 says that he is your adversary, and he comes as a roaring lion, seeking to devour you. Then it goes on to say we need to steadfastly resist him.
Sometimes, brothers and sisters, he does come out there roaring at you. What does a roaring lion do? If you face a roaring lion—even a fierce-looking dog barking at you—it makes you fearful, does it not?
That is his purpose as a roaring lion: to make you fearful, to put fear into your heart. Brothers and sisters, one of the most devastating forces that the enemy has is this matter of fear.
There is outright fear that grips you sometimes from facing the roaring lion. There are other fears that he puts in your heart that you have to deal with—the fear of man. That is a real issue for many Christians. They cannot do what the Lord asks because they are afraid somebody is going to get upset.
But we are told that we do not have to conquer the roaring lion. We only have to resist him. The Lord has conquered. So we can resist him in the name of the Lord, in the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
—James 4:7
His motive as a roaring lion is to get you to back off. He does not want you to come and pray. He does not want you to come and worship. He does not want you to enter into fellowship with your brothers and sisters. He wants to back you off.
If he can do it by putting some kind of fear in your heart—some kind of thought that if you do this, you are going to experience all kinds of problems and trouble—he wants you to back off. He wants to capture you, to keep you imprisoned in his cell through your mind. He wants to control you.
He comes as a fierce, roaring lion. Paul had to speak to Timothy. Timothy was a timid person, very reserved, not one wanting to be out front in any way. But he was encouraged to war a good warfare.
He said, “You have got to get in the battle, Timothy. You have to be a part of it. You have to be a good soldier. You cannot back down.”
The other thing that happens to us is that we become passive. After we get wounded a couple of times in fellowship—maybe through a misunderstanding, somehow you are offended and wounded—instead of dealing with the wound, you stay wounded and become passive. You just back off and say, “I am not going to go through that again.”
It happens, does it not? It happens to all of us. But these are the works of the enemy. He comes as a roaring lion.
2 Corinthians 4:4 says he is the god of this world. He comes as the god of this world. He controls it. If you do not believe me, think about our educational system.
Unfortunately, I know there are good teachers out there. We have some in our midst who really want to share the subject with the children. But unfortunately, education is now being used not so much to teach our children as to indoctrinate them—into the way the government believes, not the way we believe.
Brothers and sisters, the government says it is okay for men to marry men and women to marry women. If you do not believe it, you are called prejudiced and evil yourself. The government is now calling evil things good and good things evil. Even our judicial system is backing it up.
The Lord has told us that in the world we would be persecuted—some cast into prison, and some even killed—because you stand for the truth and for the Lord’s will. Brothers and sisters, he is the god of this world.
That is why, in 1 John 2:15, we are told not to love the world. A couple of the greatest weapons he has in this world are pleasure and pain. We all enjoy pleasure, and we do not like pain.
The world offers you pleasure for a while that unfortunately ends up in great pain, because it takes you away from the Lord. It takes you out of God’s economy. It takes you away from doing the will of the Lord and serving Him instead of yourself.
We think we can please ourselves by partaking of the pleasures of the world. Brothers and sisters, it is only temporary. It is like a drug that you take: it makes you feel good for a while, but it also captures your soul. That is what drugs do.
The material world—he is the god of it, and he uses it against us. In Revelation 12:10, we find that he is the accuser of the brethren. One of the greatest weapons he has is accusation. He accuses us before God even.
God has to listen to all those accusations. He accuses us. Brothers and sisters, I hope I can clarify this, because I believe a lot of saints get imprisoned through the accusations of the enemy. They get weighed down through his accusations. They get bound by them, and they cannot get free.
Part of what he accuses us of is real. We know it. We know we are sinners. He has that little something in us—that ground in us—and when he accuses us, you cannot always deny it.
Brothers and sisters, you have had some sins this week, and you just feel like you cannot gather with the saints. That happens, right? When you are out of fellowship with the Lord, you do not want to be here. I know that personally.
That is the trap. “Jerry, how could you even go and be among the saints? Look at yourself.” Well, what does the word of God tell us to do? It says to confess your sins, and the Lord is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
In other words, the accusations can be dealt with. When we repent before the Lord and say, “Lord, I trust in Your forgiveness. Your word says that if I come and confess it, it is done,” the Lord forgives.
Now, I know the Lord may still discipline us sometimes to keep us from doing it again. But the bottom line is that He forgives you. That weight of accusation should be gone.
