ULDAH MINISTRY

No,81　　JULY. 2002

【 BIBLICAL SPIRITUAL WARFARE 】

　 Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD and against his Anointed One. "Let us break their chains," they say, "and throw off their fetters (from ourselves)." The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them. Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, …
Psalm 2:1~5

You say, "I choose the appointed time; it is I who judge uprightly. When the earth and all its people quake, it is I who hold its pillars firm. …No-one from the east or the west or from the desert can exalt a man. In the hand of the LORD is a cup full of foaming wine mixed with spices; he pours it out, and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to its very dregs.
Psalm 75:2~8

And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down― that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. … "Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Revalation 12:7~11

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armour of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the power of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, after you have done everything, to stand.
Ephesians 6:10~13

From the books of the Bible we know that Satan and his demons are allowed to be involved in human affairs. His most complacent strategy is to attack man's belief systems by inciting doubts, anger, fear, anxiety, accusations and rebellion against God. If we are beaten by temptations and give way to his invasion, he viciously starts polluting our mind; thought, emotion and decision and we end up arguing, reasoning and alleging or adopting false ideas and imaginations against the knowledge of God. We must be fully aware of this nature of biblical spiritual warfare especially in our day and age when we are flooded with so much information which leaves us confused. If thousands of years ago, Job had been confused by his three friends' messages which had God's words and their own words mixed in together, as was examined in my last news letter, how much more would we be stirred up by information and teachings formed on the basis of assumption, speculation and experience rather than on facts or truth. Take for instance, in the field of journalism, it is an unspoken agreement that our mass media and public opinion have not necessarily always conveyed the truth, especially concerning the matter of Israel and Jerusalem which God significantly called a "cup of trembling for all the surrounding nations" and also which He likened to the "apple of His own eye," i.e., the most sensitive part of the body. Likewise, if we adopt wrong concepts and interpretations of biblical terms and messages, we will easily be misled. I am afraid that there are many such misunderstood and misapplied concepts among Christians today. I have therefore highlighted here in this letter, one of such misrepresented concepts, 'Spiritual Warfare.'
As long as the devil is allowed to roam through the earth to devour the rebellious against the Lord, the spiritual tension lingers. There is a modern trend of spiritual warfare, which some Christians are seriously tackling with and which has come to be widely and popularly accepted today. Bill Randles, who believes that he himself was kept from stumbling completely by the conviction of the Holy Spirit one day in the prime days of his absorption in the teachings of the "Faith Movement" (which teaches that men are in "God's class of being" and are "little gods" and so on) since he was saved in an Assembly of God church. He presents several erroneous examples about the issue in a biblical light. Some of what he lists up in his book, 'Making War In The Heavenlies' (St. Matthew Publications) include the following:
? Christian leaders openly challenge, taunt and curse Satan and evil spirits.
? They discuss how to purge the skies over the geographical locations where "strongmen" reside. Prayer warriors after time of prayers at mountain tops, at top floor rooms of hotels or at the tops of tall buildings, declare that they have taken back their land in the name of Jesus.
? Los Angeles Times, February 17, 1990 reported under the headline "Evangelicals and Charismatics Prepare for Spiritual Warfare": Growing numbers of evangelical and charismatic Christian leaders are preparing broad assaults on what they call the cosmic powers of darkness. Fascinated with the notion that Satan commands a hierarchy of territorial demons, some mission agencies for big church pastors are devising strategies for "breaking the strongholds" of those evil spirits alleged to be controlling cities and countries. …
? Charisma Magazine, June 1993 advertised: … we wage "Holy War" against the kingdom of darkness …God said its time to sound the trumpet of battle and take Miami back from the clutches of the Devil!…
? Spiritual mapping, which involves researching the secular and religious history of a city and identifying names of ruling spirits over the area is a must to take your city for God.
No.4 of the above list reminds me of Islam's holy war, 'jihad' and No.5 makes me think of an occult involvement and non-biblical mystical clairvoyance. Such kinds of practices smell of imitations of pagan mythology. Such a phenomenon seems to point to the predicted end-times in the Bible, when people will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. Randles points out that behind the modern trend of the spiritual warfare movement there is a man-centred, new arrogant view of life, characterised by Dominionism, Replacement theology and a revival of Greek philosophy, Gnosticism (a sysncretistic religion). Dominionism exalts Christians in the present age over all previous generations as a militant force and as conquerours. Replacement theology believes that unless Satan and demons, i.e., the territorial spirits, are pulled down by commanding angels what to do and where to go and be replaced by the church, there will be no inauguration of the kingdom of God, i.e., Christ's coming will be delayed. Gnosticism emphasises a deeper, hidden subjective knowledge and supernatural experience and eventually ends up with exalting the participant to a group of special privileged people who share intimacy and oneness with God. Randles argues that this philosophy elevates man to God's class.
However, if the train of these beliefs is false, what is the true biblical spiritual warfare? The biblical spiritual warfare might be defined as the following, according to Paul, who often mentions it in many places, especially in 2Corinthians 10:3~5: For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
? Although our sphere of living and activities are in the flesh, i.e., in this world, we are also inevitably involved in a warfare in the invisible sphere as the book of Job reveals.
? Our enemy establishes strongholds in us and in any area of our lives but our weapons are divine power to demolish them.
? The toughest battle field of our spiritual warfare is in the area of our own mind and not somewhere up in the skies. Therefore, unless we take captive our wrong thoughts, wrong belief system and wrong emotions to the obedience of Christ and the acceptance of the Word of God we will pave the way to be controlled by our enemy, the devil.

