This sermon was preached at the opening of the meeting of Synod on Tuesday, 21st May, 1996.
Text: “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 devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:10-12.
THE first three chapters have been taken up with the great themes of God’s eternal love and grace, the uniting of sinners to Christ, and their participation in the benefits of salvation. Then, in his usual way, Paul goes on to the practical side of salvation, important truths regarding the Church, personal piety, and Christian duty in various relationships. Allusions have been made to the opposition to be expected from the world and the flesh, but now Paul comes suddenly to speak forcibly of the third enemy that believers will be sure to meet with in their Christian course. He states in the strongest terms a warning of satanic opposition that can only be overcome by divine help.
I believe that this warning is specially applicable to us now. There is general agreement that Christ’s cause is low just now, and that that decline has been going on for a long time. We speak of a “cloudy and dark day”, but I suggest that a stronger description could well be applied. If we lift our eyes from the local situation to scan the Visible Church, then our nation, and beyond that the whole world, we will have reason to think that this is a critical period in the history of the Church. So much so, that the Church of God is at so low an ebb that it only just exists.
Is there any particular reason for this calamitous situation? I use that adjective because, amongst other things, I have in mind the six thousand millions of men, women and children dying in their sins, and no word reaching them of salvation through Jesus Christ; not only heathens, Mohammedans, atheists, Romanists and so on, but people with Christian connections. Mankind today, apart from a very tiny proportion of God’s people, is a vast mass of unregenerate souls firmly under the power of the prince of this world, that is, the devil. He has been permitted to extend his power to such an extent that the cause of Christ has been reduced to its present alarming level. This awesome satanic power is what the text brings before us.
Some years ago the Moderator of another Church devoted his opening address to an appraisal of the dangers threatening his church’s witness at that time. It was an honest and pretty thorough examination, and ended with the need to cry mightily to the Lord for help and preservation. In due course his address was severely criticised for being too negative and pessimistic. What was needed, said the critic, was to hear of “growing faith, increasing love and tested endurance.” In my opinion, time and events have proved the preacher’s warning to be appropriate, and I have the less hesitation in pointing plainly to the demonic author of the present perilous situation.
Let us consider, first, the description given here of satanic power; secondly, let us glance at the working of this power; thirdly, note the present results of these satanic activities; and fourthly, the response to all this.
First: Consider the description given here of satanic power
Through Paul, the Holy Spirit informs us here of the malice and power of the devil. This spiritual being appears in the Bible as evil with no redeeming feature. He entered Eden and seduced our first parents into sinning, to their own and the whole race’s ruin. Modern religious thought pooh-poohs that idea. The devil is just a mythical being, the personification of evil and suffering. Scripture references are just figures of speech. The devil has become for many a figure of fun with sinister overtones.
But because God’s Word is truth, and speaks of the devil being as real and personal as God, we disregard modern thought and face the fact that Satan is an angel who fell, and is engaged in constant warfare with his Maker, being permitted to do so. And the devil is not solitary. He is the leader of other spirits as wicked as himself, and he has a world-wide kingdom of sinful human beings — he is “the god of this world.”
Satan has had power in the sphere of nature, as recorded in the Book of Job. He is the power behind witchcraft. He can take possession of men, affecting their minds and bodies. He is the active element in spiritism, and I believe, in aspects of modern charismata. What else is certain is that he is always involved in keeping men at sin, in tempting them to sin, and in trying to win believers back to his service. Hence Paul’s reference to “the wiles of the devil.”
We are warned, however, that we have to contend with a whole empire of evil. Thus, we are shown here to look beyond “flesh and blood”, that is, men, to the invisible hosts who serve the devil. Men can be bad enough, but at their worst they are not devils, nor does common grace allow them to become completely devilish. Yet when we see devilish behaviour, as at Dunblane and Tasmania, let it remind us of the spirits of hell who seek to affect men and make them resemble themselves. See now, how they are described.
“Principalities”, mighty spirits leading the devil’s hordes. The idea, speaking in military terms, is of commanders of corps, divisions and brigades. The term “principalities” begins to throw light on the numbers under their command. The term “powers”, or potentates, teaches that these commanders are not leaders in name only, but possess authority over their followers. It is an organised force of demons that we face, not a rabble.
