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by Charlie Wolcott

Today’s post is going to be the second to last post for my series on Spiritual Warfare Basics. Today, I will discuss one of the major tactics the enemy uses against us in battle and then next week I will wrap up with a final post reminding us who is really in charge of everything. So today I will describe a tactic called “Divide and Conquer.”

This is a challenging strategy to describe just via text. It is really enhanced via visuals so I have included a couple links to describe how this strategy works. But little better illustrates it than the Nazi conquest of the European Mainland. There was one man in Europe that actually had the guts to stand up to Hitler: Winston Churchill of England. To get the full picture of how this conquest worked, watch this hour long documentary called “Why We Fight: Part III, Divide and Conquer,” which explained to the US civilians why we got involved in World War II. But allow me to explain the gist of what was happening.

Because England was the one main threat to Hitler, he had to find a way to defeat them. England, being an island, could not be approached by air without being close enough to the coast to fly there and return. Most aircraft had a range of 400 miles, which meant 200 miles there and 200 miles back. There were only two places that were close enough to work. German northern ports were too far away without depending on aircraft carriers. But France was close enough and because of the curvature of the earth, so was Norway. France gave a direct attack from the south and Norway provided another angle from the northeast. And if Germany could take both nations, he could then establish a blockade around the island and wear England down into submission.

Through a series of propaganda and deception, Hitler marched through Denmark and Norway with relative ease; neither nation was prepared for the invasion when it happened. England and France set up a blockade at the French/German border called the Maginal Line. In WWI, the French beat back the Germans by attacking into the German offense. This time, the French went defensive. The Maginal Line was thought to be impenetrable. Between the line and the northern coast were three neutral nations: Luxembourg, Holland, and Belgium. They sought to avoid war, but got war without warning.

The allies set up defenses in position to assist the Maginal Line should the German attack there and ready to swing north like a gate with a “hinge” right at the northern end of the Maginal Line where a large forest acted as a natural barrier. Hitler knew this and attacked the three nations to instigate the allies to move their “gate” and close it in. And the allies did. However, now with the allies defenses in two different locations, Hitler went straight where he was least expected, straight through the ‘hinge’ of this line. He created a “spearhead” that pierced through the defenses and established flanking positions so the main army could simply march through virtually unhindered. France fell before almost anyone could imagine and Hitler raced for the coast. Over 400,000 allies troops got pinned at Dunkequerk and England sent every boat they could muster to rescue them. England was now pinned between two major fronts. Fortunately before Hitler could carry it all out, the US came to England’s aid and pushed the Germans back.

This entire conquest was a large-scale model of “Divide and Conquer.” It requires you dividing your army up to attack multiple fronts of your enemy, and it also requires getting your enemy to divide himself up in attempt to meet you. When properly used, this tactic can defeat armies significantly larger than you are. Sun-Tzu always praised the general who could outthink his opponent rather than outfight him.

So how would we see this tactic being used against us in the spiritual arena? Sun-Tzu says “chaos comes from order, disunity from unity.” This doesn’t really make sense at first glance, but let’s look a little deeper. If you are unified, make your opponent think you are not. If you have order and structure, appear chaotic. We have many fronts coming against the Christian faith in America. And a number of them appear disorganized. In such apparent disorder, it makes it harder for us to see what is really going on behind the scenes.

We as Christians have fought battles over issues like abortion, or homosexuality, or our freedom of religion and freedom of speech rights. But these are all just facades to the real issues being attacked. While we are fighting legal battles, the enemy is coming in through the education system, through the science experts, and creating a “spearhead” that we are doing virtually nothing to stop.

The enemy has also gotten us to fight amongst ourselves, often over trivial issues. There are over 41,000 denominations of “Christianity.” Now a good number of those are quite a stretch to call “Christianity,” because they include many of the cults that only have a slight semblance of Christianity. But the very word “denomination” means “division.” Paul got on the Corinthians’ case over this. Some boasted to be under Paul, others Apollos, others Christ. Paul pretty well told them, “Forget about that. It’s all Christ and Christ alone.” The enemy is succeeding in getting us to split up in attempt to meet all his fronts, and he is succeeding because we are not joined together. We aren’t communicating with each other. We don’t have the same spirit. And a lot of that is because we’ve allowed so many false teachers into our midst. We don’t even know what we need to be unified together on. Today, we are “unified” on anything except the Gospel truth. We have been divided and the conquering has long been underway. Can we stop it?

The whole point of this series is to get us to wake up, and to recognize the enemy’s tactics as they are being used against us. I know I cannot nearly do this job its proper due in these posts, but I want you to be more aware of what is going on and to be alert. Use this post as a springboard to dig deeper to find out what is really going on in our nation, in our church. One thing I have learned is that Satan cannot change his tactics. He uses the same stuff over and over and over again. It comes in very different packages but it’s the same bag of tricks. If we recognize what those tricks are, the enemy will not be able to beat us. He can’t overpower us, but he can outwit us. And he always will unless we turn to our Commander-in-Chief, Jesus Christ.

Next week, I finish this series on the basics of Spiritual Warfare. We have all these tactics and strategies the enemy uses on us, but we have an advantage that goes above and beyond anything Satan can use against us: Jesus Christ, our Commander-in-Chief.

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