By Glynn Adams
February 18, 2023
The current church culture in America is on life support. It is living off the work of the saints of old, money, and energy of previous generations from a time in America that has been destroyed by her enemies and a lack of Biblical knowledge and blatant disobedience. The plug will be pulled when the money runs out (a large percentage of the money in our churches today come from people in their fifties) or when the remaining three-fourths of a generation who are institutional loyalists die off or both.
Please don’t hear what I am not saying. The death of the church culture as we know it will not happen to the church Jesus built. The church Jesus built is good and will survive until He returns. The lack of Biblical details has messed the church up since the third century through today’s modern-day American church. It has become carnal by practicing the rituals of man, entertainment, a form of godliness, and living out the traditions of men that make the Word of God of no effect. Pastors and church members are passive and don’t want to be bothered. It’s a religious game and a mindset – let’s go to church!!!
Nowhere do you see that Jesus established a religion called Christianity. In Scriptures Jesus called His followers disciples, sons of God, Kingdom of God citizens, Ambassadors of the Kingdom of God, and priests not Christians as in Acts 11:26. I wonder what the reaction of Jesus is with all of our religious services and theological debates here in America while our nation and this world is headed to hell.
Why has the church withdrawn from the communities and culture in America? How did we get where we are today in bondage and loss of freedom with multiple churches throughout each city in America and become so ineffective?
The fault lies in the fact the vast majority of Pastors and church members know hardly anything about the things of God and why Jesus built the church? We truly are being destroyed for a lack of knowledge of the Word of God – who we are in Christ, and what is our purpose in this life and the obedience, commitment, submission, faithfulness, and allegiance to LORD Jesus Christ it requires? Folks, the hard truth none of us know much about Jesus, Satan, the Word of God, the church, spiritual warfare and being disciple of Jesus Christ, including myself.
Today, I was in the process of finishing an article for NewsWithViews on the Kingdom of God and while reading my morning emails, one said some followers of Christ were going to war against the demonic halftime show at the coming Super Bowl Sunday so I was reading from some spiritual warfare books on how best to get prepared to participate with them. In my research, I discovered just how unprepared and ignorant I was to “stand” against powers and principalities. I have cast out demons from individuals and have done spiritual warfare many times but I begin to feel very uneasy in my spirit about this super bowl warfare. When I feel this way, I immediately begin to look at myself, my spiritual condition, and I seriously begin to look for answers.
Now somehow in all of this, I remembered I had a correction to finish on my Kingdom of God article. I was reading Matthew 13 because the question in my mind at the time was, “Why can’t the church in America see the Kingdom of God?” And as I was reading the parable in Matthew 13, that feeling I get when the Holy Spirit is giving me revelation, the lights in my spirit came on and revelation filled my spirit. There it was the answer to my question right there in Matthew 13:10-11. Jesus was speaking to the multitudes and the disciples ask Jesus why He spoke to them in parables. He answered and said to them, “Because it has been given to you (disciples) to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God but to them (the multitudes) it has not been given.
Then Jesus explains to the disciples that the multitudes don’t want to know, hear, see, or understand the Kingdom. The reason you have been given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom is you disciples gave up your boats, your way of making a living, your life; and you left everything to follow Me. “And blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear for assuredly I say to you that many prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.) and righteous men (Noah, Moses, etc.) desired to see what you see and did not see it and to hear what you hear and did not hear it.”
The reason the church in America cannot see the Kingdom of God in the Bible is they do not want to see the Kingdom of God, or know about the Kingdom, or hear about the Kingdom. If all you want from Jesus is material things such as healing, miracles, prosperity, and food, you will never get the deep truths from Him until your desire change. We must surrender all to Jesus. HATH GOD REALLY SAID – ALL?
We, the followers of Jesus Christ, have mostly ignored the truths of Jesus and the Word of God because we looked for something comfortable, and easy, little commitment, little sacrifice, little obedience and we found pastors that gave us what we wanted. That is why in America we have the church that men have built and not Jesus. Spiritually, we are about a half inch deep and a mile wide. That is why evil, with less power, makes more disciples of Satan than the church, with all power, makes of Jesus.