Becoming a Christian naturally brings us into spiritual warfare because from the beginning, the devil has always been harbouring enmity against Christ, our master. It is therefore inevitable that Christians will face conflict with the devil and his demons and yet, we are at the same time, already promised to be able to share in Christ's victory as long as we are obedient to Him. God provided us with weapons, the armour of God against the devil's schemes: Truth, Righteousness, Peace, Faith, Salvation and the Word of God. To put it differently, I believe, our spiritual weapons can be summed up into three crucial elements: the Word of God, Prayer and Moral livings on the basis of the whole biblical claim.
To wage a good warfare, appropriate understandings on the issue are essential.
? The war has already been won by Jesus on the cross and God has from the beginning been completely in control as depicted in the quoted verses at the beginning of this letter. Whereas our God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, Satan is fatally limited in his knowledge, ability and accessibility and is no equal to God at all. God ordained all creatures including Satan to stay within bounds as Paul taught at Athens: He created from one stock every nation of men to inhabit the whole earth's surface. He determined their eras in history and the limits of their territory. (Acts 17:26) Accordingly, it is a distinct characteristic of Satan to attempt to go further beyond his God-appointed boundary and to tempt man to follow suit. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the heavenly realms have been assigned to man and thus it is not man's job to go out to curse Satan in any place or to pull down territorial spirits with militant chant and warring prayer at all.
? Spiritual warfare is inevitable in the process of man's spiritual growth. Recalling how Israel won the promised land reminds us of the significant fact that she had to progressively fight for the land which had already been given to her by God. In order to securely possess it, she had to be led to warfare with the inhabitants there. Likewise, this can be applied to Christians. We are to be led to fight the spiritual warfare for what is already promised and what is rightfully and legally ours. As we overcome such warfare one by one, each experience secures us of a more abundant life in Christ, which Jesus stated, 'I have come that they (Jesus' followers) may have life, and have it to the full.' (John 10:10 Line added) Thus, our full inheritance in Christ will become our own through our personal battle against the enemy. Whether or not we will ever experience the fullness of our inheritance in our present lives depends on us, each individual.
? Replacing false belief systems and patterns of thinking in man's mind by the correct knowledge of God brings breakthrough in spiritual warfare. We can learn how to fight it from the examples of the apostles'. For example, Paul, when he was deeply grieved by idolatry at Athens, never waged warfare against pagan gods, Zeus, Apollo, Mars, Hermes or Aphrodite but against people's wrong concepts and philosophies and proclaimed the true living God who does not need to be supported by man at all. Christians are not ordained to make war against territorial spirits in the heavenlies and gods in this world, or to reform this world into a man-oriented, outwardly-united Christendom but to surrender self to Jesus Christ with repentance and to boldly proclaim the Word of God.

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　　This month a money gift has been sent to FREDERIC to sponsor his three primary school children for their school fee of the Autumn semester and also to regularly (for 6 months) feed refugees who are not assisted by UNHCR at all. The refugees are living on begging and their plight have been taken advantage of by Islam.
We tend to believe that Non-Governmental-Organisations (NGOs) are satisfactorily supporting refugees in Kenya. On the contrary, FREDERIC has revealed to us the fact that there are still countless numbers of refugees ignored by these NGOs that do not want to take risks to reach out to all the neglected by venturing on new venues. Instead, the majority of churches and NGOs in Kenya richly feed themselves on donations collected for refugees! He believes that if he and his co-workers, all of whom are well-qualified and -skilled, faithful servants of God were properly supported by well-wishing contributors in place of those con, cheating people, the Lord's wonders would unmistakably come to be seen among those refugees. He wishes missions to be sent to Kenya and Tanzania to see
�@their sincere work for the Lord on behalf of ignored refugees, �Athe amazing fact that the good news of the Lord is spreading by refugees and �Bthe threatening power of Islam to which Christian refugees are defecting, as well as �Cthe ugly reality of churches.
Pray for FREDERIC's and co-workers' single-minded service and plans being effectively accomplished by the Lord and for the unfairly treated refugees being able to be satisfactorily fed on both physical food and spiritual food, the Word of God. Also pray for God's mercy and guidance to them especially at this crucial time when her presidential election is getting close. Also join in his earnest prayer for his country Brundi's future, where conflicts between rebels and government troops are still going on. Lastly, furthermore pray for his family's needs being met by the Lord in His best timing.
His letter reminded me of some biblical principles: ?The Lord is all-watchful and completely sovereign even if He cannot be seen on your side because of clouds and dusts in your mind. Therefore, if you are cheating something in any area of your life, whether small or big, you might be successfully deceiving man's eyes and hearts but it should be reminded that you will never be able to escape from God's scrutinising eyes.
Now no-one can look at the sun, bright as it is in the skies after the wind has swept them clean. Out of the north he comes in golden splendour; God comes in awesome majesty. The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power; in his justice and great righteousness, he does not oppress. Therefore, men revere him, for does he not have regard for all the wise in heart? (Job 37:21~24) ?When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.(Deu.32:8) From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.(Acts 17:26) I believe that we, different nations and races are being ordained to serve our own countries and races so that the Word of God will thoroughly spread to the end of the world unless otherwise is specifically impressed to the individual by the Lord. As FREDERIC never ceases to long for returning to his country to co-operate the Lord's greater plan in His appointed time, so I always think my ministry here in London as a probation period, in which I need to learn more before my final work in the Lord in Japan. Unless we are approved by the Lord as efficient and trustworthy after the patient time of training and after the given opportunities of being entrusted, we won't be further entrusted by Him, whether on this side or the other side of this world. (Lk.19:12〜27, 16:10〜13)

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