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Spiritual Combat, Highlighting Satan’s Pincer Movement
A Military Maneuver
Military leaders have studied the Bible to understand war or battle strategy. Very many times, God makes military allusions in scripture. Almost since the beginning of time, a war exists. The Apostle Paul calls for soldiers and he himself fights a good fight. What strategy does Satan use?
In his art of war, Satan often uses what armed forces call a “pincer movement.” It is like it sounds if you understand getting pinched. My dad would pinch me in church when I fell asleep, so I understand the threat and possible pain of a pinching. The pincer movement is a military maneuver where an opposing army attacks simultaneously on what experts call, “both flanks.”
In 1943, General George Patton led the U.S. 7th Army in a pincer movement against Messina, Sicily, as part of the Allies’ attempt to trap Axis forces before they could retreat to the Italian mainland. The pincer movement involved the British 8th Army moving up the southeast coast of the island, while the U.S. 7th Army moved east across the north coast. During the American Revolutionary War, the British used a pincer movement, also known as a “double envelopment,” in several battles to isolate New England from the rest of the colonies and gain control of the Hudson River Valley.
Satan’s Pincer Movements
How does Satan use a pincer movement to attack a believer on both flanks? On one flank, he attacks with a force of persecution or punishment. Satan threatens the believer to succumb to his pressure of persecution.
As the believer looks at the flank of persecution and moves away from it, Satan lures the same believer with the allurements of the flesh. He feels justified gratifying his flesh because of the poor treatment he experiences. You can see these two working in tandem in different places in scripture.
Anyone in the world of Noah saw what he endured as a preacher of righteousness. At the same time “the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair” (Genesis 6:2). Those are the very two pincers of lust and persecution.
Satan brought the pressure against Israel from Pharoah with his harsh treatment of those people before the Exodus. He made their work harder by not providing straw for brick making. Israel also craved for the leeks, garlic, and onions that they had in Egypt.
Overall, the merchants of Babylon in Revelation 18:15 prospered through Babylon’s luxury under the leadership of the Satanic Antichrist. On the other hand, he makes war against and starves those who are against him in Revelation 13.
The Defeat of the Satanic Strategy
God uses many different examples in the Bible of Satan using the pincer movement in his war against God. Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians 12:11 of not being ignorant of Satan’s devices. Satan employs a strategic approach often likened to a military pincer movement in his ongoing conflict against God and humanity. This tactic involves attacking from two flanks simultaneously, creating pressure that can overwhelm and confuse the target.
The flank of persecution and the other of lust are not the only pincers he uses. Sometimes he couples lust with the intellectual onslaught of false teachers. Other times one side are those false teachers and on the other are the personal conflicts with believers either inside or outside the church. Very often Satan fights his war on two fronts just like the United States faced both the Japanese and the Germans on two different ones in World War 2.
Like all war and battle against Satan, believers must recognize what Satan does. They should engage in prayer and put on the armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18). Believers can also find support and relief from their brothers in the church (Hebrews 10:24-25). They should focus on the Bible, the Lord Jesus Christ, and their future of eternal rewards that awaits them.
The Gospel Is the Power of God Unto Salvation, pt. 3
If the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, then what does that say about the Holy Spirit and His work? Does He have a part? The gospel is a message from the Bible and the Holy Spirit works through that message. The Holy Spirit speaks through the Bible. I have appreciated the language, “the mouthpiece of the text.” In Ephesians 6:17 language, the Word of God is the sword of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit works, but He works through the Word of God. This helps explain one aspect of how the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.
The Substance of the Preaching of the Gospel
Furthermore, the gospel made of scripture or the declaration of scripture itself is powerful, as Hebrews 4:12 says. “The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” This couples or harmonizes well with Romans 10:17, “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” Faith comes by hearing the Word of God.