But the enemy does not care. Even if you confess it to the Lord and get clear before the Lord, he comes right back and says, “You have got to be kidding me. You did this thing.”
Unless you have faith in the work of Christ on Calvary’s cross—unless you believe what the Lord has said is true, that if you come before Him and confess your sin, He is faithful and just to forgive you—he has you tied up.
Think of it this way: accusation is to keep you under. Accusation is to imprison you. Accusation is to stop you from following the Lord. Conviction of the Holy Spirit is so that you might repent, confess your sins, and be set free from accusation.
Oftentimes, we can be in prison because of what we have done. We are uncomfortable, and we go to the Lord and say, “Lord, forgive me.” The jail cell is unlocked at that point, but you still have to go out. Some remain prisoners because of the accusation.
Brothers and sisters, this is our adversary. This is the way he works.
1 Peter 5:8 says he is your adversary—your personal adversary, brothers and sisters. Before you accepted Christ, I know you had troubles and problems in life, but the enemy did not really care. He already had you under his control.
But once you accept Jesus Christ, he takes notice. If you begin to follow the Lord, he really takes notice. If you consecrate yourself to the Lord, to serve Him and His purpose, he begins to get angry and he begins to come after you.
Brothers and sisters, this is why he is so fierce with some of us—with you. I do not want you to back off because he is fierce.
You have become part of the Bride. You have become part of that warrior instrument that, in the end, will precipitate his downfall from the heavenlies. He is not prepared to let that happen to you in your life.
If you start thinking, “I need to function in the church. I need to be there praying with the saints. I need to be there at the Table. I need to be worshiping the Lord. I need to be in the word of God. I need to be before His throne, just with Him,” then the fierceness of the enemy will come against you.
He hates Christ. But Christ is the Head, and he cannot touch the Head anymore. We are the body, the living body of Jesus Christ. So the way he gets at Christ now is through the body. He comes after the body. He comes after you and me to try to destroy us.
Think about trying to become a living stone in the house of God. Stones that we see in the field are very dead, without life, but we are living stones. If you are going on with the Lord, you have to be built together. That is what those stones are for—to be built together as living stones. The enemy does not want that.
What does the psalmist say?
This is My rest for ever:
Here will I dwell.
Brothers and sisters, the house of God is being built without hands—spiritual, living stones. That is what we are. If you want to stay out in the field by yourself and become a trophy, it is not going to work.
The Lord is not going to have a trophy room in heaven. He is going to have His temple built out of living stones. Dedicate yourself to that, and the enemy will come after you.
Excuse me. He is your adversary. Never forget it.
In Ephesians 2, it says he is the prince of the power of the air. He resides in the atmosphere with his spiritual forces of evil around this earth, and he influences everything that goes on down here. He is the lord of darkness.
In Ephesians 6:12, it says that our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers of darkness, powers, and principalities of darkness over the nations.
Remember Daniel? Let us look at Daniel 10 real quick. Daniel 10, verse 2:
In those days I Daniel was mourning three full weeks.
Then Daniel 10:12-13. A heavenly messenger comes to Daniel and says:
Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.
But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.
Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days: for yet the vision is for many days.
In other words, Daniel was greatly concerned about the people of God and what was going to happen. This messenger, as soon as he heard Daniel’s prayer, started to come to him to give him the answer. But he was withheld by the prince of darkness over the nation of Persia—the Persian nation. That is Iran today, by the way.
Finally, Michael the archangel came and assisted him, and he was able to get away and bring the message to Daniel.
The thing I want to say is that there are powers of darkness working in the heavenlies. Brothers and sisters, look at the response to prayer here.
Daniel had a sincere prayer before the Lord. He was burdened about the people of God. He was burdened that they were in captivity and under the control of the Persian government at that time—slaves. He was burdened about where the Lord’s testimony was.
So he began praying, and it affected something in the heavenlies. The messenger heard his prayer. As soon as he heard it, he began to come to let Daniel know the answer, but Daniel did not receive it for twenty-one days.
But this I will say: Daniel persisted until he got the answer. That is how important prayer is in God’s way of working, brothers and sisters. He has to have a praying church, a praying people.
He waits for a praying people. Then He acts. He moves. Why God has decided to do it this way, I do not know, but that is His way. He has brought us into all of His work.
