Lesson 1

Our enemy is known by many titles: "the evil one" (Matt. 6:13; 1 John 2:13); a murderer ... a liar ... the father of lies" John 8:44); "the ruler of this world" (John 12:31); "the god of this age" (2 Cor. 4:4); "the prince of the power of the air" (Eph. 2:2); "the great dragon ... the serpent of old ... the devil and Satan ... who deceives the whole world" (Rev. 12:9).

The world in which we live, the cosmic system, belongs to Satan. We--believers in the Lord Jesus Christ--are guerilla soldiers placed by the Almighty God in the middle of the enemy's territory as an offensive force.

Our enemy is bigger, meaner, quicker, smarter, and smoother than any mere human who ever lived. He is a master strategist who has had thousands and thousands of years to hone his evil skills. He stalks about this planet "like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour(' (1 Pet. 5:8). He can break a man or woman physically, mentally, and emotionally--as effortlessly as we might wad up and throw away a piece of paper. But he is no match for God--or for the believer who knows how to stand in the power of God.

Ignorance of the nature of our enemy and of his strategy is one of Satan's greatest weapons in this war. God intends that we understand what is going on and who it is we are fighting. In the Word He tells us all we need to know about Satan and his troops.

There are in the Bible more than 200 references to angels, spiritual beings created apparently long before man and superior to man in power and intelligence (Heb. 1:14, 2:7; 2 Pet. 2:11). Biblical evidence points to the fact that these beings were placed by God in ranks and orders not unlike military ranks. The most common New Testament word for these beings is aggelos, which means "messenger" and is usually transliterated "angel," but they are also referred to as thrones, "thrones;" kuriotes, "powers;" archon, "rulers;" exousia, "authorities;" and dunamis, also translated "powers."

Only three angels are referred to by name in the Bible: Michael, who is the archangel and the defender of Israel (Dan. 10:13,21; 12:1; Jude 9; Rev. 12:7); Gabriel, who is a special messenger to God's servants (Dan. 8:16, 9:21; Luke 1:19, 26-33); and Lucifer, the one we now know as Satan.

The word translated from Isaiah 14:12 as "Lucifer" in the King James and "star of the morning" in the New American Standard is the Hebrew helel, "the shining one." The name "Lucifer" comes through the Latin lucere, "to shine," from lux, " light."

Ezekiel 28:11-15 tells us that Lucifer was the greatest--in power, in beauty, in rank--of all the angels God created. He was called "the anointed cherub who guards," and his responsibility related directly to the throne-room of God. The Greek diabolos, from which we get "devil," and the Hebrew satan both mean "adversary" or "accuser." How did the most beautiful creature to come from the hand of God turn into a murderer and liar and deceiver, the author of all evil? With two words: "I will."

Satan, who like the other angels had free will, rebelled against God. He became enamoured with himself and in his pride and arrogance he decided he wanted to be independent from and equal to his Creator.

Under his leading one-third of the entire angelic host revolted against God (Rev. 12:4). God convicted and passed sentence on Satan and the fallen angels: eternity in a "lake of fire" (Matt. 25:41). Though the sentence has been passed, it has not been carried out yet. Satan has been cast out of his original position in heaven, but at present he holds power over this earth.

Apparently Satan appealed his sentence, contending that God's judgment was not fair. To question God's divine judgment is to slander His character. God will not tolerate this, and so He put into motion a plan for refuting Lucifer's accusations. This plan centers around man.

What is going on in human history resembles a duel. Satan challenged God by maligning His character. God has deter) mined to show all creation that He alone is just and righteous, that apart from Him there is no good, and He is going to do this by letting Satan attempt to Prove otherwise in combat.

But how can there be a fair fight between an omnipotent God and a created angel? In the human realm a strong man challenged by a weaker man might level the ground by fighting with one hand tied behind his back. That is exactly what God is doing. He tied His own hands by limiting His power so that it could become operative only through the free choice of a creature inferior even to the angels: God created man for the purpose of resolving the angelic conflict (Heb. 2:7; Isa. 43:7).

The resolution of this conflict centers on the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Long before man was even created, God knew that he would fall to temptation, and so He provided a way of salvation for all men. In this He simplified the angelic conflict by narrowing man's options in every circumstance to two Possible choices. Man could choose for the plan of God, which is to take the side of grace and truth by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, or he could choose against the plan of God, which is to take the side of evil and lies by relying on himself.

