KNOW THY ENEMY!

In my last four (4) articles, I have concentrated mainly on the subject of spiritual warfare, spiritual weaponry, and SELF. In this article I wish to continue to elaborate on these spiritual subjects, but particularly on the topic of THE ENEMY.

I will use credible and authoritative sources, rely on various Holy Scriptures and apply sanctified common sense to back up whatever I write, much of which is contrary to popular teachings and mainstream Church doctrine.

I may challenge your beliefs, and also encourage you to properly handle God’s word, not the letter but the spirit of what He is saying through the Scriptures, which lies beneath the written surface. Here are two Holy scriptures, one from the Old Testament and the other the New Testament, testifying to what I have just written. We know that any truth is established by the testimony of at least two witnesses.

“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” (Source: Proverbs 25:2 - NIV)

“He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (Source: 2 Corinthians, Chapter 3, verse 6)

Before going further, I want you my spiritual brothers and sisters and those now involved in the spiritual warfare I have written about just days ago that what I write and share, I do with the purest of intentions and to encourage you, protect you and to continue to grow in your faith. And God willing, I will do exactly that.

I also want you to know that a human being (i.e. me) who has been so close to the brink of death, as have many of you, has no time, energy or patience to lie, exaggerate, and cause unnecessary divisions or to write fictional stories to appease the flesh.

I am motivated to write this article, and I have written all my articles pertaining to spiritual matters/concerns, for two (2) principal reasons: 1) LOVE and 2) To encourage you to enjoy “A Right Relationship with Our Heavenly Father.”

In this article, I purposely make a clear distinction between the enemy located “within” and the enemy located “without or in outer heavenly realms.”

The Exterior Enemy

As many of you may recall from reading some of my last posts, either under my last articles or comments we exchanged on LinkedIn's main site, that I have been repeatedly attacked recently by the “Exterior Enemy.”

I shared that I have been under spiritual attack many times in my 25 years as a believer, but rarely had I experienced one as powerful. To my mind, this meant one of two things: 1) Our Lord is preparing us for a very intense battle and wants us prepared and to pull together with all of our spiritual weaponry; and/or 2) The enemy knows its time is short and is making a last terribly vicious last stand. I have prayed to our Lord and that is what I feel in my spirit as His response.

I take this especially serious, because this involves spiritual attacks to my mind involving taking my life. I have already tried to in the past, when such attacks have occurred (less than a handful in 25 years after attacks that have been this intense) and the Lord has saved and healed me from each attempt. So this is not something to be taken idly, that is a spiritual attack against your mind, the enemy's principal target since we use it (and He knows this as he used it in the allegorical Garden of Eden which depicts our Lord's spiritual Heaven) so much in the nitty-gritty of our daily lives.

Those of you who are mature and who have fought vicious spiritual attacks will know the enemy's schemes, at least some of his principal ones. These are the intentional use of confusion, lies, deceptions and delusions to take your eyes off our Lord and instead spend your energy and time worrying about him (i.e. the enemy). He is nothing, but to treat him indifferently without prayer and our Lord's strength is a huge mistake on our part. I use a masculine pronoun (he, him) to describe the enemy for the sake of simplicity, but the enemy goes by many names, titles and descriptions as you already know.

I sent out an urgent plea to many spiritual warriors asking that they pray for me to help me through two recent vicious attacks, while I myself prayed and meditated alone with our Lord. Should you ever be attacked in a vicious manner such as the one I mention, refer to the five (5) spiritual weapons I wrote about in two recent articles, and do exactly what I did as expressed in the first sentence of this paragraph. I cannot overestimate the importance of these actions to those of you who are mature brothers and sisters who are engaged in the ongoing spiritual war (i.e. in my last article I referred to it as WWWIII – A Spiritual Warfare).

Prayers of our brothers and sisters in Christ and those of the spiritual warriors I mentioned in the previous paragraph whom I called upon on LinkedIn to help me did indeed calm down my mind and spirit from the attack, within less than one hour. That is just how powerful spiritual weaponry, the calling upon and gathering of saints to pray on your behalf, and sitting silently and vigilantly before our Lord in prayer and meditation really are in fending off the most vicious of attacks. Please mark down on a piece of paper or somewhere or on something this and the last paragraph. To do so and refer to it if or when the attack comes will save your life, not only your spiritual life, but also your mental and physical one as well, especially if the attack is of the most vicious kind possible. I do not write this to needlessly pour fear into the majority of believers, because as I mentioned earlier this has only happened to me less than a handful of times in 25 years as a believer. For those of you who are active spiritual warriors who are now battling the enemy as I am, I indeed mean every word emphatically!

After I woke up the following morning following the attacks, and even as I write this article, the attacks have taken their toll on me in all departments, mentally, spiritually, and physically draining me. I need to recuperate, but with your continued prayers and those of our brothers and of course our Lord in the lead as my protector supreme I will overcome. This scripture was deposited in my spirit by the Lord and translated to my mind to remind me what you and I should be doing.

"Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." (1 Peter, Chapter 5, verse 8)

I write this because as I mentioned earlier, the enemy's scheming is legendary and can fool and confound even the most mature of believers. He did so to many of our Lord's apostles, King David and major Old Testament prophets such as Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah and Jeremiah. If the enemy can do this to these mature saints who spent their entire lives devoted to serving our Lord and some of them were even physically with Him and taught by Him personally, then should we not heed their examples and experiences?

