The Conflict in the Heavenlies

Life On The Highest Plane

Christ Our Captain

"In Christ" in the heavenlies is the believer's promised land. This is his God-given inheritance promised even before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4, 11). "In Christ" in the heavenlies every spiritual blessing is his possession by right (Ephesians 1:3). Through his identification with Christ the believer has already entered into the heavenlies (Ephesians 2:5, 6).

Christ, his Saviour, has won him from the kingdom and family of satan to the Kingdom and family of God; Christ, his Head, has given him his own divine nature; Christ, his Lord, has dethroned self and has assumed the undivided control of his life; Christ, his Life, has shared with him His risen, glorified, supernatural life in all its fullness; Christ, his Sanctification, has put His blood, His Cross and His throne between the believer and the world, the flesh and the devil; and Christ, his Conqueror, gives Himself in His High Priestly and intercessory ministry for the believer's continuous and complete victory.

All this maddens the devil and spurs him into warfare against the saints of God. It is the twofold triumph of Christ in the believer and the believer in Christ that causes the conflict in the heavenlies. It is satan contesting with Christ His inheritance in the saints and their inheritance in Him.

It is a spiritual conflict. It is a battle between supernatural forces. It is he who is the very personification of evil and wickedness and all his evil subordinates warring against Him who is the very personification of righteousness and holiness and all of His holy warriors. It is the hierarchy of hell against the theocracy of heaven.

Ephesians 6:12, "For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in he heavenly places."

If in this conflict Christ is to be manifested as the Victor there must be on the believer's part a realization of the power of the enemy. It is a very foolish thing to underestimate the power of the devil for we do it not only to our hurt but to the detriment of the body of Christ of which we are a member. The devil is mighty and powerful; he is cunning and crafty; he is intelligent and industrious. His forces of evil are invisible - "not flesh and blood."

They are well-organized - "principalities."

They are well-governed - "powers."

They work in secret - "the darkness of this world."

They are entrenched in innumerable hosts in the very territory where the believer dwells - "hosts of wickedness in heavenly places."

It behooves the believer to know that he is surrounded by the unseen, cunning, malicious, powerful hosts of the evil one who  plots his downfall.

1 Peter 5:8, "Be sober, be watchful, your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."

The believer is the channel through which Christ manifests Himself to a world in satan's embrace, and through which Christ witnesses and works in that world to win it back to Himself. So if the devil can defeat the believer and cause his testimony, his prayer and his service, to be powerless, he has to that extent defeated Christ for he has held his ground in the world and regained ground in the believer. The only way in which he can hold his kingdom is by keeping his dominion over human lives. The most holy and spiritual Christian is satan's greatest hindrance so against him will be launched his fiercest onslaughts.

This being true, not only is it necessary to realize the power of our foe but also to recognize his methods of attack. He is a deceiver and seldom fights in the open. He lays snares to entrap the ignorant and innocent and comes as an angel of light to deceive even the elect. He works most successfully through the subtlety of seduction.

2 Corinthians 2:11, "Lest satan should get an advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices."

2 Timothy 2:26, "And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him of his will."

2 Corinthians 11:14, "And no marvel; for satan himself is transformed into an angel of light."

2 Timothy 3:13, "But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived."

In the garden of Gethsemane we see the devil making his final attack upon the God-man by trying to drive a wedge between the Father and the Son. To accomplish this he aimed his fiery darts at our Lord's spirit, soul and body. All the hosts of hell were united n that spiritual battle to keep Him from the Cross. And now he works in every conceivable way to keep the body of Christ from appropriating and abiding in the victory He gained for it at the Cross and shares with it from the throne. Against both the corporate body of Christ and its individual members the devil is massing his hosts for he knows the time is now near when the sentence against him will be executed.

To understand his present method of attack we shall need to remind ourselves that he has two accomplices: the world and the flesh. The flesh is the material in human life upon which he works and the world is flesh in the aggregate. We shall need to understand also just what the devil is doing in this world which is wholly under his leadership and control.

His aim, as we have seen in chapter five, is the dethronement of God. To accomplish this there must be the undermining of the authority of God in every relationship He bears to man, and the democracy of self-will must be established in its place. To achieve this success satan planned a world-wide revolution in government, in society, and in religion. His plan is to destroy government through anarchy; society through debauchery; religion through apostasy.

The daily papers chronicle his successes in his world-wide revolution in government. Under the deceiving guise of a fair-looking but falsely-working nationalism he is seducing countless numbers of men and women in various countries, some of whom are truly honest patriots at heart, into action that must inevitably end in the overthrow of stable government.

His successes in the world-wide revolutions in society are no less apparent. The immodesty and indecency in women's dress, the surrender of the outward marks of gracious womanliness for an aping mannishness; the laxness in the marriage vow as evidenced in the frequency of divorce; the insubordination of children and lack of parental discipline; the fading of the fair bloom of purity from the heart life of countless boys and girls; the growing unfaithfulness in the sacred relationship of husband and wife which reaches its height in the hell-born doctrine of free-love; the feverish pursuit of pleasure on the part of both old and young: all are but a few of the manifestations of the social debauchery into which the devil is leading the world.

~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with # 2)