Spiritual Warfare

Man has invented machines to do most of his work for him, especially over the past 200 years. But now we have crossed a threshold where man is turning over his thinking to machines. First radio, then television, then the computers, smartphones, the Internet, social media have done to mankind what all the kings and conquerors of all the ages could not do, and that is to bring all of humanity under...

What does paganism look like? It looks exactly like the marriage of religion, patriotism, and worldliness that we are seeing in our culture right now. Paganism is the worship of nature, the worship of animals, the empowerment of the feminine over the masculine, the removal of all moral absolutes, the extinguishing of all hope, and the eventual collapse of the civilization. It looks like darkness,...

Religion without holiness is the first step to paganism. ALL religions outside of true Bible-believing Christianity reject the moral law of God. When people turn their back on God and his church the issue is always practical righteousness, holiness, reverence, and separation from this ungodly world. Paganism is based upon the belief that nothing is absolute - nothing is absolutely wrong, nothing i...

The descent into darkness described in the first chapter of Romans is primarily a description of mankind as a whole, or individual countries or cultures, because the slide into paganism happens corporately. Nations or peoples do it together, and that is a major reason that it has such power when it gains control. It starts with a knowledge of God. Man did not start out as pagan, he started out fel...

The issue that drives everything on earth is the battle between good and evil. To fail to understand that there really only two sides engaged in this spiritual battle always leads to being deceived by the evil. The battle waged by evil is to confuse, compromise, mix the two up together, and eventually change places so that good is called evil, and evil is called good. All gods except Almighty God...

There are really only two forms of religion in this world: the worship of the true and only God, or paganism. There is faith in Almighty God, who created the heavens and the earth and all that is therein, who has revealed himself to man through the written Word of God, and his only begotten Son, who came to earth and died for the sins of mankind and rose from the dead, and also by the Creation tha...

The Lord is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer, my savior. He is the theme of my life and my everything. When all is said and done, God is all there is. David gave God the honor, the glory, the credit for everything he ever accomplished, and every blessing he ever enjoyed. When we learn to live with God as the biggest thing in our life, our soul, our mind, and our heart, we will know what victory...

Sin divides a man against himself. He has violated his conscience and lost his innocence, and sees himself different than he ever did before. An inner conflict is set up from that moment on; there is an internal struggle with himself, good against evil. It is that enmity in Ephesians 2 that can only be abolished when we are born again and reconciled to God. The old man is crucified with Christ. Th...

To be weary is to be exhausted physically, and/or mentally. It is when you think and say things like, "I am sick of this." "I have had it with this." "I'm tired of this." It can also be the result of being, or feeling defeated. It happens to all us, over and over through life; as long as we are living we will feel weary often, because life is a struggle. God does not tell us not to be weary, but n...

Love is the diminishing of self. Love does not exist until we value someone else more than we do ourselves. Until we desire their good more than we desire our own. Until we count their life more important than our own. This is not just a higher type of love, this IS the Bible definition of what love is. This love is the very evidence of being born again, and the lack of it is the evidence of being...

I never envisioned a world like this, and I do not know anyone who did. We knew that "evil men and seducers would wax worse and worse" but we never imagined that it would be like this. We expected more of the same kind of sin we were seeing 40 years ago, and we expected it to be more and more widespread and common, but we did not expect the insanity and the madness that we are seeing now. We shoul...

God views man and his history forward and backward by generations, not by the present only. We have a strong tendency to only look at the present; at our own generation, and our own experience. This makes our view, and therefore, our comprehension of everything that matters very small and narrow. Judging and discerning truth by our little life and our few short years of experience on this earth is...

There are certainly times when people who leave a church have been done wrong. Offenses are a part of life in any kind of social setting, including church. There are an abundance of Scriptures that instruct us and command us concerning the issue of being offended, and how we are to deal with it Biblically and righteously before God. But it is also clear to me after over 40 years of preaching and b...

Hypocrisy is defined as simulation, or pretending to be what you are not, and also dissimulation, which is hiding what you really are by having multiple versions of yourself that you present to others. Both of these aspects of hypocrisy are based in dishonesty and lies. Hypocrisy is the leaven that has leavened the whole of humanity. It has become almost all that life is about for almost the whole...

Hypocrisy is the omission of truth, and/or the addition of lies. This must be done with words, which are the utterance of thought. So hypocrisy begins with the manipulation of thoughts through the use of words. Do not allow your mind to be deceived by distortions of truth through the shell games people play with words. Satan is a master wordsmith and this is his game. Remember that truth is fixed...

Hypocrisy is basically having multiple personalities. Dissimulation is part of the definition of hypocrisy. It is like "simulation" but with the "di" it means pretending to be two (or more) different people at the same time. The inner conflict and confusion affects the emotions and makes them hard to control. Thus, we have moods, which in fact are multiple spirits that we allow ourselves to be sub...

The traits of Jezebel all speak of pride, rebellion, and selfishness. These things are ugly, abominable, and sinful in anyone, man or woman. A simple study of the name and its meaning tells us that she is an impudent, daring, vitious woman. She is shameless; lacks modesty; is bold, with contempt of others; saucy. She is impure and immoral. She is defective; there is something wrong with her in her...

Satan's spiritual attack against you will come in three ways. He will try to convince you to believe that you have done too much, and the mess you have made of your life is too much for God to fix. He will also tell you that you are not worth God's concern; you have nothing to offer, or your problem is too insignificant for God to be bothered with. He will also tell you that it is too late for you...

Purity and pollution both affect the way we view the world around us. To the pure all things are pure. He looks for the good, finds it, and rejoices in it. Them that are unbelieving and defiled in their mind and conscience only look for the bad and find it in everything and everyone. Rotten fruit is sweet to a worm but noxious to normal people. These are the two kinds of people in this world. When...

Throughout the Scriptures purity is more often than not connected with our interaction with other people. The matter of purity is not simply for our own sake, or so we can be right with God, it is necessary in order to be right with others. Every relationship between people is affected by purity or the lack thereof. More than that, we can say that it is one of the pillars of any relationship. If y...

The primary meaning of religion, by it's definition, refers to the true God and the Savior. The word has been misused and slandered so that now most people have the wrong perception when they hear the word. But it is in the Bible and it is our subject. There is only pure religion and vain religion. Pure religion has two identifying marks: more concern for others than for self, and not defiled by t...

We purify water, air, coffee, oil, fuel, and all kinds of other liquids by running them through a filter. We cannot hope to remain morally pure in a world like this unless we have a filter. We cannot hope for our children to remain pure unless they have a filter. We can be their filter while they are very young, but every day as they get older they will see and hear more from this world, and they...

To be pure is to be clean; it is to be free of pollution and unadulterated. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." There is no such promise to those who are not pure in heart. This world is a very unclean place. We are swimming in filth up to our necks all the time. We are bombarded with pornography, profanity, blasphemy, and violence in everything we look at and listen to. There...

Jesus said that the world would be like it was in Noah's day just before He comes again. The earth was filled with violence then, and it is approaching that same condition now. While we are focusing on all the wars going on in the world, that "same spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience" is filling the children and young people of this generation with the spirit of violence. Video gam...

A pure heart is a heart that has its affection set on God above everything and everyone else. The "perfect heart" that is mentioned many times in the Scripture is that heart that will not turn away from God. A pure heart cannot be wooed or drawn away, and is described in Solomon's Song this way: "I have found Him whom my soul loveth, I held him, and would not let him go."