Spiritual Warfare From the Bible

By Reverend Glynn Adams

March 10, 2024

There is no way one can cover the whole subject of Biblical Spiritual Warfare in one article.  I will present some highlights of God’s knowledge of Spiritual Warfare in this article and perhaps a follow up article.  There is a spiritual war going on in America and everywhere else on this earth and in the heavenlies!!!  YOU are in a spiritual war whether you know it or acknowledge it.  Many Christians and non-Christians are being destroyed today because they are not engaged or know of this spiritual war.

God says in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”  The knowledge of the Bible speaks of a spiritual war going on in this earth and the heavenlies whether “you” see it or not!!!  This spiritual war the Bible speaks of is a war between God and Satan, Christ and the anti-Christ, good verse evil, life or death, light and darkness, right from wrong, truth and lies, blessed or cursed, bondage or freedom, true prophets and false prophets, our flesh and spirit, and heaven or hell.

This spiritual war is spoken of from Genesis to Revelation.  What you don’t know or understand about this spiritual war can harm you, cause you suffering, sickness, and disease, deceive you, bound you, put a curse on you, frustrate you, torment you, and even kill you.  Here is just one scripture of sickness that Jesus dealt with while on this earth, “And behold there was a woman who for eighteen years had had a sickness caused by a spirit and she was bent double and could not straighten up at all.”  And when Jesus saw her, He called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your sickness.” (Luke 13:11-12)

Now if you will continue reading in Luke 13, to verse 16, you will see this woman was a daughter of Abraham, who Satan had bound for eighteen long years.   Paul says in Galatians 3:7, “Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham.”   As believers in Jesus Christ, we are sons and daughters of Abraham.  This woman was a believer as a daughter of Abraham.

Don’t tell me Satan can’t cause sickness and bondage among those who believe in Jesus Christ.  HATH GOD REALLY SAID?!!!  Yes, we just read it in the Bible!!!  I went through seven long years in a Southern Baptist Bible School, College, and Seminary and I was not taught one word about Satan, demons, sickness, or bondage.   What I learned about Spiritual Warfare I learned from others and studying the Word of God.  What you don’t know can harm and cause you much pain and torment.

And we have millions of followers who attend churches all over America who are being destroyed by Satan and their pastor does not teach them about Spiritual Warfare because they are ignorant of the Word of God.  Satan comes to us in our ignorance and what we don’t know.  “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge.”  You had better forsake this idea about all you have to do is attend some church service on Sunday and you will be ok is a deception of none other than Satan and many of his false pastors in our churches today!!!!

“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but divinely powerful for the destruction of (demonic) strongholds.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-4)  “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.  Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.  For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”  (Ephesians 6:10-13)

Listen to what the Bible says in 1 Peter 5:8-9, “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert.  Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.  But ignore him (that is what most are doing today) NO!!!! BUT RESIST him, firm in your faith………  The way you resist Satan is you stand on the Word of God with power and authority that we have been given and say, “I resist you Satan in the Name of Jesus.”  But if you are not firm in your faith, then you are ignorant of Satan and his schemes and you will be overcome by him.   Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 2:11, “In order that no advantage be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes,”

There are so many false teachings in the Body of Christ by pastors today.  You are being told that Satan can’t bother the believer in Christ, he has been defeated at the cross.  Yes, he was but he is still on this earth.  We are being told by some you don’t need to read the Bible especially the Old Testament.  The Bible from Genesis to Revelation tells the story of God and both testaments give us valuable information about spiritual things of God including sickness and Satan and his schemes.

I know for a fact that we have many false teachers and pastors in the Body of Christ today in America.  Many do not know God has a Kingdom and Satan has a Kingdom of Darkness.  Many can’t see the flood of evil that Satan is pouring into the world and our nation.  The passivity of many in the Body of Christ in America where so many are ignorant of the part God expects them to play in His spiritual warfare against Satan.  We are to be resisting Satan and the powers of darkness in our lives and nation.