Except for the work of redemption on Calvary’s cross, of course, which we could have no part in. But as far as the work of God and serving the Lord, brothers and sisters, I think Brother Sparks said it very well: “You can give all the greatest messages in the world, but if you are not praying, if you are not standing, not much is going to happen.”
That is what he said, and I believe that. The power of prayer. The princes of darkness are real. They are real dark forces working against you and the prayers that you offer up.
I would like to share a personal experience. It is always a bit dangerous, but it is a matter of spiritual warfare. The best examples I know are the ones I have been through.
I have shared this before, but I felt compelled to share it again—to open our eyes, brothers and sisters, to the immensity of the battle we are in and what we are up against.
Back in 1972 and 1973, I had just begun meeting with a few brothers and sisters—very few. My brother Stephen was coming down once a month at that time, and he would share Friday night, Saturday morning, and Saturday night, I think.
That was when I first came across these words: the eternal purpose of God. It was the first time I was made alive to the fact that I am a part of the living body of Jesus Christ. It was not an organization, which I was used to working in. It was the organic body of the living Lord Jesus Christ, intimately connected with the Head—alive and real.
That really blew my mind. It was amazing. The Lord opened that up to me because I had been struggling with that issue. For a pretty good period of time—maybe as much as a year—I had been saying, “Lord, what is the church? What is it?”
I am sure that question came from Him, because nobody else had been asking that question. Then I heard that message, and I said, “Now I know. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah.”
Then I discovered that what I was doing, what I was in, really was not what the Lord’s heart was after. He wanted us to be a living body to Him.
That was the revelation beginning in me: that I was called to be a living stone—not just a participant, not just the guy who sat in the pew, but a living stone, a part of what He was doing.
I became familiar with the term the priesthood of all believers. It was not just the people who had gone to college and gotten their degrees who could speak the word of God. We are all priests to God. We can all hear from the Lord, receive from the Lord, and serve the Lord.
The priesthood of all believers was not left just in the hands of a few. That was an amazing, eye-opening event, brothers and sisters.
I found out that the Lord was looking for this house to dwell in. I started putting some of these pieces together. It was an amazing time for me.
Like David—and I am not like David—but like David, I really did desire, “Lord, I want You to have this. I want You to have Your house. I want You to have Your Bride.”
It is not just going to happen out of vapor, out of thin air. Something has to happen, and it involves me for You to have what You want. It involves me and other brothers and sisters—a habitation for the Lord.
I wanted to dwell in that house, as He has encouraged us to, in order to behold the beauty of the Lord.
As an individual Christian, there is no doubt that you can have great experiences with the Lord. But if you really want your eyes opened to the beauty of the Lord, you have to be in fellowship with brothers. You have to be built together.
The Lord is immense. No one person can possibly take in all that the Lord is. It takes us all together—Christians through all the centuries, and the Old Testament saints—to even begin to magnify something of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the heavenly Jerusalem.
These were the things that I was seeing, and I came under tremendous attack.
In the very beginning, when the Lord showed me the importance of prayer and corporate prayer, every Wednesday night I would get sick and nauseated. But as soon as I crossed the bridge, it would leave. That was a little battle going on that involved my physical body.
But something tremendous happened at the death of my mother-in-law. I called her my spiritual mother. She was the one the Lord used to begin opening my eyes to these things.
She had only seen a glimpse of it herself in reading The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee. She shared that with me. Even though she had not seen much, she had seen enough, and she left that legacy with me. I am thankful for it.
She was precious to me, and she passed away unexpectedly at the age of fifty after an operation that was serious but not considered life-threatening. She just passed away at fifty. That threw me—honestly, it threw me.
But something happened. A spirit of fear came over me—a spirit of fear. I want you to know, I am not talking about just being scared of something. I am talking about the force of fear. It is a spiritual force.
Fear is a spiritual force that can grip you and grip your soul. Brothers and sisters, it did me. It gripped me mentally and emotionally. I seemed to be paralyzed at times.
Everything could be peaceful and fine. It did not matter where I was or what the circumstances were. All of a sudden, this wave of fear would hit me. I could not resist it. It would take me down.
I have shared this before. You know those people in the tsunami? What was it—140,000 died? All of a sudden, they saw the waters recede and did not understand what was going on. Then suddenly, this mighty wave came and swept everything away.
That is the way it would do me. I thought I was losing my mind. I really did. I thought I was mentally crushed, mentally off the rails.