As all creation watches, the angelic conflict plays out in the (j souls of men on planet earth. God will let it run just long enough to prove absolutely that His justice and grace are perfect. In The Invisible War, Donald Barnhouse describes it this way:

War has been declared. The great, governing cherub had become the malignant enemy. Our God was neither surprised nor astonished, for, of course, He knew before it happened that it would happen, and He had His perfect plan ready to be put into effect. Although the Lord had the Power to destroy Satan with a breath, He did not do so. It was as though an edict had been proclaimed in heaven: "We shall give this rebellion a thorough trial. We shall permit it to run its full course. The universe shall see what a creature, though he be the highest creature ever to spring from God's Word, can do apart from Him. We shall watch this experiment, and permit the universe of creatures to watch it, during this brief interlude between eternity past and eternity future called time. In it the spirit of independence shall be allowed to expand to the utmost. And the wreck and ruin which shall result will demonstrate to the universe, and forever, that there is no life, no joy, no peace apart from a complete dependence upon the Most High God, Possessor of heaven and earth. (Donald Grey Barnhouse, The Invisible War, [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1965], 51.)

Satan, of course, was vitally interested in what choices would be made by the first two humans God placed under his nose. Master strategist that he is, he stayed away from Adam, but he heartily encouraged Eve to do something with her life, to develop her full potential as a human being. That the first words out of his mouth were designed to destroy her confidence in the Word of God seemed to escape her notice. At any rate, she ate the forbidden fruit. And, as Satan must have believed he would, Adam followed the woman. Satan became the ruler of this world.

At this point Satan surely assumed he had won the conflict, but his glee was short-lived. God invaded Satan's earthly domain with the promise of the Savior who would come from the seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15) and a demonstration--by sacrificing an animal to clothe them--of His substitutionary death (Gen. 3:21).

From the instant God's promise was given, Satan made every effort to nullify it by preventing the birth of Christ, which would have proved that God could not keep His word. He tried by inciting Cain to murder his brother Abel (Gen. 4), the first man born with an old sin nature to believe in the Savior. He tried by sending fallen angels to infiltrate the human race (Gen. 6), knowing that if mankind could be totally corrupted, the Christ could not come as a man. He tried by repeated attacks on the nation of Israel, knowing that if Israel were destroyed, there could be no promised seed of Abraham (Gal. 3:1~). But he did not succeed, and Christ was born. God had come in the flesh. Satan's attempt to have the baby Jesus killed by way of Herod's decree failed as miserably as everything else he had tried up to this point (Matt. 2; Rev. 12:1-5).

Now all of Satan's opposition, all of his attacks could be focused on one person--the Lord Jesus Christ. Every step of the way, from the cradle to the cross, our Lord was opposed by the enemy in every conceivable way. Not only was the Lord tempted in all points as we are (Heb. 4:15), but He was also opposed in ways we will never understand. Still Jesus accomplished His task; He fixed His face like flint and went to the cross in our place.

At the crucifixion Satan thought for a second time that victory was his. After all, the Savior of mankind was dead. But then came the resurrection. When the Lord Jesus Christ ascended to heaven and was seated at the right hand of the throne of God according to the prophecy of Psalm 110:1-4, it was clear He was the victor in the angelic conflict.

The statement made here by God the Father, and repeated in Hebrews 1:13, is crucial to our understanding of the work of God the Holy Spirit. The Father, fully accepting the work that Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross, declared that He would be seated until His enemies were made a footstool for His feet. At the seating of Christ, a new age was introduced--the Church Age, which would become a reality at the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2.

With the onset of the Church Age the most amazing plan began to unfold. It was something Satan could never have anticipated or prepared for, something he absolutely could not defeat. Before the cross, Satan had had to square off with the one person on earth in whom was the omnipotence of God--Jesus Christ. But now, every person who placed his faith in the Savior would carry within him that same omnipotence by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Every believer is a threat to Satan. We may not think of ourselves as much of a threat, but when we consider that the omnipotence of God in the person of God the Holy Spirit indwells us and enables us and empowers us, then we begin to understand something of how Satan sees us.

"Greater is He who is in you," the apostle John tells us, "than he who is in the world" (1 John 4:4). We are walking miracles, walking weapons systems. The enemy knows that and shudders. He realizes that he cannot change the fact that God is in us. He knows that we have it all, all God’s power available to us from the moment of salvation. The sovereignty, righteousness, justice, love, eternal life, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, immutability, veracity—it is all there in the Holy Spirit.

