Are We Really In A War?

[Tranquil]

Be assured, spiritual warfare is a reality in the life of every believer. When you open the pages of the New Testament, there is no shortage of passages that characterize the Christian as a warrior and the Christian life as a battle. We are called to a grim struggle with unseen forces, and the fight is real.

This charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may wage the good warfare. (1 Timothy 1:18)

Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life. (1 Timothy 6:12)

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. (2 Timothy 4:7)

You therefore must endure hardship a sa good soldier of Jesus Christ. (2 Timothy 2:3)

No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. (2 Timothy 2:4)

Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong. (1 Corinthians 16:13)

Commenting on these passages, pastor and writer J. C. Ryle said this: “Words such as these appear to me clear, plain, and unmistakable. They all teach one and the same great lesson, if we are willing to receive it. That lesson is, that true Christianity is a struggle, a fight, and a warfare.”


DON’T BELIEVE IN A DEVIL?

Men don’t believe in a devil now,
As their fathers used to do;
They’ve forced the door of the broadest creed

To let his majesty through;
There isn’t a print of his cloven foot,
Or a fiery dart from his bow,
To be found in earth or air to-day,
For the world has voted so.

But who is mixing the fatal draft
That palsies heart and brain,
And loads the earth of each passing year
With ten hundred thousand slain?
Who blights the bloom of the land to-day
With the fiery breath of hell,
If the devil isn’t and never was?
Won’t somebody rise and tell?
ALFRED J. HOUGH

Know it or not, like it or not, you and I are in a war! And we need to begin living as if we were in a battle for our lives. Because, in fact, we are.
Stu Weber

 

[JoshebB]

Be assured, spiritual warfare is a reality in the life of every believer. When you open the pages of the New Testament, there is no shortage of passages that characterize the Christian as a warrior and the Christian life as a battle. We are called to a grim struggle with unseen forces, and the fight is real.

This charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may wage the good warfare. (1 Timothy 1:18)

That is true BUT it is equally true the "war" we fight is on the behalf of Someone who is ALMIGHTY, Someone who is omni-attributed. Logically speaking it is impossible for the creature to overcome the Creator, for the finite to ever eclipse the Infinite. Doing so would be like a child blowing spitwads through a straw at the center of a nuclear explosion. The blast does not even know the child, the straw, and the spitwad exist. It simply incinerates everything in it path. To understand "war," battle," and the language of conflict in scripture correctly it is necessary and incumbent to understand no war exists a fraction of a nanosecond longer than the Creator permits it to exist.

God could instantly speak everyone's existence out of existence, and He could do it so forcefully that all record of our existence would be gone from recollection and record. Scriptural mentions of conflict and contest ALWAYS occur within that context.

Know it or not, like it or not, you and I are in a war! And we need to begin living as if we were in a battle for our lives. Because, in fact, we are.
Stu Weber

Appeals to extra-biblical sources do not replace scripture or its authority. If Mr. Weber (or any other Christian teacher) do not speak to the omni-attributed might of God they are leaving out something critically important.