Who Is the Enemy?

I am writing this in response to really great question from one of our faithful blog followers. Sometimes, even as believers we tend to forget who the real enemy is. Some people go their whole lives never really thinking about this. Yet other people find themselves blaming everything on Satan. “The Devil made me do it.”

To accurately answer this question we are going to have to take a look at history. Interestingly enough, we can see this history best in Revelation (Revelation12: 1-13). This beautifully haunting vision is of a dragon which the author of Revelation, John, sees fighting against the angels. This dragon is actually Satan. He fights against the angels of heaven, and it says that he swept a third of the stars from the sky with his tail (Revelation 12:4). He took with him a third of the angels when he turned his back on God. In Ezekiel 28:12-19 we see another description of him before his fall. He was beautiful and perfect, but he became prideful and attempted to exalt himself in heaven.

Man’s trouble with Satan began in Eden (Genesis 3:1-4). We were created to be like God. We are the spitting image of our Father. Satan attempted to attain greatness and be like God, and we were just given that gift. Now that is not to say in ANY way that we are above or even close to being as great as God. However, we do bear a striking resemblance. The enemy sees us and wants to bring us low, as he is low, in order to hurt our creator. It would be similar to an artist making a great masterpiece, and then someone taking it and reducing it to something ridiculous and sad. Talk about a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

Since we have walked the earth, Satan has sought to destroy us. We read about his scheming and his working against us in the New Testament over and over again. (1 Peter 5:8, 2 Corinthians 11:14, James 4:7). The list goes on and on. He is a murderer. He is a liar. He is a deceiver. He is a thief. He has chosen to encompass the antithesis of God.

He, unfortunately, is not alone. As I said before, Revelation shows us that he took many other angels with him when he fell from grace. To us they are known as demons or evil spirits. They walk about unseen in our world and put in man the desire and thought to do unspeakable things. Have you ever read about a crime and thought, “What causes an otherwise sane person to do something like that?” Good chance that there is an evil spiritual influence there. That’s not to take away from personal responsibility. We do not have to listen to those thoughts or go along with what is suggested. In other words, we do not have to eat the poison that is set in front of us, but so many people, even believers, dive right in and consume it all. We would like to think that we are above doing so many things, “I would never…” But so many fall. What makes us think we are above temptation? The truth is God gives us freedom and strength to withstand such things.

I know that all this talk about Satan and evil spirits in modern society is really unusual. We really don’t believe in things that we don’t see, but this is the truth guys. There is an enemy, and he wants nothing more than for you to be mute, ignorant, inactive, and satisfyingly numb. If you aren’t doing anything in the name of the kingdom of God, you aren’t hurting him. To those of us who do stand and do try to represent the Father in all that we do, we know all too well the scars and wounds that can come from doing battle in the spirit realm.

I hope this answers questions for those of you who were wondering about who we are talking about when we say, “The enemy”. For those of you who have been believers for a long time, I hope that this gives you a little more background into who has been pushing against you all this time. Thank you for the request and feel free to ask for anything else that you would like to learn about.