But the enemy knows something else. He knows that there is one thing we do not have as baby believers—the Word of God in our souls. Without the Word, we cannot know or use the riches that are ours. Without the Word, which is the sword, we have no weapon for the Spirit to wield against Satan (Eph. 4:17; Heb. 4:12). Satan knows that unless we grow, there will not be established in our souls the balance of residence—between the Spirit of God and the Word of God—that creates the power to defeat him.

So, the one prospect that really scares Satan is that we might grow. He is going to use all his wiles to keep us from choosing to grow because he knows that if we grow we will begin to understand that we have available to us the same power that worked in the apostle Paul. If we grow, we will realize that God has a plan for our lives, a plan as specifically tailored to us as Paul’s was to him, a plan that will turn us into heroes of faith, that will allow us to become friends of God. Whether all this will be utilized in our lives is up to us. Our free will is the one weak link between God’s power and us.

Suddenly instead of one man to contend with, Satan had 11; soon the 11 become 120, and before he knew it, there were 3,000, and then a million, and all of a sudden everywhere all over the world every believer in Jesus Christ is walking around with the same power that God in the flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ, had.

Within 70 years of Christ's resurrection, the written Word of God was completed. Imagine how Satan felt when he realized that the truth of the Word of God and the grace of the Spirit of God would be available without measure to every believer on earth.

This is why the Lord could say in Matthew 16, "on this rock I will build My church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." Notice that the Lord's idea was not that the Church would hopefully hold out a few faithful and brave souls against the onslaught of Satan. Instead, He envisioned the Church on the offensive, constantly pounding the gates of hell. In the ancient world the gate of the city was where all major decisions were made; it was the place of power and authority. Jesus was Saying that the power and the authority of hell would never prevail against the onslaught of the Church. That was the plan Of god and it remains the plan of God to this day.

As finite beings with all kinds of human limitations, we are pitted against an enemy superior to us in wisdom, in strength, in power, and in numbers. We have to understand that on the cross Jesus Christ won the strategic victory. This means that the tide of war has turned. When God sent His Son into the world, He paid the penalty for our sins; He broke the back of the devil; He broke open the gates of his P.O.W. camp called the world.

But the war is not over, and we are still on the battlefield. Whether we as individuals win the tactical victory will depend on whether we can apply to our lives the things gained through Christ's strategic victory. If we want to win day by day, we have to utilize the assets that God has provided for us and follow the game plan that He lays out for us in the Word. Without a clear and accurate understanding of the Word, it is impossible for any believer to stand up to the strategy of Satan.

When the apostle John talks about those who are "overcomes," he uses a military term. Nikao refers to peace achieved by military victory. What does it mean to " overcome the world" ? It means to have peace through victory. John is talking about the spiritual peace that comes through spiritual victory.

In verse 4, the apostle makes a declaration of fact. The neuter "whatever" states a principle: whatever is born of God is victorious over the world. Period. The realm of flesh is always conquered by the realm of the Spirit.

"Overcomes" is the present active indicative of nikao; it pictures continuous victory in an ongoing struggle. The key to this victory is "our faith," which John says has overcome the world. This time, nikao is an aorist participle. In Greek, the aorist tense refers to something that takes place at a point of time. The aorist participle in Greek always precedes the action of the main verb.

What that means in this sentence is that the momentary victory of faith in Christ (for salvation) provides the basis for the ongoing victory in the life of faith. Salvation is the once-for all victory; spirituality is the ongoing victory. To be overcomes means that we live in a realm of peace--not an external, but an internal, realm. John's two-fold development here is much like Christ's invitation in Matthew 11.

When the Lord in Matthew 11:28-30 offered to the disciples-and to us as believers--peace as a birthright, He was not offering a tranquil physical environment; He was offering peace with God and personal rest of soul. In the passage, He talks about two different kinds of rest. One is the rest that Jesus gives: "Come to Me ... and I will give you rest." The other is a rest that we find: "Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me ... and you shall find rest for your souls."

The rest that He gives to all who come to Him and the rest that we find through study are two different things. One is a rest of position; the other is a rest of practice. One is a rest that is eternal; the other is a rest that is moment by moment.