The gospel is the power of God unto salvation, not some kind of work of the Holy Spirit separate from words. I’m speaking of the unbiblical teaching of “regeneration precedes faith.” No. The gospel is the power of God unto regeneration, part of salvation. Even though scripture does not teach regeneration preceding faith, it says gospel preaching precedes faith. The Holy Spirit uses the message to regenerate, just like the Word of God generated the world in Genesis 1.
The Greek term for “word” in “word of God” in Romans 10:17 is rhema, not logos, both translated “word” in the New Testament. Rhema does not speak of scripture or the Bible as a whole, but an individual passage. Faith does not come from opening the pages of the entire book, but using the specific texts of scripture in the appropriate manner. There isn’t power in a wrong interpretation as if the Bible is a kind of talisman with magical qualities. The power comes through its message, what the text actually says.
What I’m writing fits with 1 Corinthians 1:21, when Paul says “it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” This again corresponds to Romans 1:16, written also by the Apostle Paul. “Preaching” isn’t a tone or a style, yelling or bellowing forth. It is the Greek word, kerugma, which refers to the substance of the communication. It is not preaching the act, but preaching as in the message of the declaration. The preaching is what is being said, not how it is being said.
More people are not converted because someone is more clever in his speaking. People are saved because they hear the truth, the right content, and they respond to that. As you read this, you might think that something else could help the gospel along. I don’t think we should separate sincerity and compassion from the message itself. Paul uses the terminology, “speak the truth in love,” in Ephesians 4:15.
Compassion or the Lack and More Either Diminish or Adorn as Part of the Message
First, it is love to speak the truth, as opposed to (1) speaking error and (2) not speaking it, remaining silent. Jesus spoke the truth. Paul spoke the truth. Also though, someone could speak the truth without love or do it with some other wrong motive. This is one of the wrong motives referred by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13. Though you speak with the great eloquence, that is, with the tongues of men and angels, if you don’t do it with love, it is “sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”
Sounding brass, what I like to call a gong, and tinkling cymbals, which imagines banging on forged metal platters, both percussion types of instruments, don’t have meaning without accompanying instruments that would offer a melody. They also dissipate upon striking, needing to be hit again. Without love, our communication is temporal.
Jude writes at the end of his epistle (v. 22) that compassion makes a difference to the presentation. How does this harmonize with the gospel being the power of God unto salvation? Is it better put, gospel and love are the power of God unto salvation? No, love itself is part of the message. Romans 1:16 stands. This fits with an adaption of the Marshall McLuhan statement, “the medium is the message.” The absence of love lessens the message, diminishes it. I believe accompanying truths buttress this.
Peter says that good works themselves, when beheld in a believer, have an effect of their “glorify[ing] God in their day of visitation” (1 Pet 2:11-12). The absence of the good works undermine the message. They are part of the message of the gospel. Paul speaks in Titus 2:10 of “adorn[ing] the doctrine of God our Saviour” with “all good fidelity.” “Fidelity” translates the word for “faith.” Several other passages provide further evidence for this point.
Good works alone, fidelity, compassion and other accompanying traits of the message do not act as “the gospel.” They are not “the gospel.” Paul extols the preaching of the gospel by those with a bad motive. He says in Philippians 1:15-16 that men preached “Christ even of envy and strife” and “of contention, not sincerely.” Paul rejoiced that they preached the gospel. He didn’t say their message should not have been preached at all.
People are often quick to judge the works and the motives of those who preach the gospel. They did that with Paul himself. I write to make this point though, that the gospel doesn’t need the accompanying aspects of a good motive, good works, and effective style to work. If it is the gospel, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.
Every professing Christian at times thinks of himself or feels he is not worthy to preach the gospel. He could not possibly represent it with his life. That is not to say he should not strive to live a life that matches or correlates with a true gospel that he preaches.
I’m saying that a weak confidence due to personal struggle with the flesh should not impede or stop gospel preaching. This is one reason why someone puts on the helmet of salvation before he picks up the sword of the Spirit in Ephesians 6. The helmet protects the head, the source of thoughts that debilitate spiritual warfare, using the Word of God.
More to Come
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