This great host are called “the rulers of the darkness of this world.” They actually rule, under Satan, this dark world of ours; dark because of spiritual ignorance, sin and misery. Think of the thousands of millions of human beings, each acting in his own way and invariably sinfully, yet behind each the influence of evil spirits. When we speak of Satan’s dark kingdom, we have to think of a more extensive and longer-lasting empire than any other we know. The Bible records a little of its first four thousand years. It is sustained by the edicts of rulers, by fake religion, and by men’s self-seeking and aversion to their Maker.
Lastly, Paul calls it “spiritual wickedness in high places”, meaning, countless wicked beings in the eternal world, unseen, intangible, but everywhere, and greatly to be feared for their power and malignity.
All this, then, is the Christian’s worst foe. And by a change of metaphor, Paul stresses that for the individual believer, it is not an army arranged in ranks that he faces. It is not even a hand to hand combat, but so close an encounter that it is called “wrestling”, in which two persons grapple and attempt to lay each other helpless on the ground. In satanic power we meet a foe who can affect the faculties of our souls; yes, can come as close to us as the Holy Spirit.
Does the inspired description give us a clearer view of the enemy of our souls, and the would-be destroyer of Christ’s Church? Christ says, “the thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.” He uses every means to prevent poor sinners obtaining spiritual life through Christ, and aims at destroying the means of grace which the Church provides. Hence, the Church, Christians in God-appointed union, is the devil’s great target. Do we see what the strength spoken of in verse 10 is needed for?
Secondly: Let us glance at the workings of this power.
The text clearly has its main application to individual Christians but, as we have seen, its language brings before us a world-wide system of opposition to God and His cause, and it is that aspect we are emphasising at present. The fact that the Church of Christ is in an exceptionally weak condition at present, is due to the power that has been allowed to him whom Scripture calls, “that old serpent, called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world” (Rev. 12:9). It was as the prince of this world that he assured Jesus that he would give Him all the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them if Jesus would fall down and worship him. The devil has had a hand in all opposition to God from the Fall, both in individuals and men in the mass.
What I wish to do now is to glance, and that is all, at the methods Satan has used to oppose and persecute the Church of God. It is certain that Satan did not expect God’s speedy, merciful intervention in Eden, nor the sentence that a descendant of Eve, his first victim, would bruise his head. Undaunted, though, the devil wrought in the souls of the majority of men in the antediluvian period rebellion against, and disregard of, God, and hatred of God’s worshippers. These were reduced at last to one family.
After the flood and after Babel, the devil pursued a new method, the encouragement of men to forsake allegiance to Jehovah and to worship imaginary gods through idols. With the exception of Israel whom God chose as His own nation, the whole world was idolatrous. The many attacks made on Israel by heathen neighbours were dictated by hatred of Israel’s God. Idolatry had such an appeal for the mind of fallen man that the system has persisted in great strength to the present day in Asia.
In due time Christ came, and the gospel went forth to the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Most of the Jews rejected Christ and opposed His followers, and heathendom did not take kindly to the new religion. In these ways Satan did what he could to prevent the spread of Christianity.
Gnosticism, a conglomeration of Jewish, Christian and heathen features, arose in considerable power in the second century, having all the marks of a Satanic attempt to neutralise the truths of the Gospel. It did not last long, but some of its features appeared later in Romanism. I pass over the heresies which arose in the second, third and fourth centuries, and the resistance to them by individuals and councils. Arianism and Pelagianism were the principal. Some who defended the faith at that time had no hesitation in identifying Satan as the ultimate author of these attempts to undermine the gospel.
