Articles

There’s a battle raging, and it’s the epitome of Good vs. Evil. God is Good, and Satan is Evil. Of course, this battle isn’t one we can see with our eyes. It’s a spiritual battle that has been raging since Satan rebelled against God. We can feel the battle, and there are times that it manifests in the natural world, but the battle is supernatural. This world and all of humanity is the battlefield.

Sometimes it seems as if evil is winning. Especially in this day and age, when all manner of evil and wickedness have been legalized, and if a person speaks out against the insanity, that person is labeled a “hater.” How can we hold on? I really don’t know how people cope if they don’t know Jesus. He is the Rock of our salvation and our strength in times of trouble. We certainly have trouble today.

“[[To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, the servant of the LORD, who spake unto the LORD the words of this song in the day that the LORD delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul: And he said,]] I will love thee, O LORD, my strength, The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower” (Psalm 18:1-2).

Fear can cripple us and is a weapon of the enemy, but when we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus Christ is with us, we have nothing to fear. He is our fortress.

There have been troubled times throughout history, and Martin Luther lived during troubled times. He was born in 1483, became an Augustinian monk in 1505, and was ordained as a priest in 1507. The Roman Catholic Church had/has many false teachings, and Luther began to reject things like “indulgences.” He tried to reason and discuss the issues he had but to no avail. Pope Leo X demanded Luther renounce the ideas he set forth in the Ninety-five Theses. Luther refused and was excommunicated. What heresy could have caused him to be excommunicated and declared a criminal? He spoke about grace through faith in Jesus alone.

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

He angered the pope by believing Scripture above the pope’s decrees. He believed that the Bible was the only divine revelation from God. He also considered all true Christians to be priests.

“Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5).

Luther read Scripture and believed it. Brothers and sisters, this is a very important point to understand. No matter what your preacher preaches, if it disagrees with Scripture, he is wrong. Sadly, Luther was also antisemitic, so use discernment if you study his life and teachings.

Martin Luther trusted the Lord through all of his hard times and wrote hymns that encourage and strengthen our faith. As Christians, we need to look to God as our mighty fortress in these evil times in which we live. We must stand strong on God’s truth rather than fall for Satan’s lies.

A MIGHTY FORTRESS IS OUR GOD

Words by Martin Luther

A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing;
Our helper he, amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing

For still our ancient foe
Does seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great,
And armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.

Satan has always tried to put fear and confusion into the minds and hearts of those who look to the Lord for strength. We see it so much in the Psalms of David. He faced many battles, even before he became king. At a young age, he fought a bear and a lion, which prepared him to fight the giant Goliath. King Saul tried many times to kill him. After David became king, he fought many foes, including his own son. David always turned to the Lord for strength.

“For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me” (Psalm 31:3).

God never failed David, nor will the Lord fail us in our times of battle. Spiritual battles are hard because the enemy is unseen and attacks our minds to draw us from our God. Remember, God is our rock and fortress, not our enemy. Many Christians aren’t armed for a spiritual battle. Pastors seem to ignore our mortal enemy and choose to preach “feel good” sermons. There is a vicious spiritual battle raging, and looking at the news headlines, Christians are failing God in the battle and siding with Satan. Pastors need to stop tickling ears and start arming the soldiers for battle. Turn to Scripture for God’s truth, and then don’t be ashamed to stand upon His truth.

“And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).

Seeker-friendly preachers won’t tell you that it’s God who can destroy body and soul in Hell. All they preach is “God is love.” He is love. Like sugar is sweet and water is wet, God is love. It’s His nature to love. He doesn’t send us to Hell, but by rejecting Jesus Christ for salvation, we send ourselves to Hell. Still, God has “rules,” and if we reject the only way of Salvation, then we have made our choice. When we accept the sacrifice that Jesus made on the Cross, the Holy Spirit is sealed within us, and salvation is secure.

“In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:13-14).

If your profession of faith was earnest, then the Holy Spirit is sealed inside you, and your salvation is secure.

Did we in our own strength confide
Our striving would be losing,
Were not the right Man on our side,
The Man of God’s own choosing.

You ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is he;
Lord Sabaoth his name,
From age to age the same;
And he must win the battle.

Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation. Christianity is not a religion; it is faith. Faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).

It’s not by our own strength that we can accomplish anything for God. It is only through Jesus. He fulfilled the Law and the Prophets. We are no longer under the Law of Moses, but that doesn’t mean the Law is null and void. We still have the moral law of God. In Christ we have rest and no longer have to do works to try to save ourselves.

“And he said unto them, ‘The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath. Therefore the Son of man is the Lord also of the sabbath” (Mark 2:27-28).

And though this world, with devils filled,
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God has willed
His truth to triumph through us.

