Lifebyte 15. Freedom In Jesus Video Series (Part 1)
Certain Of What We Do Not See

Satan’s Strategies (Part 1)

[click here for a printable copy]

In this segment, as well as the next two, we’ll examine the strategies of the demonic forces that are battling the followers of Jesus.

Please answer this:
• Have you ever seen or experienced a demon in your life? If yes, recount the circumstances.

The apostle Paul deliberately warned us to not be unaware of the devil’s schemes (2 Corinthians 2:11). Satan’s such a crafty spiritual foe because he uses deceit and illusion to disguise himself. The enemy of our soul masquerades as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14), so we shouldn’t be surprised that his demonic servants do the same thing. Satan’s agents permeate Christian communities as wolves amid the sheep. They subtly twist Scripture to misinterpret God’s grace and push an agenda that demeans the LORDSHIP of Jesus in a believer’s life.

We want to clarify the strategies of the devil so that you’ll stand firm in the onslaught. This is spiritual war, and, “To be forewarned is to be forearmed.” At the same time, we aren’t encouraging you to become a demon hunter, or to specialize in demonic matters. You need to KNOW about the enemy’s tactics. But, your focus should always be firmly on Jesus and His purpose for your life!

As we’ll share in Part 2 of the Freedom In Jesus series, Demolishing Strongholds, every follower of Jesus has authority in our Lord to evict the demons that agitate or influence them. You need to concern yourself only with the ones that interfere with the freedom Jesus promises you, your family, or those close to you. (See: Newsletter 1999-08/09, Impudence.)

One of Satan’s strategies is to suck you in to such focus on demons that you lose sight of your love and your purpose in Jesus. This has been the consequence faced by many who start up so-called “Deliverance ministries.” Studies have shown that people become like those on whom they emotionally focus. So, depending on whom you focus, you can become like Satan or like Jesus.

Your Position In Christ As You Experience His Promises
Living your position in Christ, and experiencing His promises to you should always be foremost in your heart and in your service to Him. We want to equip you to deal with demons only when they interfere with these two righteous goals.
The scriptural way to deal with every matter here on earth is to set our heavenly Father and His Son Jesus as the central focus of your life. To that end, let’s review the relational priorities of The Restoration Diagram (below). Everything we’ll share with you is designed to help you deepen your relational priorities with our Father and Jesus, your home, and your extended spiritual family who fellowship in each other’s homes.

A particular demonic goal is to keep Christians from experiencing the love that our Father desires with His children. Another is to keep them from supportive intimate fellowship in their homes as they share in the Newer Testament “one-anothers”. If you’re not familiar with the Hebraic foundations behind this diagram, please visit our website. Or, see our Jesus In Your Home video series (free download).

Do you know our purpose for helping you understand Satan’s strategies, as well as his demonic hierarchy? We want to help you effectively wage the spiritual warfare our Lord has called you to, in the way He prescribes. As in any kind of warfare, you can’t just enter the battle unprepared. Several biblical points deal specifically with your responsibility in the spiritual warfare raging around you:

"The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8b)

"And these signs will accompany those who believe: In My name they will drive out demons..." (Mark 16:17)

“The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20a).

Our Father has called you to be His hands, feet, heart and mouth here on earth. As a follower of Jesus you need to be about completing the tasks our Lord has assigned you. If you’re living His Word through the power of His Spirit, you’ll have no fear of the devil or his work. And when you’re garbed in your Ephesians chapter 6 spiritual armor, you can stand firm against the powers of darkness and overcome them by the authority of Jesus.

The Schemes Of Satan
Now that you’re confident that your position is in Christ and your focus is on Him, let’s take a closer look at the schemes of Satan. By their very nature, schemes are disguised in deceit. That’s why they’re so effective. In one particular situation, Jesus addressed a group of Jewish people who had believed some of His message but didn’t yield in trust to Him as Lord. They were trying to justify their acceptability to God through a false assumption that their physical descent from Abraham would save them.

"You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44).

Satan’s goal is to cause all of humanity to be out of fellowship with God. He’ll do all he can to hinder the followers of Jesus from daily living in covenant union with our Father and His Son, Jesus. And Deceit is Satan’s chief weapon to prevent an intimate relationship with our Lord. Think back to when God approached Eve after she’d eaten the forbidden fruit. He asked her straightforwardly, “What is this you have done?” She candidly admitted, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Genesis 3:13).

Believers today are being deceived by Satan in a variety of ways. For instance, how many people who’ve “attended church” for years rationalize their religious practices with no thought as to whether they’re scriptural or not? What we mean by this is that there are so many types of worship experiences that lack any biblical foundation. Many congregation leaders follow approaches that work in the world system but have nothing to do with God’s Word. And what about so many competing doctrines? The 22,000 rival denominations can’t all be correct in their diverse creeds and religious practices!

Church councils from the second and third centuries were heavily influenced by the pagan Greek philosophy and worldview. The decisions from these councils have had a huge impact on today’s denominations. For the most part, church councils interpreted the Scriptures through the lens of demonic Hellenism rather than through the God-given Hebraic foundations of the first followers of Jesus.