Romanism has been called Satan’s masterpiece. It is noteworthy that it was a gradual development, unlike the rise of idolatry which seemed to have affected all the tribes and nations at the same time. Another aspect of this new devil-inspired movement was that where in the first two centuries after Christ, the attack was on basic doctrines like the Person of Christ and total depravity, the new campaign took the form of altering things from their original biblical positions to concepts more agreeable to the carnal mind. When we look at the history of the Visible Church, say, between the third and seventh centuries, we can detect changes that replaced the Apostolic Church with the Popery that lorded it over millions of unenlightened souls in the appropriately-named Dark Ages. Teaching elders began to be regarded as much superior to ruling elders, and this led to the supremacy of bishops and to autocratic church government. Ministers came to be looked on as sacrificing priests, and this led on to transubstantiation. Bishops came to be robed in costly vestments and, favoured by the state, became arrogant. Jerome produced the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible whose errors suited the Papacy. Eventually the Bishop of Rome became accepted as the Universal Bishop, the first Pope, and this man-created office soon aspired to temporal power. Its holders claimed to be Peter’s successors and Vicars of Christ on earth. Purgatory became accepted as a doctrine, and so on. By the 16th century, the Romish system had become a complete caricature of the Church, operating in a way that left its members, the nations of Europe and South America in spiritual darkness; and would have gone on longer had not God set in motion the Reformation. By that great movement, true Christianity revived, prospered and spread far afield. Satan sought to minimise the damage to this part of his unholy empire through the Council of Trent, but Papal power is nothing like what it was, though still a soul-ruining system holding millions in spiritual bondage and attempting by clandestine methods to regain the place it had lost.
During the eleven centuries that Satan, through heathenism on the one hand and Romanism on the other, kept the greater part of mankind under his control, it was ignorance, superstition and fear that he preyed on. Then in providence the Renaissance of the 14th and 15th centuries saw the beginning of a spirit of enquiry into classical literature, physical science and philosophy, all contrary to the repressive attitude of the mediaeval church. Next, there came about in the 18th century what has been called the Age of Reason and The Enlightenment in which learned thinkers began to regard human reason as the best source of knowledge, superior, some thought, to scriptural revelation; and by the end of the 18th century, scholars like Semler and Eichorn had embarked on a destructive criticism of the Old Testament. To them there was no supernatural, no divine inspiration, and Christ was no more than a teacher. One can see how Satan changed his tactics to suit the human condition, as divine providence led men out of the period of intellectual darkness. If rational enquiry was to mark a new era, then let it be directed towards and against the Word of God and the Reformed religion. Human agents were available and became willing tools of the devil. The work of rationalistic biblical criticism became the apparatus that well-nigh extinguished the Church of God.
The 19th century saw an intensification of antagonistic criticism. First the Old Testament, then the New were attacked on the pre-supposition that there had been no such thing as verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. From what is known of the early German “higher critics” and those who followed them, they gave no sign of possessing saving knowledge. Claiming to be Christians, they in fact were under the power of the god of this world; and although, no doubt in ignorance of that fact, willingly engaged in the work he set them of destroying the reputation of the Scriptures as God’s Word. Satan lured them with the hope that they would make great names for themselves as independent-minded scholars, and they had their reward as far as that was concerned. What they left out of account was the wages of the sin of denying the divine authority of Scripture.
Do I need to remind you that our existence as a branch of Christ’s Church came about from the invasion of English and Scottish churches by rationalistic biblical criticism?
Following the great success of the higher criticism, the next attack on the Church of God was by the theory of evolution. Having done much to get rid of the Word of God, the devil saw the opportunity by the use of this theory to assail the very idea of the existence of God. If it could be shown that dead matter became living things of a simple sort, and then these become more complex by a process of descent with modification until at last all the living things we know came into existence; and this process occupying millions of years, the biblical account of a six-day creation by a spiritual being of infinite wisdom and power would be relegated to the realm of myth. Having disposed of a divine Creator, this new theory in combination with the new doctrine of God resulting from biblical criticism, would lead to views of a God much gentler in disposition than the Jehovah of the Jews. God could be regarded as a Universal Father. If the Church could be persuaded to embrace that sort of God, it would gladly gloss over the question, What godlike qualities does the Universal Father have? He did not create; He does not work miracles; He treats sin lightly; He does not condemn sinners to hell; His main concern is how people behave towards each other in the world — and so on. Satan reasoned correctly that the combination of biblical criticism and evolution would bring the Church into doctrinal confusion and worldliness, and become a section of humanity as much under his power as heathens and Romanists, and be doomed to perish with himself everlastingly.
