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by Charlie Wolcott

In the last three months, I do hope you have learned a lot about what God has shown me about spiritual warfare. There is so much more I would like to share, but at this time, God has told me this is enough for now. My prayer is that you have taken the concepts in these posts and used them to look at our situation as Christians in a deeper and newer level. Just in the writing of these posts, I have grown in my walk and am starting to recognize more of these tactics and strategies as they are being used.

Today, I am going to finish this series on a high note. The enemy has been a brilliant tactician against us as a church, and for us being weak, feeble-minded humans, we have fallen so often to his strategies. But do not fear. As followers of Christ, we have on our side the one person who did not fall even once to Satan’s strategies: that person is Christ himself.

In reality, in all of Satan’s planning, scheming, and strategizing, Jesus is above and beyond anything Satan can imagine. Think about this. Satan could not stand that the Son of Man was beating him in every step during Jesus’ ministry. Jesus could not be touched. Several times the people tried to stone him or throw him off a cliff and he simply walked right through them. Satan was livid and he searched and searched and searched for any opportunity to take him down. And he found his chance.

He found a weak spot in Jesus’ inner circle: Judas. If you look throughout the Gospels, Judas was the one always questioning what Jesus did, especially when money was involved. Judas was the money handler for the ministry, which is interesting because Matthew had previously made a living dealing with money. Satan got Judas to trade Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. Satan then worked through the Pharisees and even Pilate to have Jesus beaten to a pulp and then crucified, the most brutal form of execution at that time. From a military perspective, this was an ingenious plan. The one person who could stop Satan from maintaining his rule over this world was dead.

But in all his cunning and planning, Satan was the one duped. Satan truly thought he had won, but all he did was walk right into God’s plan and carried it out for him. He thought he had captured Jesus and defeated him. Yet Jesus said no one could take his life. Rather, he laid it down willingly. He had the power to lay it down. He also had the power to take it back. Satan never understood this.

It gets better. The fact that some of the prophecies of the Messiah, including Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, and Zechariah 11, talk about the manner in which Jesus died. This is incredible because the all these were written between 400 and 1000 years before Jesus lived as a human on earth. Remember that crucifixion was not a method of execution that existed during the time these prophecies were written. Also during some of these prophecies, it was not conceived that a Gentile nation, such as Rome, would conquer them. How is this possible? It isn’t, unless there is a sovereign God overseeing the entire thing. What is truly incredible is that Satan knew about these prophecies. He knows Scripture. He knows what God says. He even quoted Scripture to Jesus. It was out of context and seeking to misapply the promise, but he knew Scripture. So why did he go after Jesus exactly the way the prophecies said he would? The answer is simple. He didn’t understand what he was doing. No one understood what they were doing when they crucified Jesus. It was a brilliant plan, but none of those involved understood the whole picture. If they had, they would never have crucified him. For Jesus to conquer death, to pay the redemption for sin, he had to perfectly fulfill the Law and the prophecies about him. All it took was one prophecy missed for Jesus to not be the Messiah. I wrote about the “Messiah Test” back in November. Check it out to get a deeper picture. The key point is this: if I was Satan and dealing with the Messiah, I would do everything in my power to get him to break just one of the promises. Did you know that the Jewish execution was stoning, yet the prophecy of Christ’s death would be “hanging on a tree” which is now known as “crucifixion”? All Satan had to do was to make sure Jesus did not die by crucifixion. Yet he couldn’t because of the Roman government. The Jews could not execute Jesus. Rome had to. In all Satan’s planning, all he did was walk into God’s far superior plan.

Jesus outwitted, outsmarted, and beat Satan. And he did so by being completely obedient to his Father. He did not stray one bit. If you want victory over Satan, all you have to do is simply obey the Father. You cannot do this in your own strength, but if you believe in Jesus Christ, if you are covered by the blood of Jesus and have been born again, you have access to all Jesus had to defeat Satan. If you are obedient to God, Satan has no legal power over you. He only has power over you as long as you walk in sin.

I said at the beginning of this series that Satan is a defeated foe. And like 2000 years ago, he is coming for one last attempt to defeat God at his own game. Much can be said about end times prophecies, but I am not going to get into details on that. What I do know is that Satan is going to gather all the world’s armies together and advance upon God’s people to destroy them. And when that time comes, Jesus is going to return, not as a meek, mild baby, but as a conquering King. Jesus is our Commander-in-Chief. He is known as the Commander of the Army of the Lord. There is no better Commander out there to serve. He has a 100% winning record and the final battle is coming. God has shown us how the end of the story will go. Satan, in all his wit and planning, is again going to walk right into God’s plan and perfectly fulfill it.

Which side are you on? The side that thinks they are going to win, but are raging against God in futility? Or are you allied with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords who never loses? To be allied with God, we have to go by his rules. I have accepted God’s offer on his terms, to follow him wherever he leads me. I strive to follow his orders, even if it results in opposition or even my death. And in nearly 25 years of following him, God has never failed to fulfill what he promised. I don’t follow him because of what I get out of it. I follow him because he is the King and he deserves to be followed and worshipped no matter what happens to me. He may lead me into battle, he may lead me behind the scenes. But either way, I am available for him to use me as he wishes.

So this is the conclusion of my series on some spiritual warfare basics. I will touch on this subject again later down the road, but this should give you a foundation to work with to understand what we are facing and how our enemy is working. I pray this encouraged you and strengthened you to carry on and fight the good fight for the glory of our Commander-in-Chief, the Lord Jesus Christ.

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