My Beloved Brother Steve continues:
The Theater
Once the spiritually inspired speech has achieved the first two objectives of capturing the ears and eyes of God’s Man, the third objective to securing Man’s allegiance is ready to be pursued: Determining the Theater in which the conflict will be engaged.
Everything to this point has been about setting the stage for the conflict. The Theater is the location and environment in which the conflict will actually be fought. Each spiritual kingdom has a vested interest in establishing the Theater.
The kingdom of darkness wants the conflict to be fought in the Theater of Darkness. This occurs when Man engages the conflict on his own apart from Jesus. When he does this, Man gives permission for the engagement to be fought under the rules of darkness. Under these rules, Man is overmatched because he agrees to battle in the dark while giving the powers of darkness permission to use his Elohim Ruling Class authority however they wish, which they then use against Jesus and His Man.
The Kingdom of God operates differently. Jesus, Who does nothing apart from the Father, never leaves the domain of Light nor enters the domain of darkness. It’s in this Theater of Light that He engages every conflict with the kingdom of darkness. And, it’s into this Theater that He lures Satan and his cohorts where their every thought, deed and intention is exposed and seen for what it is.
This is Jesus’ Theater of Light.
It is in this Theater where God’s Man fulfills the Father’s Vision. It is in this Theater where spiritual territory is secured by conquest, where it is transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of God. This is the Theater that terrifies Satan and his kingdom. And, it is in this Theater where Jesus invites us to engage the coronavirus conflict WITH Him.
This is what spiritual warfare looks like to the two kingdoms.
Spiritual Landscape
“What king moves toward the destination of warfare to encounter another king of a different quality and class, without first in time, order and importance sitting down to deliberate and resolve if he is able or possesses the power with ten thousand to meet in opposition the one coming with and superimposing upon him twenty thousand?”If he doesn’t, will he not otherwise send ambassadors with the defined mission to make an earnest request for peace and wholeness while he remains far off?” (Luke 14:31, 32)
Leverage
War is the ultimate risk/reward – cost/benefit calculation. It’s where the parties in conflict risk everything to either get what they want or defend what they have. So, too, in spiritual warfare. While the Theater of Engagement determines where the conflict is going to be fought (in Light or Darkness), the Spiritual Landscape establishes the setting. This is the context for the conflict. It’s comprised of the various factors that have led each party to conclude that war is either the best or only option to achieve their respective objectives.
In this environment, leverage is king. Leverage is an exploiter. It uses something, anything – a device, situation, circumstance, attitude, belief, relationship, strength, weakness, possession – as a lever to enhance power, improve position or neutralize superior force. Its purpose is to create advantage where none appears to exist. It can make the weak stronger or the strong weaker.
David was but a young boy. By military standards he was no match against the superior skill, strength and size of the war-hardened Goliath. But, he leveraged the giant’s massive size and fixed position against him. The weak became strong and the strong fell. (1Samuel 17)
Leverage.
In Luke 14:25 – 33, Jesus is describing the role leverage plays in a person’s calculation about becoming His disciple. His stern advice and warning to His listeners was to get rid of anything in their lives that could be leveraged against them by their adversary. If they were willing to do this, they could be His disciples. If not, they couldn’t.
Jesus wasn’t talking about taking a vow of poverty or having a distain for material things as so often asserted in religious piety. He, after all, had a moneybox and gladly accepted the young boy’s fish and loaves to feed the 5,000. What He was emphasizing was understanding the nature of possession – that whatever you have has you. And so, whatever a person holds onto (possesses) can and will be used against them.
This isn’t a matter of mechanics (getting rid of things); it’s a matter of attitude (getting free of things). And so, for those who wish to be His disciples, they must be willing to give up or set aside everything to see and possess Him alone, nothing more, nothing less. Everything else can and will be used by our adversary as leverage against both Him and us.
”Therefore, in this same way, each and every part of the totality of you that does not lay aside and say adieu to each and every part of the totality of what he already possesses will not be able or have the power to be My learner and disciple.” (Luke 14:33)
In the verses above, Jesus tells us why – we’re at war. He describes the Spiritual Landscape of this war through the lens of its inferior king. This king is calculating whether he can defeat a superior king of a different quality and class who has a 2 to 1 troop advantage over him. The issue he must resolve is does he have any leverage that will give him the advantage over the superior king despite his inferior
numbers?
If the answer is yes, the inferior king will proceed with his war plans. If the answer is no, then he will send his ambassadors to the superior king to request terms of peace before the conflict is engaged.