One of the reasons Satan hates us so much is that in our position in Christ we are higher than the angels (Eph. 1:3; Col. 3:1). All the things he tried to achieve through his arrogance and rebellion are given to us when we believe in Christ. If he cannot keep us from accepting eternal life, he will at least do everything he can to keep us from enjoying the riches of God's grace while we are on earth.

But we can overcome the enemy; we can share in Christ's victory over Satan day by day by remembering His triumph. When John uses the present tense and the active voice for the verbs "overcomes" and "believes" in 1 John 5:5, he is telling us that the one who chooses to keep on believing is the one who will keep on overcoming the world.

Faith, exercised moment by moment, brings spiritual victory, which brings peace to the soul. But that faith must always be in the person and work of Christ. If we lose sight today of the victory of Jesus Christ on the cross, if we do not apply today the meaning of the cross to our lives, then we will not have inner peace and the enemy will have won another round in the tactical war. All victory is found in Jesus Christ John 16:33; Rom. 8:37; 1 Cor. 15:56-58; 2 Cor. 2:14).

Satan is the father of all religions. He loves religion and religious people and uses both to further his deception of men and nations.

"Religion" from the Greek threskeia, is used a very few times in the New Testament, always in contexts having to do with things external or ceremonial. Threskos, "religious," means "careful of the externals of divine service." But nowhere does the Bible suggest that any amount of care in the externals of divine service can make a person acceptable to God, either before or after salvation.

Christianity is not a religion; it is a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Entry into Christianity is based solely on the work of Christ on the cross, accepted by faith. Growth and production in the Christian life are based solely on the work of Christ on the cross, accepted by faith. Christianity is a total grace operation. Man can neither earn nor deserve anything from God. But in grace, God does the work, God gets the credit, and man gets the blessing. This is not a plan that man would have devised.

Christianity is not to anyone’s natural liking. Because it is absolute, there is no place for dialogue in Christianity. It declares the way to life to be very narrow. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life," Jesus said, "no one comes to the Father but through Me" (John 14:6). No man was ever more narrow-minded than Jesus.

Satan, on the other hand, is very broad-minded. He fosters an infinite variety of religions, but they all have one thing in common: they depend on man, not God. Within Christian churches Satan works to promote the same perversion of the Word and independence from God.

The Bible tells us that the enemy has his own system of counterfeits including a false gospel (2 Cor. 4:3-4) with a counterfeit Jesus who is not the Jesus of the Bible; false doctrine (1 Tim. 4:1); false ministers who tell people what they like to hear (2 Cor. 11:13-15); a false communion (1 Cor. 10:19-21); false spirituality, not by grace but by what people do and do not do (Gal. 3:2-3; Col. 2:20-23); false definitions of good and evil, promoting social action and the neglect of divine institutions (Col. 2:8); and false power (2 Thess. 2:8-10).

As the day of his destruction draws nearer, Satan steps up his deceptive activity. The Bible lists at least nine denials that he will foster in the last days:

1. The denial of God (Luke 17:26; 2 Tim. 3:4-5)

2. The denial of Christ (1 John 2:18-23, 4:3; 2 Pet. 2:1)

3. The denial of Christ’s return (2 Pet. 3:1-4)

4. The denial of the faith (1 Tim. 4:1-2; Jude 3)

5. The denial of sound doctrine (2 Tim. 4:3-4)

6. The denial of Biblical separation (2 Tim. 3:1-7)

7. The denial of Christian liberty (1 Tim. 4:1-4)

8. The denial of true spirituality (2 Tim. 3:1-8; Jude 18)

9. The denial of spiritual authority (1 Tim. 4:13; 2 Tim. 4:3)

J John 5:4-5

Unit 5, Lesson 1

2. What would lead you to believe that there is a system of rank and authority in the angelic realm?

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3. Who is Satan? Explain where he came from and how he came to be the enemy of God.

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4. Give at least five names or titles by which Satan is known in Scripture.

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5. Explain man’s role in the angelic conflict.

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6. What is God’s purpose in allowing the angelic conflict to be played out on earth?

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7. After the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ how did the nature of the angelic conflict change?

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8. What is the difference between the strategic victory and the tactical victory in the angelic conflict?

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9. What is the source of daily tactical victory?

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10. Who are the overcomers?

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11. In what since is religion the ace up Satan’s sleeve? If Christianity is not a religion, what is it?

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12. Name nine denials the Bible says will characterize the end times.

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13. How would you explain Satan and the angelic conflict to a friend? What Scripture would you use to back your claims?

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