It is exactly why the flood of evil is pouring into America and this world, and at the same time the passivity of most of so-called believers of God as they view this state of affairs and are ignorant of the part God expects them to play in His warfare against Satan. I am learning from other members of the Body and what little I learn, I will pass it on to you in this article. That is how we learn, from one another in the Body. You will see later that spiritual warfare is more than throwing a bomb at Satan or hurling words at him. Today we are throwing hatchets at the moon thinking it is spiritual warfare against Satan!!! Consequently, our getting together and praying against Satan is like King Canute’s command to the waves to come no further up the beach – does nothing.
From what I have learned so far, I will give you a heads up where God wants us to go is that the barriers and things that Satan and his powers of darkness do will not be moved by God’s omnipotence until His Body takes the initiative and stands his ground “in the heavenly places” to engage the powers of evil in prayer that are directly the cause of the ground-level troubles, and resist them in the name of the Victor of Calvary. I never really paid attention to or understood “in heavenly places” but now it is making sense.
What does Paul do in the scary situation in Ephesus? He gathers Caius and Aristarchus – or whoever is available. Together, they take their position in Christ “in the heavenly places” and wrestle with and withstand the powers of evil that are manipulating the willing puppets on the streets. Immediately there is a break in the situation. Empowered in the Lord and in the strength of His might, and clothed in heavenly armor, they force Satan to yield ground.
For years now, the church has been gathering at abortion clinics because we think it is the thing to do. Did it ever enter our mind to gather somewhere in prayer, “in the heavenly places” and wrestle there against the strongholds of evil that were manipulating the willing flesh and blood puppets at the clinic?
The business of war is learned in war, in actual combat situation, not from theories expounded or from exercises on paper. We should beware of activities that do not bring us to grips with the enemy. Everywhere Paul went, his activities stirred up the enemy and brought him into action like a roaring lion.
In our culture, we see school boards changing our schools to indoctrination centers rather than learning centers or our government giving undue treatment to certain citizens. Today we want to wrestle with flesh and blood, the school board members or members of Congress in our government.
To correct these very natural ideas, the Apostle Paul would turn our minds from the human causes (we wrestle not against flesh and blood) and introduce us to the real source of trouble – “principalities, authorities, world rulers of the darkness, and spiritual forces of wickedness.” The physical attacks that come against us through our circumstances are only the symptoms of the very real hostility of the world rulers of the darkness under the prince of the power of the air. We want to go after the flesh and blood but our first call is to withstand those invisible enemies. But how can mere humans grapple with and drive back invisible supernatural forces on this earth?
Paul conveys to us in the Word of God that our wrestling does not begin in our hearts. It has as the foundation the mighty victory over Satan that Jesus Christ won on the cross. This includes all that God did with Jesus as the direct result of that victory and also with us when God gave Him to be “head over everything for the church” – His Body. The exaltation of the Head, “far above all rule and authority, power, and dominion” far from separating Him from His Body on earth, has taken us in Him as co-sharers in all that God has done with Him. This means we are seated “with Him in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 2:6) and (Ephesians 6:10).
So when Paul says, “Finally be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power” (Ephesians 6:10), his finger is pointing back to the foundational truths he developed earlier. Satan is a defeated foe with a crushed head. There is no power in him, nor are there any means available to him to reach and unseat the Victor of Calvary now seated at the right hand of the Father. This is one fact we need to keep strengthening ourselves with.
There is another: All the things God did for the Head, He did for the Body also. This means that we are positioned in the heavenly realm with Christ. Our strengthening in the Lord is achieved as we reckon by faith on what God has told us He has done for us. As Dr. Stuart Holden says, “The true order of faith is not that we have to live an earthly life with a view to heaven but that we are called to a heavenly life with a view to earth.” Even though we are walking here on earth, our position in our life is “hid in Christ.” It is time we get relevant to what God wants us to do rather than religion or the world!!!!