Ideas about living things evolving obtained long before Darwin’s time, but the modern theory began with the publication of Darwin’s “Origin of Species by Natural Selection” in 1859. His particular interest was in the way evolution took place. His view can be summed as the survival of the fittest and eventual modifications of these. Developments of and alterations to Darwin’s theory took place, but whatever the forms, theories they remain. No evidence has emerged, yet many scientists accept the theory of evolution even while they cannot explain the why and wherefore of it. Nevertheless its widespread acceptance by scientists whose word has come to be more and more relied on, has affected men’s beliefs about God, religion, morality and the nature of man himself. The species has been exalted above the individual members, leading to socialism and communism. Evolution’s direct opposition to Biblical Christianity has played a strong part in the decline of the latter and the strengthening of Satan’s kingdom.
As already said, for more holy and wise purposes, Satan is allowed to have a kingdom, and in our time has been allowed to control an empire which has been doing all it can to destroy the Church of God. What we are considering this evening is the tremendous extent to which this has been happening. That such a measure of devilish success was in the Saviour’s mind, we can, I think, gather from the words He spoke to Peter after that disciple had acknowledged Jesus as the Christ (Matt. 16:16). Christ did not say, “I will build my Church, and the devil’s kingdom will assail it in vain.” What He said was, “… and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Which is to say, “However near the devil’s kingdom comes to overcoming my Church, it will not succeed.” Ours is such a day.
There are two more instances I must give of the workings of Satan’s power. Notwithstanding all the wiles of the devil, there were those who held to the Bible and its truths. To deal with them, Satan used a new method, namely to multiply translations of the Word of God. This is a big subject and all I can do just now is mention some of the results of this move. By departing from the Received Text which the Authorised Version translators had every reason to regard as the divinely inspired Word of God, and preferring the much inferior Alexandrian Text as represented by the Sinaitic and Vatican manuscripts, a Revision Committee dominated by Westcott and Hort, produced the Revised Version of the English Bible in 1885. Spiritually unqualified translators and a corrupt text produced a faulty Bible which in fact did not find popular favour. What it did, though, was to trigger off a fashion for more efforts of the same sort, more than a hundred up till now.
These varied from the scholarly to the crude. Most followed the faulty Westcott and Hort Text. Some were paraphrases; all omitted parts of Scripture and some included explanatory notes. Suitability for popular consumption was the aim, as if easy-reading would lead to readers becoming Christians. An outstandingly bad effect of multiplying versions which differed from each other was that they hid from view the truth that the Bible is one verbally inspired Word of God. To an inquiring sinner, the question, What does God say? can be all-important. What then is he to make of a situation in which different versions disagree on what God says?
I leave that and turn very briefly to the last of the devil’s methods which I wish to glance at, namely, ecumenism. Biblical Criticism and evolution having done their work at turning the greater part of the Visible Church away from the Bible and to a wholesale liberalising of the Bible’s doctrines, Satan’s next move was to try to bring the parts of the sadly deteriorated Visible Church into one body, and eventually back into Rome. There is a considerable history to the ecumenical movement, but suffice to say that the keynote of the endeavour is that denominational separation is sin, and that Christ’s prayer, “that they all may be one” involves all churches in the duty of becoming one church. To this end many councils have been formed, the largest being the World Council of Churches, and church unions have taken place, with others in the making. In every case, truth has been sacrificed to consensus, so that basic beliefs have been reduced to a minimum and so phrased that they can be interpreted as the parties wish. Other faiths are being welcomed, and the leaning towards Rome has become very apparent. With that I conclude my glance at the workings of the devil against the Church of God.
Thirdly, we note the present results of these satanic activities.
Let me mention these activities again. Before the flood there was rebellion against God, afterwards there was idolatry, then in the first three centuries after Christ, individual heresies, then Romanism, then nationalistic Biblical criticism, then evolution, then multiplication of versions, and lastly, ecumenism. They are all still playing a part in Satan’s effort to destroy the Church, even the first three. It is man’s nature to be rebellious, and there is no shortage of examples of persons young and old rebelling against Christian truths and ways.