Because Satan knows his time is running out, he is concentrating all he has on a desperate last-ditch attempt to defeat the purposes of God.  Surely this is not the time for God’s soldiers and warriors to withdraw into passivity to put this spiritual reality out of their minds.  But that is exactly what is happening in the Body of Christ in this nation.  Many are waking up and doing their part but this is an all hands-on- deck moment.   Many of you in the Body of Christ and your pastors are asleep and apathetic toward this spiritual war today are in for a rude awakening.

When Jesus was on this earth, His entire ministry on this earth reflected the belief that the world had been seized by a hostile, sinister lord named Satan.  Jesus had come to take back what was lost in the Garden with Adam and Eve.  There God proclaimed enmity between the serpent and his seed and the seed of the woman.  Because of this, the law of strife became the law of life for the human race.

In the fulness of God’s time, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Seed of the woman and the eternal Son of God was born.  As the Son of Man, Jesus was a warrior soldier, not merely a civilian passively suffering the attacks and harassment of Satan.  He was the faithful one, the original soldier of the cross, pressing forward along the lonely road to victory through the sufferings of death.  While on this earth, Jesus healed many who had a sickness caused by demons, He cast out demons, and He taught His disciples to do the same.  Jesus also was a warrior against Satan by standing against the Scribes and Pharisees who were teaching the traditions of men making the Word of God of no effect.  Our pastors are doing the same today and leading us to a form of godliness.  We need to stand against these pastors and their false teachings.

Now glorified and seated at the Father’s right hand “far above all principalities, and power, and might, and dominion,” Jesus as Lord of all is beyond reach of Satan attacks.   The finished work of Calvary is now finished and nothing Satan may do can change the finality of the victory stroke that crushed his head.  However, Christ’s victory over the powers of darkness and evil in this world is now in the hands of the Body of Christ on this earth.  Consequently, the bitter enmity of Satan is now directed against the Head through the members of his Body on earth.

Because of Satan’s hostility, the work of conforming the members of the Body of Christ on this earth into the likeness of the Head’s soldier image is high on the priority list of the Holy Spirit.   Because we in America and around the world have not become warriors like our Head, too much of the full effect of the finished work of Christ has been lost in America.  Satan’s fiery darts are zeroing in today on the members of the Body of Christ because we have not learned to take our position in the heavenly places with Christ by faith.   Many in the Body of Christ face life without taking to themselves the whole armor of God by prayer.  As believers we are in Christ and He in us.  This means that the aggression against Satan that Jesus showed while He was on this earth must be expressed through us today!!!  Did you get that Body of Christ in America?  Do you receive it?  Not to become a warrior for Christ is disobedience to the LORD Jesus!!!!

So, as the Body of Christ in America, we are no longer free to play the role of civilians, living as if there is no war.   Our soldier role is pictured for us throughout the Old Testament.  It is also established by our union with our Conquering Head and is affirmed in the New Testament.  The history of the saints of God in every age is one of conflict.  The pathway of the disciples of Christ throughout the Word of God is one of certain warfare.  If you are not now or have not recently become a warrior for Christ, you are living in blatant disobedience to our LORD Jesus Christ!!!

Today if you are not expressing the enmity God put between the devil and Jesus our Head, or if you are seeking detente, co-existence, and peace through compromise with the Kingdom of Darkness or if you refuse to make yourself available to your Lord as a willing instrument of war, ready for His use in His warfare, or if you are not aware of the teaching of Scripture about your part in this spiritual conflict raging in this nation today and if you do not change your way to that of a warrior, you will probably be the one who Jesus says, “Depart from Me, I never knew you!!” (Matthew 7:21)

Folks, we are being lied to in the Body of Christ today by our pastors and ourselves.  We think or we are told that following Christ and going to a church building is to be comfortable, easy, and little responsibility.  But that is not what Jesus says in Matthew 10:16-23, that He would send us out as lambs among wolves, we will be reviled and hated and all matter of evil said against us, and will be delivered up to the court,

