"Understanding The Origin Of Spiritual Warfare"

Spiritual welfare is probably the most misunderstood area of the Christian Life .why some Christians live in fear of demonic forces, others are so sure of themselves that they seek out opportunity for confrontation with evil spirits.

Still others blame every problem or sickness on the devil .some even tried to cast demons out of fellow Christians. In reality

this radically different approaches or exhibit and ignorance of the true nature of Satan and the extent of his power.

Christians especially those emissions must be equipped in four areas :

1.Think by biblically, not just culturally

-must accept the supernatural worldview that depicts a cosmic conflict between God and his Angels; Satan and his demons; with womankind caught in between .

– must come to understand that resistance to the message of the gospel is attributable not only to intellectual and life style choices, but also to spiritual welfare.

-John state the fact that believers have an anointing from the holy one (1John chapter 2:20 -27) and can tell the difference between light and darkness ,truth and falsehood.

ii.That he or she will become a target of the enemy’s opposition .

-must learn to detect when under supernatural attack.

-learn how to use God’s armour and mighty weapons to deal with these attacks. effective use of God’s mighty weapons of the word, prayer and Faith to overcome the enemy’s head winds.

iii.becoming better at discerning and dealing with the demonic birds of the air that steal away the precious seed of the word -Matthew 13:19

-need instruction on how to penetrate the veil of supernatural deception and set captives free.

-to be effective in plundering the enemy’s camp, one needs to know how to turn souls from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God -Acts 26:18

-skills of spiritual welfare must be sharpened in this current climate of philosophical relativism and new-age metaphysics.

iv.understand that the powers ofp darkness employ specific skins among particular people and places on Earth.

-There are territorial strongholds of evil that condition the way people think and govern their lives. This is virtual ideological air pollution.

-we are to be better informed or the discernment that guides our intersection for the unsaved. We are not to get involved in getting the names of presumed territorial spirits or wailing and flailing against them.

-we are to seek wisdom in knowing how to precisely pray for the release of God’s power to diminish the darkness and advance his kingdom.

Definition of spiritual warfare:

Tom white (president of Frontline ministries) defined “spiritual warfare” in this way

Spritual welfare describes the prehistory storage and ongoing conflict between the sovereign God and the rebellion of a created, angelic being ,Satan .

The adversary and other fallen angels aggravates sin within the human personality, and promote ungodly values through human cultures to divert the unredeemed from salvation and hinder the redeemed from enjoyment of the fullness of Christ and fruitfulness in ministry.

The savants of Jesus is called to expose (Ephesians 5:11), resist (Ephesians chapter 6 to 18) and overcome (1John 2 verse 12 to 14) schemes of the enemy that oppose God purpose, thereby giving witnesses to Jesus triumph ( Acts 1:8; 26: 17 to 18).

In the light of this definition ,any servant of Jesus Christ that poses a threat to the powers of darkness will likely be targeted and must be fully equipped to discern and deal with the resistive schemes of evil.

The origin of spiritual warfare

Conflict that originated spiritual warfare; Revelation chapter 12 Chronicles a warfare,which apparently occurred sometime around the creation of the Earth.

And there was one in heaven. Michael and his angel 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 -Revelation 12:7-9

Additional passengers are alluding to the same incident in Isaiah and Ezekiel.

How you have fallen from heaven ,oh Lucifer, star of the morning, son of the down, you have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nation’s!

But you said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven ;I will raise my throne above the stars of God and I will sit on the mount of the assembly in the recesses of the North.

I will ascend above the height of the cloud !I will make myself like the most high.

Nevertheless you will be trust down to show, to the recesses of the pitch. Those who see you will gaze at you, they will ponder over you, saying, is this the man who made the Earth tremble, who sook kingdoms- Isaiah 14 verses 12 to 16.

The Bible does not shed a lot of light into the specific issue being disputed in heaven. many Christians have the impression that Satan try to overthrow God.

This is extremely difficult to believe since God is the all-powerful creator and sustainer of all life.

We have no example in scripture of satan and possessing ominipotents or any other divine attributes, but we do have adequate evidence that he is an intelligent being.

Given this intelligence would satan think that he could possibly overthrow far greater being possessing infinite attributes?