This is the exact calculation that Satan made. But, since he didn’t send a delegation to the Superior King to request on his behalf terms of peace, he must have calculated that he had some leverage over the King (Jesus) that he (Satan) could exploit to neutralize the King’s superior power.
His calculation? That he could leverage God’s Man against the Superior King. So, while being outgunned 2 to 1 in angelic power in the heavens (spiritual realm), by leveraging God’s Man Satan would retain the advantage in the earth where YHVH Himself had decreed that Man was to have dominion. (Genesis 1:26 – 28)
The only challenge that faced the inferior king was whether he could convince Man to play by his rules. If he could, he could then leverage the authority of Man to control the affairs of men in the earth while using Man to thwart any advances attempted by the Superior King. This would give the inferior king control of half of God’s creation thus making him an equal sovereign with God. (Isaiah 14)
Though the inferior king calculated that this was a winning strategy, it had and continues to have two major flaws that can, in return, be leveraged against him:
First, for Man to play by Satan’s rules, Man must first agree to submit to Satan. When Man does this, it makes him subordinate not only to Satan but also to the entire Angelic Class. This makes Man “lower than the angels,” which in turn relegates him to the class that is lower than the Angelic Class – the Animal Class.
The Animal Class is the Serving Class. So, when Man plays by Satan’s rules, to comply with Satan’s societal order where Angelic Class Authority is supreme, Man’s authority must be reduced in rank to protect against the threat Man’s superior rank and authority poses on the realm. This leaves Man with the only authority that’s left – Animal Serving Class Authority.
The effect of this defensive maneuver is that while Man possesses Elohim Ruling Class authority, when he operates under the inferior king’s rules, those rules don’t allow him to use his full Ruling Class Authority. Instead, his authority becomes, like the king who made the rules, inferior.
“You exalted your inner mind, will and heart [Covering Cherub] because of your beauty. Your wisdom is thoroughly decayed ruining your brightness and splendor. You are thrown and cast upon the earth and land to be set before the face of kings to be seen and observed by them. “Through the abundance and greatness of injustice and unrighteousness in your trade, traffic and merchandise, and the guilt and punishment due for your iniquity, you have pierced and profaned the sacred place. Therefore, in your coming in and going out in the midst of the fire, it will eat and devour you setting ashes upon, over and above the earth and land in the whole and all of every eye that sees and observes.”
“The whole and all of the people who know you will grow numb; they will be thoroughly stunned, astonished, stupefied and appalled with alarm, terror and destruction. It will come to pass that you shall become nothing, a non-entity as far as and even unto futurity, the vanishing point of time.”
(Ezekiel 28:17 – 19) [Brackets added for clarification]
Second, Man’s choice is and always has been his alone. It is the greatest power that YHVH gave to His Man. So, Man can refuse to play by Satan’s rules at any point in time by simply changing his choice. This instantly terminates Satan’s leverage in the earth through that Man. And, the moment Man chooses to play by the Superior King’s rules (listening to and doing nothing apart from Him), Jesus will immediately begin to teach His Man how to rule WITH Him in the full capacity of his Elohim Ruling Class Authority.
“. . .’For truly I say to you, laying the argument to rest, if you have faith as a mustard seed [which comes from hearing the spoken word of Christ], you will say to this mountain, “Change place; depart from here and move to there” and it will change place and depart. Indeed, not even one thing will be impossible for you.’ “ (Matt. 17:20) [Brackets for clarification – Romans 10:17]
We get a glimpse of the frailty of the inferior king’s Leverage Strategy in Revelation 12:4. This is where the Apostle John was shown the pivotal battle between these two kings.
The Dragon (Satan) uses his tail (authority) to drag a third of the stars of Heaven (angels) and violently casts them to the physical earth that operates in time and space. This forceful concentration of his military assets was the Dragon’s frantic
reaction to a single event that he had to stop at all costs – the Woman giving birth to a son who would willing live in total dependence on His Father. That a Man – any man – would so live is the one threat that Satan cannot defend against because he is, after all, inferior.
It’s fascinating that Jesus uses this same 1/3 – 2/3 split in His parable about these two kings of different quality, class and capabilities meeting for war. But, just as Jesus was telling His listeners then (and thus to us now) that it’s impossible to calculate the cost of being His disciple apart from Him, so it’s also impossible to calculate the cost of being His enemy.
The coronavirus and the spiritual forces of darkness that are trying to exploit it for their own purposes are about to find out just how true this really is.