Many in the church warn of a contemporary “war against Christians” in our culture. A few examples:

- Kathy Griffin and her recent rant against Jesus at the Emmys.
- Hollywood’s seeming obsession with portaying Christianity in the least flattering light.
- CNN founder Ted Turner asked employees who had ashes on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday if they were “a bunch of Jesus freaks?”
- Bryant Gumbel in a June, 2000 CBS “Early Show” interviewing Robert Knight of the Family Research Council appearing to defend the Boy Scouts refusal to allow homosexuals to be Scout leaders, thinking the mike was off, muttered that Knight was “a f***ing idiot.

Spiritual Warfare - Seeing The Forest

We often sadly fail to see the forest because of the captivating beauty of an individual tree. It’s usually much harder to get the “big picture” than it is to focus on isolated components. But if we concentrate solely on the individual instruments, we will never hear the grandiose beauty of the full orchestra.

We do this all the time in Scripture to our detriment.

Weapons of Mass Destruction: Dirty radiological bombs, Anthrax, Sarin, Tactical Suitcase nukes. Scary stuff. Just the threat of them sends chills down most people’s spines. We tend to measure our enemies by the weapons they possess. The more powerful their weapons, the more fearful they are. And WMDs are considered the ultimate weapons. The big Kahunas. When they come out, the game’s over.

What about Satan? THE archenemy? What’s his most powerful weapon with the greatest potential for harm? The one that inflicts the most damage? What’s his ultimate weapon of mass destruction?

We’ve all seen Hollywood’s portrayal of the classic good-verus-evil confrontation. There is a nail-biting confrontation between the forces of good and the forces of evil with the outcome in doubt until the end of the movie - and evil seemingly wins more often than not in today’s movies.

But what about reality?

While sometimes direct confrontation with the powers of evil may be necessary (i.e., Acts 16:16-18), the battle more often takes place within the context of the gospel making inroads.

John L. Nevius was a missionary whose missionary method was employed to such splendid effect in the evangelization of Korea in the late 19th and early 20th century. Nevius went as a Presbyterian missionary to China completely skeptical of claims being made that demon possession existed there in the mid-19th century. His skepticism was overturned by his own experience and he wrote a deeply interesting, even chilling, book detailing the evidence for demon possession then occurring in China. In it he reported healings of hundreds of cases of demon possession among the Chinese.