To depose the one who sustains you would be the equivalent of suicide. Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 are most commonly cited passages for insight into the persistence and Fall of Lucifer (satan) .

But while looking at these passages as references to Lucifer readers often overlooked the fact that the authors are primarilyy given prophecies concerning literal nation that will soon oppress Iseral (Isaiah 14 verse 4; Ezekiel 28 verse 12)

Therefore,to take the passage as referring only to a spiritual principality can be misleading. Note that both passages fit better when taken ,as referencing a little king and kingdom on this earth.

In actuality, the word “Lucifer” does not occur anywhere in the original test. the word translated to “Lucifer” actually is “shining one” and can be taken as a reference to a spirit personality or an earthly being .

Noet the last portion of the quote,” is this the man that made the Earth tremble?” Obviously the primary reference of Isaiah is to a person.

However, the fact that an illusion to Satan exist here is undeniable. The reason we apply this passage to setan at-all is that the

prophet are writing first of all about literally earthly Kings, but also making references to the spiritual principalities ,which is the influencing Force behind the nation.

The influenced and the influencer have come to share so much purpose in common. they are addressed as one in what will might call a split reference.

In this case the influencing principality seems to be satan himself.

With the realization that Isaiah is writing to Israel concerning an earthly kingdom the first explanation of the phrase “I will be like

the most high”(Isaiah 14: 14 )would be that some earthly Babylonian king has a giant eagle. Full of pride over his conquests and

accomplishment he considers himself to be in sovereign control of his own destiny and is seeking to exalt his throne even higher.

As evidence that this could realistically be the case as the story of Nebuchadnezzar in the narrative of Daniel 4 verse 23 to 32 and Daniel 5 verse 18 to 21.

The Daniel four messages is one of the strongest insight into the sovereignty of God in the entire Bible.

Only in a secondary sciences we can apply Isaiah14 to Satan as well. Notice the 5″ I will” phrase there versus what God willed.

the phrase ”I will be like the most high” bears a striking similarity to the phrase “you” will be like God in Satan’s temptation of Man (Genesis 3 verse 5).

That decision foe man was to take control of his life separate from God. We have no reason to doubt that the decision settlement was very different, especially since the divine overthrew would seem to be impossibility.

In other words ,we would be inconsistent if we said the phrase “I will be like the most high” means something different for satan than it did for Adam and the King of Babylon.

They all desireed to exercise and uninhibited control over themselves in the same way that God is excerises sovereign control over his kingdom.

Satan tempted Jesus as the second Adam and similar fashion (Matthew 4). If the devil could get Jesus to violate the will of the Father ,Jesus will effectively be ruling himself apart from God.

If Satan could get Jesus to usurp that authority for himself, if he could get Jesus to “be his own man” he has made Jesus a follow partaker of the same form of rebellion and eliminated him as a fite Redeemer.

instead christ stayed with the will of the father and became the author of our internal salvation.

When Satan lost that intial contest in heaven he was “cast down” from his lofty position of service to God along with the angels who followed in his rebellion.

At the time of Adam sin something happened to his nature. A similar change seems to have happened to satan (Ezekiel 28:15-16).

His nature apparently become twisted and he now is given over to doing evil continually. from the point of his loss in the heavenly warfare satan set his course according to His evil perverse nature interfering where possibly in human arena with enticements aimed at introducing a self-centered will to man.

This was the impetus of his attack in the garden of Eden when he ask, “has God said?” and successfully on the mind the attitude of man towards God’s leadership.

Thus Satan, by his act of disobedience, became the father of the classic struggle will call spiritual warfare .

Satan and the demons:

The devil, Satan, and demons are same and interchangeable words a usage . According

to James Hastings the world devil came into English from Greek either directly or through it latin transliteration.

Hasting said its original meaning was that of the accuser or transducer of Men and soon came to denote the supreme spirit of evil, the personal tempter of man and enemy of God.

Satan is Hebrew and means adversary. In Job 1 and 2 prologue ,satan appears as a member of the celestial council of angelic

beings that have access to the presence of God with a special function to watch over human affairs and beings with the sole aim of exposing mens sin and accusing them in the celestial Court.