Idolatry, as I said, continues in Asia in those forms of heathenism called Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto and Confucianism. They are not aggressive religions, seeking to spread themselves, but are being reached out to by the inter-faith movement, and ranked among the ways by which man’s religious instinct finds expression. To that extent, they play their part in downgrading Christianity. As for the early heresies, these crop up from time to time in one form or another.
Romanism is still a deadly foe of Christ’s Church. Without changing any of its heretical dogmas, it has softened its exterior to impress doctrinally-ignorant Christians with the idea that it is not so very different from Protestantism, that it contends for scriptural morality, and has definite, scriptural doctrines. Occasionally, of course, the disguise slips, as not long ago the Pope when in South America called Protestants “sects” instead of the more usual “separated brethren.” Romanism, contrary to the vagueness in the decadent Visible Church, has its dogmas, worship and claims cut and dried, and nominal Protestants have sought sanctuary there. The admission of women to the ministry of the Church of England resulted in departure to Rome. Romanists and their friends in the Church of England and elsewhere, have obtained strong influence over the Queen and other Royals to the point of signalling danger to our country’s Protestant Constitution.
As already mentioned, our existence as a branch of Christ’s Church is due to the efforts of adverse biblical criticism in the Disruption Free Church, which in much less than fifty years became grievously corrupted by changed attitudes to the Bible and Westminster doctrines. Separation from the spiritually diseased body had to take place if the Free Church was to continue, and this was done in 1893.
Everywhere we can see the havoc wrought by the ungodly critics of God’s Word, the servants of Satan. Nominally Protestant churches worldwide have ceased to treat Scripture as the source of Christian doctrine and practice. Whether it be public worship, preaching, Sabbath observance, divorce, homosexuality or anything else, the rule is what modern man thinks, and not what God in His Word says. And, of course, the liberalising of doctrine that took place once the Bible had been downgraded, made an end of the gospel and the Christian life. Around us is the spiritual death and moral decay that demands more and more freedom to go further, and that denigrates and tries to silence any witness that the true Church attempts.
As to evolution, accepted as factual in both the secular and religious spheres, it intrudes into so many subjects via the mass media, education, literature, scientific achievement, entertainment and religion, that for most people it cancels out the very idea of a creating God and affects the whole range of basic, Bible truths. Christ’s true Church, holding firmly to the Bible, is faced with the disbelief and sometimes the scorn of the world. Evolution is a fact, they say. It has discredited the Bible and its antiquated notions of creation, sin, gospel and hell are now unacceptable.
I don’t think I need to apply particularly what I have said on multiplying Bible versions or ecumenism.
In the light of what I have brought before you, do you not agree that the Church of God is faced today on all sides with the works of the devil, an assembly of forces so powerful that the Church trembles under the impact? What is experienced, say in a branch like our own, is that Christ’s servants go forth to their preaching, witnessing and protesting very much aware that only a tiny audience will pay any heed to them. Of the unconverted among these, only one now and again will confess to having been savingly affected by the Word of God’s grace. We fully believe that divine power, as often experienced in times past, can make hearers willing, can change communities for the better, and as at the Reformation, can win whole nations to the cause of God. But what is felt at present is the force of Isaiah’s question, “Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” There have been years of labour, yet the careless are still unimpressed, Christless souls are growing old, death and depopulation are doing their steady work, crowds outside our church walls remain there. Neither love nor money, so to speak, will move them from their irreligion, materialism and worldliness to seek salvation from sin. Satan by the force and multiplicity of his methods, conditions people to regard the Christian religion as very much an optional extra which others may have if they please, but not themselves. And so, the Church of God occupies the position of an irrelevance, more or less, in this modern age. The minority who are religious have no time for extremists who press the authority of the Bible. The indefinable God of these up-to-date Christians suits them well enough.