One afternoon, about fifteen minutes until five, my boss came to me at work. I was working for the City of Richmond in the engineering department. He said, “Jerry, the director wants to talk about this project we have been working on, and I would like to have you with me. Can you stay?”
I said, “Certainly I can stay.” I went back to my desk, got my things together, and left.
The next morning he was furious. He said, “What has happened to you? What are you doing? I came and asked you to stay and help me with this, and you just left.”
I had no explanation for him other than, “I forgot.” That is pretty poor, is it not? Your boss comes to you, and as soon as I turned away from him, the thought of staying was gone.
That is when I realized I was in great danger. I was in danger of truly losing my mind.
It woke me up, though. I said, “Lord, I do not know what is going on, but I am not going to make it.” I remember laying in bed, literally crying out to the Lord. I am not a crier, but I was sobbing before the Lord.
I felt hopeless and helpless. This thing had gotten hold of me, and I could not deal with it.
The Lord spoke to me a verse out of the twenty-third Psalm. This is what He said to me. At the time, it was audible—at least, I heard it in here:
He restoreth my soul.
I knew it was my soul that was at stake. He said, “I will restore your soul.” Brothers and sisters, that was like a life jacket being thrown to a drowning man going down for the last time, because that was what I felt like.
I felt like I was drowning. I had taken my last breath, and I was going down. Later in life, my sixteen-year-old son experienced something similar. He got caught in a riptide.
I said, “Son, what were you thinking?” He said, “Dad, I struggled and struggled. Finally, I said, ‘This is it. I cannot fight anymore. I am just going.’ I went down for the last time, and at that time a lifeguard grabbed my hand.”
That is the way this felt to me—like I was being pulled out of death.
“He restoreth my soul.” Brothers and sisters, that was a shaft of light. It was hope that I needed. The Lord gave me that hope with that personal word: “I will restore your soul.”
I believed Him. I believed He was going to restore my soul. That was my hope.
I came into possession of the book War on the Saints. I have no idea to this day how that book came into my possession. But I saw it—War on the Saints—and I said, “That is it. Warfare.” It is by Jessie Penn-Lewis, by the way.
As I read the book, I discovered that Satan was out to destroy me—body, soul, and spirit. He wanted to take my soul down. He wanted to take me out totally so that I could be totally ineffective in the purpose of God and totally ineffective in sharing the Lord.
This assault was much different from any assault of the enemy I had ever experienced. It was tremendous—a direct assault on my soul and my mental capacity.
That is what the Lord used to open my eyes to the real spiritual battle, brothers and sisters. It was not just resistance from the enemy. His thought was to totally destroy me.
Not because I was any great saint—I can tell you that. I still am not. But I do know there were things in my heart for the Lord and for His purpose. Regardless of how weak I was in carrying them out, the enemy hated it.
He was not going to let me by. He came on to destroy me.
When I read the book, I realized it was a spiritual battle, and that helped me tremendously. I said, “Lord, I am not losing my mind. The enemy is out to destroy me.” That helped me a lot.
I had been looking inward all that time: “What is wrong with me? What is wrong with me?” Then I discovered the enemy was trying to destroy me. It was a spiritual battle, and understanding the nature of that battle really helped me.
Then I saw in Ephesians 6 that it says to stand. That chapter became alive to me:
Having done all, to stand.
I realized that I could not stand in myself. I had been trying to do it, and it was not working. But Ephesians 6:10 says:
Be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might.
It does not say, “Be strong in yourself.” It says, “Be strong in the Lord.” My strength was the Lord, brothers and sisters. He was my strength.
In fact, I learned that He was my shield. It talks about the shield in Ephesians. He was my shield and defender. I could not stand in myself, but I could stand in the Lord.
Have you discovered yet that you are in Christ? There are times when you are not going to feel like it. There are times, brothers and sisters, when you are going to say, “Wow, I do not feel like I am in the Lord.” But you are, and you need to believe it.
You need to stand there in the Lord Jesus Christ. When fear came, I began to declare, “I am in Christ. It is His victory that I stand in, not mine.”
I took the ground of the Lord Jesus Christ. I pleaded the blood of Christ.
Now, I do want to finish. I know it is ten, but I want to finish this because I think it is so important.
The blood of the Lamb became so precious in that time, because when I would plead the blood of Jesus, the enemy would back off. Every time the wave came—and this went on for more than a year—I would stand in the victory of Jesus, and I would plead the blood of Jesus.