The prince of darkness grim,
We tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure,
For lo! His doom is sure;
One little word shall fell him.

Do you doubt there are demons in this world? Scripture tells us they are real. Jesus cast out many demons from people. Paul also cast them out. I have no doubt that all of the Apostles and those who followed their teachings also cast them out. These evil spirits are in the world today. Too often, their handiwork is named as a medical condition. Drugs weaken our minds, so these demons can possess people.

Satan had a field day in the 1960s. Many people smoked pot or used some other mind-altering drug. LSD was very popular. Since that time, the moral decay around the world has been incredible. We cannot battle Satan or his minions on our own. We get attacked by Satan in many ways. He may confuse your mind, like he confused Eve, and cause you to doubt God’s truth. Another way demons can take control of you is through Yoga, which is designed to open “chakras” and release the kundalini spirit in you. A person is encouraged to clear their mind. This opens you to any passing spirit that might want to take possession of you. We are to meditate on our Lord, filling our hearts and minds with His Holy Spirit and His love.

“Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all” (1 Timothy 4:12-15).

The more you think about God and all that He has done, the harder it is for Satan to confuse and control you. Satan will never stop trying to destroy God’s people, but the battle was won on the Cross. Believe in Him and resist the wiles of the devil.

“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Not by your strength, but by God’s power.

That Word above all earthly powers
No thanks to them abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours
Through him who with us sideth.

Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also;
The body they may kill;
God’s truth abideth still
His kingdom is forever!

God’s word is above all, and He never changes. Satan is attacking so many things that God sees as precious. Marriage between a man and a woman is ordained by Him, but today it’s being perverted. Children are special to Him, but many people see it as a woman’s right to murder the baby in the womb. Children are taught evolution instead of truth, and you can read in the first chapter of Romans to see what depravity that leads to, and it’s “legalized” today. When we understand that we are sinners on the road to eternal damnation, that’s when we realize we need Jesus.

“Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee Ye must be born again” (John 3:5-7).

God’s truth never changes. In order to enter into His eternal kingdom, you must be born again. That takes faith. Faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. When you realize you’re a sinner, you must repent of your sins. If you’re a person who gossips or lies, repent and change your mind about these sins. If you’re a man who has sexual encounters with other men, repent and turn from that sin. Same goes for women. If you have any sexual encounters outside of a one man/one woman marriage, repent and ask God to forgive your sin. God’s grace and forgiveness are a blessing, but if you continue sinning, then you haven’t earnestly given your life to Christ.

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (Romans 12:1).

The choice to repent and live for Christ may cause family to disown you. Jesus didn’t come to make life easy. In fact, faith in Him may cause much friction in your family.

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household” (Matthew 10:34-36). Don’t pick a fight with your family and friends, but don’t deny your Lord.

The spiritual battle is real, but we have a mighty fortress that will never fail; Jesus Christ is our fortress. God provides the spiritual weapons for the spiritual battle we are fighting. Study them in Ephesians chapter 6.

“Finally my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the evil” (Ephesians 6:10-11).

Use these weapons to fight against the wickedness; don’t fight for Satan. The evil in this world is all caused by Satan; he is pure evil. You cannot win a battle with him by yourself. God is your fortress. Stand firm upon His word without wavering. He is your fortress in times of battle.

“That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11).

His kingdom is forever.

God bless you all,

Nathele Graham
twotug@embarqmail.com

Recommended prophecy sites:

www.raptureready.com
www.prophecyupdate.com
www.raptureforums.com

All original scripture is “theopneustos,” God-breathed.

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“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee” (Psalm 122:6).

(An Israeli friend sent this to me, and I was so impressed, I’d like to feature it here as a guest column this week. JF)

Israel’s Bravery

18 September 2024

By Allister Heath, The Telegaph

Robbed of its moral bearings, bereft of any sense of right and wrong, incapable of distinguishing heroes from villains, the West can no longer celebrate when good triumphs over evil.

Israel’s brilliantly audacious booby-trapping of thousands of Hezbollah pagers, followed by the blowing up of the terror group’s walkie-talkies, is a stunning fillip for the forces of civilisation worldwide.

A tiny nation of just 9.3 million, of which 7.2 million are Jewish, living in a country the size of Wales, reeling from the worst anti-Semitic pogroms since the Holocaust, Israel is leading the war against barbarism, its young conscripts doing a job that would once have required intervention by a Western coalition acting as global policeman.

The fact that so many in Britain, Europe and America, especially the young, no longer take Israel’s side in this existential combat exemplifies our cultural, intellectual and ethical degeneration.