The Bible-based Church of God is, I repeat, extremely small, and makes no impression on the worldly mass around it. And when a branch like our own looks for support from another, it usually has to look a long distance. Then, what it sees is partial agreement, but also differences that do not permit full agreement on doctrine, practice and other matters. So that the cause of Christ worldwide, not only exists in small numbers widely scattered, but in a measure of disarray because of variations in adherence to Scripture. Just another factor that makes clear that whichever way you look, the cause of Christ is in a state of utter weakness.
Fourthly: let us consider the response to all this.
It is in the text: “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.” Bearing in mind that it is the Church aspect rather than the individual case that we are dealing with this evening, what is the Church to do when faced with the surrounding forces of the devil that I have tried to present to you in their awesome magnitude and malignity? These demonic hordes are invisible; we accept their existence and intentions on the authority of God’s Word. On the same authority we accept that these gates of hell will not prevail against Christ’s Church. Therefore, although the besieging forces are more frighteningly large and powerful than the one hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrians who surrounded Jerusalem in Hezekiah’s day, there is no case for giving up the struggle or running away. “Withstand” and “stand” are the commands here (vv. 13, 14). Omit the question, “For how long?” The answer lies with the divine Head of the Church, and only time and events will reveal it. What Scripture tells us is that in due time revival, reformation and the overthrow of Satan’s kingdom will come. The Reformation in Europe came in due time; minor revivals came in due time, and the millenium will come in due time. Meanwhile, the command from heaven is, “Stand.”
Not, let it be emphasised, that we are to stand quaking in apprehension of whatever next is to be done against the Church, but stand, “strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.” The spiritual union between Christ’s people and their Lord in heaven is to be realised by them, and from their felt weakness there is to be a looking to Christ. There is to be such trust in Him and His power over the devil, as would strengthen their hearts and animate them to stand fast, and to do all that is required to ward off the devil’s attacks, and rout him when that time comes. “Be strong in the Lord,” remembering that all power is His, and that He is “stronger than the strong man armed.” Faith draws upon that divine arsenal, and invigorated by it (which is what “strong in the power of His might” means), quenches all the fiery darts of the wicked and uses the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God, to strike at the foe in every way possible.
Verses 13 to 18 amplify what verse 10 commands. All I can do this evening is mention what the seven parts of the armour are. The first is the cordial acceptance of Scripture truth as the final arbiter on all matters religious and moral. Next, there is dependence on Christ’s imputed righteousness against which charges of sin fall to the ground. After that there is the strengthgiving consciousness of a state of peace with God through the gospel. Then there is faith, that reliance upon God that can ward off every kind of attack. Next, the consciousness of being saved that, like a helmet, protects the mind from false doctrine, carnal thoughts and depression. After that comes the sword of the Spirit, the one offensive item. I quote Charles Hodge: “In opposition to all false philosophy, all false moral principles, all sophistries of vice, all suggestions of the devil, the sole, simple and sufficient answer is the Word of God. This puts the powers of darkness to flight.”
Lastly, there is “all prayer,” and with this I conclude because it is most appropriate to our subject, that is, the wiles of the devil engaged against Christ’s weak and weary Church today. Look at the final words, “supplication for all saints,” prayer for the Church in its deadly conflict with an empire of evil. Christ’s Church is to be remembered in our prayers at any time, so important is its security, spiritual health and enlargement. But today, from our text, we have glanced at the attacks from all quarters, secular and religious, which attempt to completely destroy the Church of God, and that make earnest, importunate prayer a pressing duty.
It could be that the present all-out attack on the Church by Satan is to be reversed before long by the infinitely superior power of the Saviour. But whether the time for that be near, or further away, importunate prayer for it is, I believe, the duty of every follower of Christ. I mean, that whatever else Christ’s people pray for, they should in great earnestness and very often pray, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” Plead the honour of God’s name, now so terribly besmirched by all that Satan has done. Plead the lostness of the millions of poor sinners. Plead the weakness and sadness of Christ’s people; pray, “Wilt thou not revive us again; that Thy people may rejoice in Thee.” Plead, “O come for our salvation; stir up Thy strength and might.”
If you, members of Synod, accept that I have not exaggerated the situation in which the Church of God finds itself today, will you consider the relevance of the case to Isaiah’s words, “I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence, and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.” □