The demonic weapon of deceit is found in any doctrine that doesn’t weigh all the Scriptures that apply to a topic being addressed. For instance, the earliest followers of Jesus believed that a person experiences salvation when he stands before the Judgment Throne. However, many faith communities falsely teach that you’re saved at the moment of conversion when you agree with certain Bible verses. Proponents of this deception, which became popular just a few centuries ago, select particular passages to support their assertion. But they ignore the host of others that indicate salvation is found at the end of our earthly journey when our names are proclaimed before the hosts of heaven.

Take, for example, Paul’s command to “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).
Or, what do you think Jesus means when He says, “He who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13)?
To keep from falling into a snare of demonic deceit, each of us must appropriate the integrity of the Bereans whom Paul commended. "Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true" (Acts 17:11). (See: Christian Halakhahs, chapter 2.)

We want to ask you:
• Have you personally taken the time to scrutinize your own faith practices in light of God’s Word?

• Does just the thought of doing this inspire you, or intimidate you?

• What would you do if you found practices in your faith community that were unbiblical?

Deception: Satan Isn’t Real
One of Satan’s greatest successes has been to convince people, including a large number of those who call themselves “Christian”, that he isn’t real. In fact, pollster George Barna found that over 50% of Christians don’t even believe Satan exists. That lie not only nullifies a lot of Scriptural references to the devil, but it also negates why the Lord became man, “to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8).

And as we’ve already shown from the Scriptures in our previous segment:
• Satan is real;
• He is here on earth;
• The governments of this world are under his authority;
• And, he is specifically waging war against the followers of Jesus.

Deception: Satan Can’t Affect Christians
Satan DOES war against those who are precious to Jesus and are indwelt by His Spirit. He’s even capable of defeating those who choose to forsake Jesus and worship at the throne of sin and self (see Hebrews 10:26-31). Tragically, so many who think they’re Christians falsely believe that they’re beyond Satan’s grasp, even when they’re deliberately choosing to live in sin.

But if Satan can’t do anything against Christians, why would Paul earnestly exhort Jesus’ followers in Ephesus, "Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes" (Ephesians 6:11) The word "schemes" in this passage is methodia. It’s a military term that means strategies. Demonic military strategies are being used against us as followers of Jesus! That means we need to recognize these strategies, and take a strong stand against them!

If you’ve been taught that, as a Christian, you’re out of reach of Satan’s schemes, you need to consider if you’re truly among the faithful and obedient who are targeted as Jesus’ followers. "Then the dragon [Satan] was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring — those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus" (Revelation 12:17).

John reiterates that followers of Jesus can be overcome by Satan when they habitually give way to him and his schemes"[Satan] was given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them. And he was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation" (Revelation 13:7)

If we CAN’T be attacked and conquered, why would Peter warn us, "Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings” (1 Peter 5:8,9).

Since this entire series is called Freedom In Jesus, we want to encourage you: Followers of Jesus who are dead to themselves and live for Jesus can be conquerors! Again, we’re clearly told how to overcome Satan: "They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death" (Revelation 12:11).

Our victory is found as we continue to trust wholeheartedly in the atoning work of Jesus, testify to His ongoing work as Lord of our lives, and forsake the world system and die to self-interest in order to serve Him alone.
Freedom In Jesusseries, in union with Christ you can be victorious! But you must fight! And, how to fight effectively and win is found in God’s Word.

Sue’s Testimony
I remember a situation in which the influence of a demonic spirit was revealed in a large congregation in Connecticut. In 1983 the local news channel reported that 2,000 Satanists were moving into wealthy Connecticut to take it for Satan. In a certain congregation the pastor’s wife had a check in her spirit about a woman who’d been attending. Within a year this woman had become head of the Sunday School program. The pastor’s wife kept praying with uneasiness about this. During a time of congregational worship one Sunday morning, she saw a grotesque demon sitting on that woman’s shoulder. Horrified, she went to her husband and the elders and insisted they look into this. When they met with the woman, she admitted that she’d been sent into the congregation by the Satanists to water-down the Sunday school curriculum.

Mike’s Testimony
We could share much more of how the Satanists took over major businesses in the state. In each case Christians could have prevailed, but creedal and denominational divisions among the employees who were believers prevented them from cooperating together to stop the demonic takeover.

Let me share one more anecdote:
In the years following the arrival of the Satanists, Satanism at all levels of society grew in Connecticut. In 1986 I was invited to a gathering of school principals, chiefs of police, and other government agency representatives to deal with the rise of Satanism in the state. There were probably five hundred people in attendance in the auditorium. The moderator was a Jewish woman who was a psychologist for the state police department. Initially, most of the people there considered Satanism some kind of fad. Then, as if God put His finger on me, the moderator, whom I’d never met, pointed at me toward the back of the hall. She asked if I’d address the topic of Satanism from a Christian perspective.

I stood up and addressed the chiefs of police: “You have situations your officers are dealing with in which five or six of them can’t subdue a person.” They ALL nodded in agreement. They knew what I was talking about. Then I told them, “These people have powerful demons in them, and only in the Name of Jesus will these demons submit. Tell your officers to use the Name of Jesus to subdue these people.” Immediately, the psychologist proclaimed to the audience, “This man is right! These demons will submit only to the Name of Jesus!”
There was an immediate change in the discussion in that audience afterward. The psychologist went on to report something that had been hidden from the public: “Most of the violent crime in the State of Connecticut was Satanic-related.”
Please continue on with the next two parts concerning Satan’s Strategies.