The Biden administration is obsessed with preventing “escalation”, even though that is what is required if Iran is to be stopped from gaining the means to wage a nuclear World War III. All too predictably, America, seemingly determined to ensure the survival of every regional terror group, appeared upset at the successful attack on Hezbollah. David Lammy, our foreign secretary, is delivering speeches claiming climate change is a worse threat than terrorism; in a rational world, Lammy would be privately congratulating his Israeli counterparts for the most successful surgical operation ever conducted against a terrorist organisation, with few civilian casualties, and pledging Britain’s help.

Instead, Keir Starmer has turned against Israel, banning the sales of some weapons – a policy that Germany appears intent on following – and refusing to oppose lawsuits against the Jewish state, in an unforgivable moral inversion.

Labour has placed Britain on the side of those nihilists masquerading as human rights lawyers who negate the essential distinction between victims and aggressors, between rule-bound, democracies desperate to minimise civilian casualties, and bloodthirsty dictatorships for whom their people are pawns to be sacrificed.

Hezbollah is funded and controlled by the Iranian regime, an obscurantist, fascistic, millenarian tyranny that persecutes minorities, women and dissidents. Violating human rights and plotting war crimes is Hezbollah’s raison d’être: its 150,000 missiles point towards civilian centres and, like Hamas and Iran itself, it seeks Israel’s liquidation, guaranteeing the massacre, expulsion or subjugation of Jews. Hezbollah has forced some 63,473 Israelis to flee their homes since October 7. This is unsustainable and explains why a major Israeli response is looming; obscenely, this will trigger widespread condemnation of the Jewish state.

Western foreign policy is a mishmash of cowardice, delusion and contradictions. Iran is a threat to the world; its alliance with Russia is deepening. Turkey, led by the despot Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has threatened Israel with invasion, yet remains part of Nato. Qatar, which puts up senior Hamas terrorists in luxury hotels, is a major non-Nato ally of the US, home to a crucial Western military base and a major investor in London. Egypt, a recipient of US aid, has tolerated myriad tunnels to southern Gaza, refused to let in any Palestinians and, bizarrely, is not held responsible for supplying Gaza with provisions, that task falling to Israel. None of the three latter regimes face sanctions: global ire is reserved for Israel.

One reason Western elites have become so Israelophobic is that, infected by wokery, they increasingly loathe Europe’s and America’s history and traditions, and view the Jewish state as a standout example of a Western model they reject.

Winston Churchill would be convicted for crimes against humanity today, as would Franklin D Roosevelt and Harry Truman. D-Day would be ruled illegitimate because so many French civilians died during the Battle of Normandy.

Democracies might as well not bother with nuclear weapons, for detonating one, even in retaliation for an unprovoked attack, would be deemed a war crime. I’m in favour of much stricter rules than those governing World War II, of doing everything possible to protect civilians, but this is madness.

The Just War is a foundational principle. States have the right to defend themselves. Every civilian life lost as collateral damage is a tragedy, but pacifism is a deluded utopia that fails to grasp the reality of the human condition. It is madness to criminalise all warfare, and despicable to focus on that conducted by democracies and ignore that advanced by our enemies.

It is equally stupid to entrust so much power to legal activists. Much historic anti-Semitism has been ratified by kangaroo courts, including during the 1930s. The Trial of the Talmud took place in France in 1240, with rabbis forced to defend religious texts against trumped-up accusations of blasphemy and obscenity.

Other bigot-fests masquerading as ordinary trials include the Disputations of Barcelona and Tortosa, the Damascus Affair, the Dreyfus affair that prompted Emile Zola’s seminal J’accuse, and the trial of Mendel Beilis in Ukraine in 1913. It is a well-established model that hasn’t gone out of fashion in far-Left quarters. They no longer explicitly single out religious beliefs or individuals but leverage lawfare to delegitimise what just happens to be the only Jewish state.

The fact that the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice have the trappings of a legitimate legal setting does not mean they necessarily embody justice. The fact that their rulings are deemed legitimate by Left-wing elites doesn’t automatically make them such. The fact that today’s blood libels take on the language of “human rights” doesn’t make them less monstrous. The fact that it is possible for a country as unjustly governed as South Africa to lead a genocide case against Israel proves that the entire system is rotten. The case is backed by Iran, Brazil’s far-Left president, Ireland and Egypt: we must have been transported into an alternative, Kafkaesque universe.

Israel is the supreme embodiment of law-bound national, democratic sovereignty, of peoplehood, of matching a nation to a state, of post-imperialism, of capitalism and technology, and of the continued relevance of the monotheistic religions. If you tear down Israel, you destroy the very ideas that underpin the West, the international order implodes and the autocracies triumph.

The stakes are thus unbelievably high. We must support Israel, and allow it to finish the job of annihilating Hamas and defeating Hezbollah.

A Mighty Fortress :: By Nathele Graham

23 Sep 2024