God is serious about His Word and your obedience to it.   Our Lord Jesus and His disciples were warriors who fought the good fight and He expects the same out of you and me.   Repent.  Demonstrate your intention to submit to God and resist the devil.  Peace at any price is not the language of God.  Express your place of failure and defeat.  Put action to your faith.  God says in Matthew 7:24-28, that whoever hears these words of Mine and acts on them is building his house on the rock and when the storms of life come, it will stand.  But He who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, he is building his house on sand and when the storms come, it will fall.  Do you read the Word and act on it?

Some terrible storms of judgment are coming to America for our disobedience to God, especially in the area of failing to resist this evil that has captured our nation and Satan rules over America now and not God!!!  We have put our merciful God to the test and we shall reap His whirlwind in judgment.  We have allowed false teachings in the Body of Christ and we have said nothing but tolerate it.  We have allowed Christ’s Body to be divided because we think our opinions and interpretations are correct but the very division proves us to be wrong.

Our enemies are united against us and the Body of Christ is divided over doctrines – Baptist doctrine, Pentecostal doctrines, Catholic doctrines and on and on while there is only one Church, one spirit, one Word of God and one God.  Someone is going to have to adjust and it will not be God.  Over the years, we have voted in deceptive and treasonous men as President and the House and Senate.  We have not followed our Constitution or the Word of God since the early 60s and evil has captured our nation and we have become a habitation of demons and the gods of Babylon and Egypt are now here – shame on us!!!!

Before I throw up, let me gather myself from my righteous anger and leave you some knowledge from the Word of God to help you in the days ahead.  I leave you with this Scripture in Romans 12:1-2.  “I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.  And do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

1 John 2:15-17, “Do not love the world, nor the things of the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life if not from the Father but is from the world.  And the world is passing away and all of its lusts but the one who does the will of God abides forever.”

Acting on this Scripture in Romans 12 and 1 John will help keep you in the perfect will of God and out of the hands of the enemy who wants to destroy your life.  Many followers of Christ read the Word but never act on it and the danger of this is that we unknowingly leave ourselves open, unguarded to the enemy’s schemes and entrapments and to the demonic strongholds of the Satanic world system.  If we want to be more than conquerors, reading the Word is not enough.  Acting on the Word and applying it, mixing it with faith will change your life and also destroy the enemy’s game plan for your life.

Let me add this comment about Romans 12.  “Conformers to this world system of Satan, their lives are controlled by pressures from without.  “Transformers” are those who renew their mind.  Your mind will remember things stored in it by your old nature so when you read the Word of God, it is the water of God and the Word that washes the things of Satan and this world system out of your old nature and renews the new nature you received from God when you were born again-with the things of God.  Then you can think the way God thinks and not the way Satan and your old nature think.  And transformers are controlled by power from within.

Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher, wrote the classic book, “The Art of War,” nearly twenty-five hundred years ago.  This book is used to train our military and others around the world.  He said this about the enemy: “If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear a hundred battles.  If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.   If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

This is true of our spiritual warfare with Satan.  We must have a healthy recognition and knowledge of our enemy, Satan and his ways combined with a thorough knowledge of the Word of God and who we are in Jesus Christ!!!!   May God bless you as you make these decisions for Christ, that you may commit to become a warrior for Christ, be a transformer to renew your mind, and do not be conformed to this world system of Satan.  Next week – more on spiritual warfare!!!  I remain your warrior in Christ and watchman, Glynn Adams (Thanks to the good men who wrote these books to help the Body of Christ in spiritual warfare: “Demons and Spiritual Warfare” by Pastor Ron Phillips, “Unmasking the Devil” by Pastor John Ramirez, a former devil worshipper, “Born for Battle” by R. Arthur Mathews, “Satan and the Problem of Evil” by Gregory A. Boyd, and “Defeating the Enemy” by Phil Hopper)