Oh, that all believers would realize and continually appropriate for themselves, by faith, the glory of the objective facts God has told us in His Word of God. Oh, better yet that we would make it our priority to be strengthened by God’s Objective Facts in the Word so we could develop spiritual muscle in order to fulfill our high calling in Christ!!! We have done it our way long enough and it has been very ineffective. “There is a way that seems right to man but it is the ways of death.”
This position of ours in the heavenly realm is not some terrific Mount Everest that we are required to climb in our own strength. God has already placed us at the top of our unassailable Head. This is so that by virtue of this position, His will might be done down here on earth as it is in heaven through his Kingdom Citizens. We don’t fight for victory because we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” Our fight is from victory from the vantage point, empowered with Christ’s might and we are completely enclosed in the whole armor of God, which we are to put on daily in prayer, so the powers of evil are compelled to back off as we resist them.
Satan knows his time is running out so he is concentrating all he has on a desperate last-ditch attempt to defeat the purposes of God. Just look at what is happening in America and the church is silent. Surely this is not the time for God’s soldiers to withdraw into passivity, and to put reality out of our minds. But most don’t think of a war and ourselves as soldiers or warriors but this has to change. We must see each other as warriors and soldiers. It takes an understanding and belief in the objective truth as God has given to us in the Bible for the Believer to see ourselves as warriors and soldiers taking a stand in victory and resist the devil. Without faith it is impossible to please God!!!
As Paul develops the conflict against ‘the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12, the conflict words “withstand” and “stand”, our defense armor guarantees total security when it is put on with prayer – for in essence the girdle, breastplate, helmet, shoes, and shield are Jesus Christ. In Him we are complete. The repeated emphasis on “stand” and “withstand” and in the epistles of James and Peter on “resist” suggests that the Christian’s danger and the devil’s advantage lie in the believer’s relinquishing his position and attempting to tackle some problem from the human, flesh-and-blood level. I believe what Paul is saying here is whenever we get in the flesh, fear, anger, or whatever or the devil blows up a storm and we faint or get upset, we lose mastery over the powers of darkness – we get below them instead of abiding above them in Christ, This means we don’t know or have forgotten God’s outcome, God’s thought, God’s plan, God’s ways, by getting in the flesh rather than abiding with Christ in God!!
As citizens of the Kingdom of God and faithful followers of Christ, we are to be a good soldier, enduring hardness and to learn how to keep down the hungers of the flesh. Bodily appetites are insistent for attention, also when we are in the flesh, we are on earth and not in heaven’s realm!!. This gives the devil a good vantage point if flesh is not kept under control. The crafty enemy has had centuries of experience in finding the best openings to get man to move out of God’s will and choose his own.
A good soldier always puts on the full armor of God in prayer. He is controlled by the Holy Spirit and ensure that he is constantly always being filled with the Holy Spirit and his mind is a storehouse of the Word of God because he is constantly renewing His mind with God’s ideas. For the Holy Spirit to wield His mighty sword effectively through a human instrument, he must first have absolute control of the instrument –the mind of the man must be well stored with the Word of God.
In conclusion, we have to stop throwing hatchets at the moon and being religious, and come together as the Body of Christ and become more relevant to what is going on in our life in Christ and with Satan in this nation. It just seems if we would all get on the same page, form prayer groups who see themselves in heavenly places to stand against these powers and principalities who are operating unopposed in our nation, especially our schools and our government, God through us will change and deliver America!!!
I think we can agree that we need to learn what is written in this article is revelation from God and we must teach (perhaps a better word is share) these principles of Christ to others. Remember what I learned in Matthew 13 that not everyone has been given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. If people want to argue rather than discuss, then move on to another. What I share is very small compared to all the knowledge of God. If you have further revelation from God on this article, please share it with me and others, God bless I remain His warrior and watchman, Glynn Adams. (Thanks to the late R. Arthur Mathews, the late John Paul Jackson, and Dr. Francis Schaeffer and many others for revelations in the Word of God that help in this article.)
© 2023 Glynn Adams – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Glynn Adams: glynnadams@sbcglobal.net
