This week we continue our study on the armor of God in Ephesians 6:14:

This week’s text in Ephesians 3:17-19 touches the very foundations of our life in God:

To understand the times, I always try to go to the foundation of a matter to see if I can recognize the hand of God in it. We are told in Psalm 90:17, “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and do confirm for us the work of our hands; yes, confirm the work of our hands.” I pray this often because I do not want just to be busy but to be about our Father’s business. I want to know that what I am doing is truly His work, and that what I am studying is for His purposes.

When Peter made his great confession that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Lord promised: “... upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18 KJV). The gates of hell are the entrances through which the powers of darkness gain access to this world. They are strategic, usually planned as counterpoints to the important purposes of God. We are coming to the time when all of the gates of hell will be fully opened.

We are dealing with some of the most important questions being asked at this time: If the foundations of the nations are crumbling, is it not a waste of time to try to shore them up? Why should we not spend all of our efforts and time in building the kingdom and forget about the nations that are doomed anyway?

This week I need to make a departure from our subject on Mobilizing the Army of God. There is much more to be said about that, and I hope to get back to it later. By far the current events are weighing on people’s hearts and minds, and as a watchman/pastor I feel that I need to address some of the crucial events of this time.

As we discussed last week, the Lord had the legal authority to bind the devil and take authority over the earth immediately after His resurrection. However, He did not do this for our sakes. He did not bind the devil because He did not want it to be easy for us. The more difficult the training, the greater the results.

Last Sunday morning in one of our services, I polled those attending by asking the following questions:

1. How many had come to the Lord through a revival?
2. How many had come to the Lord through a crusade or evangelistic campaign?
3. How many had come to the Lord through Christian television?
4. How many had come to the Lord through the witness of a friend or relative?

There were roughly a thousand people in that service. The following are the approximate results to these questions:

     The Christian disciplines, such as daily reading of the Scriptures, prayer, worship, witnessing, etc., are all crucial for a healthy, balanced Christian life. While we should never neglect these disciplines, they alone are not enough. In the Scriptures, we find that experiences, encounters with the Lord and even angels, changed people more radically and propelled them toward their destiny far more than any amount of study could have done.

Some historians have argued that World War II actually began with the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I. Many of the factors that contributed to the rise of the Nazis were the result of the unfair treatment of a vanquished enemy. There were other contributing factors as well.