I am not talking about throwing spiritual phrases around at the enemy as if I am something. That is pride, and that will defeat you. It must be in humility.
What you are doing is standing in what you believe. Do you believe in the blood of Jesus? Why is the blood of Jesus so powerful against the enemy? Because the blood represents the very nature of Christ—the sinless, perfect nature of the Lord Jesus Christ.
His nature is absolutely sinless. There was no self-centeredness in Christ at all—no corruption, no hint of corruption or defilement in that life. It is a powerful life, and the blood is powerful. There was no blemish or spot there.
So, brothers and sisters, that is what you are putting your faith in when you say, “I am standing in the blood of Christ.” It is not that you are trying to throw a spiritual phrase at the enemy. It is because you believe in the blood of Christ.
I believe in the power in the blood, and I experienced the power in the blood in my life. That is why it is so real, brothers and sisters.
Do you not understand that the enemy has no ground in Christ? Right before He went to the garden, Jesus said:
The prince of the world cometh: and he hath nothing in Me.
There was no ground at all in Christ that the enemy could attack. But we do have that ground. Yet when we are in Christ and stand in Christ, we are standing in His sinless, perfect nature, not our own.
You are standing in Christ, and it is the blood of the Lamb in which there is power that the enemy cannot attack. In fact, he runs from it. I found that he would back off.
There was no corruption and no blemish in our Lord Jesus—none in His blood, in what His blood represents.
Remember the nation of Israel, slaves in Egypt. The Lord said, “I am going to set you free. I am going to destroy every firstborn in Egypt, and they are going to set you free. But your firstborn will die also unless you put the blood over the doorpost.”
When you stand in the blood of Christ, that is really what you are doing. You are saying, “Lord, I believe in that blood. I believe that the angel of death cannot attack me under that blood, and I can be free.”
That is what the power of the blood is. I am not talking about merely throwing out a spiritual verse. It is humbling to come under the power of the blood, brothers and sisters. It should humble us, not make us think we are great in ourselves.
It also represents the life of One truly and totally devoted to God—sinless, but totally devoted to Him and His service: the living Christ.
That is who we take our place in, brothers and sisters.
I am trying to think of that movie. The guy has this metal suit that comes on him—Iron Man. It is kind of like that, like putting on Iron Man.
The actor himself is powerless against some of the forces that come against him until he gets that suit on. That is exactly what the armor of Christ is. It is Christ.
You are standing in Him. You are standing on the ground of the sinless, perfect humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is what our faith is in, brothers and sisters.
I learned James 4:7:
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Having done all, stand. Stand and withstand, and having done all, stand. I had to do that for a long period of time.
You might ask why the enemy does not just leave after the first attack. He is not built that way.
I really believe that the Lord wanted me to see the power of the blood—to experience it. I would never have learned it any other way.
Today, I am thankful for that experience, though I would not want to go through it again. But anyway, brothers and sisters, it is standing in Christ.
Well, I had other things, but I will share them next time. The next part is that not only do you need to know the enemy, you need to know yourself.
Lord, we just come today. Lord, our brother shared with that theme: give us vision, Lord, of the beauty of the Lord.
Lord, we have been talking about our adversary all day, but Lord, I look at You. I see the wounds in Your hands, the wound in Your side, and Your feet, Lord. He wounded You.
Those wounds have become beautiful, Lord, in our eyes. Lord, it was through that great sacrifice at Calvary’s cross—that sacrificial Lamb, in that ultimate battle with the enemy—that it appeared he had won.
But, Lord, You rose from the dead, and You are on the throne. You are the Victor.
Lord, today these are not fairy tales. This is not Star Wars, the forces of darkness and the forces of good. It is the forces of the kingdom of God and the forces of the kingdom of Satan.
Lord, we thank You. We thank You for Your love for us, for being willing to go to Calvary’s cross to fight that great battle, even unto death, Lord, that You might set us free.
Lord, today we want to remain free. We do not want to be found under the clutches of our adversary, imprisoned by accusation and thoughts. Lord, we thank You today, Lord Jesus.
Lord, we pray that You will be able to awaken us and make us more aware, Lord, that we will be more sensitive in our spirit to the activities going on around us. Lord, may we have discernment and be able to say, “Oh, this is the enemy. This is not the Lord.”
Lord, give us that discerning spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.