I have now touched upon and discussed with you the cunning activities and attacks from the Exterior Enemy, which ultimately always have their effect on our inner beings (especially our minds).

The Interior Enemy

The Interior Enemy, within you and I that is, is much more subtle and sly than The Exterior Enemy. I would be greatly amiss if I did not point him out to you, for he resides within you. I will prove this to you using the Holy scriptures which follow shortly.

There is so much I could write, but I need to be concise and precise. The Lord willing, I will write again on this subject, or He Himself will instruct you personally. I do believe it will be the latter of the two possibilities.

In both cases, whether we are referring to an Interior or Exterior Enemy, the “MIND” is almost always his target. Please mark that down, underline it, bold it, italicize it, highlight it with a marker and memorize it. It will save your very life. I am living proof to this last statement. Many of you will indeed attest to this sanctified common sense and truth, backed up by your own experiences.

Do not make the potentially fatal error of focusing on fighting solely an Exterior Enemy, when one, probably the greatest enemy of all, is within the Interior of you.

The majority of believers will not encounter these types of attacks, but mature spiritual warriors will understand and have indeed encountered the real enemy face-to-face in his worst attacks. I have been communicating with many of them recently and we are all of one accord, which is the way it should be, and the way it was after Jesus' death with His apostles and disciples, when they met outside in the courts of the Temple or in each others' homes.

Since we are all over the globe, we are using social media instead of outer courts or our homes to communicate with each other, but the Holy Spirit and our Lord are never ever restricted by time or space as we all know.

Here are two scriptures to drive home the importance of solid food or “daily bread” to fend off and STAND up to the enemy.

“Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” (Source: Hebrews, Chapter 5, verses 13-14 – NIV)

“Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity...” “And God permitting, we will do so.” (Source: Hebrews, Chapter 6, verses 1 and 3 – NIV)

Here are several scriptures and commentary regarding The Interior Enemy.

“The Spirit and your desires are enemies of each other. They are always fighting each other and keeping you from doing what you feel you should.” (Source: Galatians, Chapter 5, verse 17 – Contemporary English Version)

“For the one who sows to his flesh [his sinful capacity, his worldliness, his disgraceful impulses] will reap from the flesh ruin and destruction, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” (Source: Galatians, Chapter 6, verse 8 – Amplified Bible)

“With the natural mind at enmity to the Spirit of God, one cannot appeal to any natural reasoning if they would impart a deep spiritual truth. But, if the individual has an open and receptive spirit, one can impart to their spirit a truth which has, proverbially, gone over their head, and in due time that Seed will take root and grow, and eventually the mind is quickened and brought into conformity to that truth.” (Source: Ray Prinzing - Daily Overcoming Devotionals)

This last scripture is perhaps one of the greatest proofs, if not the greatest, which reveals the secret hiding place of The Internal Enemy.

“We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” (Source: Romans, Chapter 7, verses 14 to 23 – NIV)

What Paul has described as His experience in the foregoing passage is a lot to wrap your and my head around. I know it was and still is for me, but he is pointing out that there are indeed two natures within us. One (our fleshly nature) that cannot and will not ever bow down or heed God's word, and the other (our spiritual nature) which, if left unhindered, will willfully, joyfully or delightfully, as Paul suggests, yield to God's lead. Using other terminology, welcome to The Interior Enemy.

This “warring” as Paul puts it, is ongoing from the day we are old enough to understand the basic difference between right and wrong, at least from an earthly understanding and perspective, to the day we leave this corruptible body of flesh behind. And this is not only a battle (internal back-and-forth struggle) that rages on in non-believers, but more so within believers, and again one hundred fold more so to those who are now battling and engaging the enemy, either the Internal or External Enemy or perhaps both.

There are two words in the Greek for evil: kakon, speaking of evil in the abstract sense; and poneros, which refers to evil in the concrete sense. That which is abstract is that which is generalized, while that which is in the concrete sense is that which is specific, names the thing.

In the generalized term we all have had evil in our nature, for we "were by nature the children of wrath, even as others." (Source: Ephesians, Chapter 2, verse 3 – NIV).

“If we yield ourselves unto evil, we become a part of that weapon used by evil to war against good. If we yield ourselves to God, we become His instrument of war to overthrow evil. We are going to be used one way or another, there is no neutral ground. And there are many specific evil things that are found in our pathway for overcoming - deeds done against us, words spoken against us, etc. How do we overcome these things? Overcome evil with good. Either, we are being used for the establishment of good, or for the operation of evil.” (Source: Ray Prinzing – Daily Overcoming Devotionals)

I believe I have written and shared enough in this article for you to chew on. Please do so and, as always, verify my scriptural sources and what I have written, as mature believers, to ensure that I am not intentionally trying to deceive you or “lead you down the garden path” as the expression goes. As I wrote earlier, I always express myself, in this case using the written medium, from a pure heart and pure motives of LOVE.

I invite you to comment on this article regarding your beliefs, concerns and/or experiences.

I always enjoy terminating shorter articles with my trademark ending and borrowed saying. In the endless words of Forrest Gump, one of my favorite actors and movies, “That's all I got to say about that.” At least for now, God willing!