CAPTURED BY THE ENEMY
Although many Old Testament scriptures portray death by the sword as the conclusion of warfare, many other scriptures report that enemies capture people and take them away to their kingdoms where they remain captive until God rescues them. Unless we read very carefully, however, we will not recognize that God allows enemies to capture Israel and the ark of god because God uses the enemy to punish Israel for its unfaithfulness. These situations are referred to as “exile” to religious kingdoms such as Assyria and Babylon. Exile is the basic tool that God uses to discipline his people.
On a few other occasions, during seasons of Israel’s faithfulness to enter into warfare with its enemies, Israel is empowered to capture the enemy because God is with them. But these are the exceptions.
After Solomon’s death, Israel divided into two kingdoms. The northern kingdom is called Ephraim and the southern kingdom is called Judah. Both kingdoms worshiped other gods and eventually fought with each other.
It is instructive to review the dynamics of all of these conflicts. The winning king took the people from the defeated kingdom home and forced them to worship the gods and idols of his kingdom. The captives became servant/slaves who are obligated to worship the king who was commonly considered to be divinely appointed to his kingship.
This is the context in which God sets people free from religion in which they are obliged to worship other gods (i.e. kings that function as religious leaders). The same thing goes on today, but religious kings win only by using words that deceive.
God wins the war when angels (i.e. messengers) to speak truth in love to the captives who perish in their religion. God wins when his people (i.e. sheep) are saved/redeemed/delivered from the control of shepherds who feed only themselves. The blind and deaf sheep of these shepherds are healed when they respond to the good news of the gospel (i.e. that they can be free from bondage to religion) with humility and repentance.
While God eventually wins in the end, it always appears that the enemy wins in the short run because God’s patience gives people plenty of time to come to awareness that religion is oppressive. In reality, however, the enemy is not winning the war. God allows a season of plagues, delusions and lies with which he punishes them until judgment day comes.
It is critical to have this picture in mind when trying to understand who or what the enemy is and how to redeem people who have been captured and enslaved. Each religious kingdom (e.g. denomination, church, ministry, etc.) has captives/slaves that serve and adore leaders because they have a deceptive appearance of godliness and flattering tongues that entice them to follow them into religion. Religious people voluntarily enslave themselves except to the degree that they are intoxicated with religion and do not know it. Some may want to be set free and others who are more intoxicated have no clue that freedom from religion is possible or good. The soldier’s job is to share the truth about religion with captives who want to be set free from religion and create the spiritual environment in which all religious captives will find the soldiers’ freedom and courage attractive and desirable.
That sounds simple enough but there is a catch: Enemy kings who fear losing their servant/slaves will resist all efforts by others to rescue their slaves. They will do whatever they need to do to hold onto their slaves and discredit, disarm and disable those who want to set the captives free. And they will do it in all sincerity thinking that they are serving God. This is the spiritual environment in which God’s soldiers contend with the enemy for people who were formerly slaves in ungodly kingdoms and guide them into God’s kingdom where they will be free.
This ongoing battle is the basic story of the Bible. It is a story told in a variety of ways at the personal and community level. It is all about the challenges of getting free from religion and then going back to set other captives free. Fighting this battle with religious enemies is the fulfillment of scripture that says it is for freedom that we have been set free. But this scripture does not mean only that we should live lives free from religion but that we should also help others who are still religious gain their freedom. In other words, we overcome religion and then help others overcome it.
Going into battle with religion to help others gain freedom from religion is the ultimate expression of loving our neighbors as ourselves. That is what Jesus did and that is what all New Covenant disciples also do when they challenge and confront religious leaders (i.e. Pharisees) about their religious beliefs and traditions. These conflicts with religious leaders are the substance of spiritual warfare with the powers and authorities (i.e. enemy) of the world of religion.
STUDY TIP: See this link for more about loving your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus is the best example of obedience to God’s command to utterly destroy religious kingdoms. King David, was also a warrior who understood this responsibility. Same for Moses, Joshua and other heroes of faith.
STUDY TIP: See Model Warriors for more understanding of why these Bible characters are considered to be heroes of faith.
Jesus sacrificed his life so that others may escape the death of fleshly religion and live in the spirit. And King David put his life at risk by taking on Goliath and other religious kings. In doing this, Jesus and David set the perfect example of true love: Laying down their lives for God’s friends. Not only did Jesus set this as an example, but he also actually commands his followers to lay their lives down for their friends.
This is a difficult command for casual Christians to understand. Jews don’t feel obliged to obey Jesus’ commands, but they are very big on obeying God’s commands. Both religions have been blinded to God’s commands to destroy religious kingdoms. Or, perhaps they have not overlooked the command but have ignored it because to obey it they would be obliged to destroy their own religious kingdom. Either way, they have been unfaithful.
Without excusing Jews and Christians from the need to obey God’s command to destroy religious kingdoms, it must be said that God has not opened their eyes. And once he does open anyone’s eyes, they will accept the challenge to go to war with religion.
When they go to war, however, they will need to disassociate from their religious identities (i.e. they will not call themselves Jews or Christians anymore). They will do this because once the New Covenant is established in someone, his/her identity is in God who is invisible and will no longer have a need or desire to be visibly identified as a member of a religious group. All that matters for them is that God’s laws are written on their hearts. They are no longer motivated by or directed by human laws and religious leaders.
The inability of Jews and Christians to set people free from religion would seem to be bad news for people who are held captive to religion. There is good news, however, in the fact that in this present age many people are breaking free from religion. We see this phenomenon in the statistics about the decline of religion. We don’t know the particulars of how this is happening, but we must conclude that there are New Covenant disciples successfully engaging in warfare with religious enemies. But this is good news only if those who do break free follow God’s command to reach back and set others free also. And they will do this when they realize that it is for the freedom of others that they have been set free and that failure to do this kind of work is not optional for New Covenant disciples. If they do not go back to help others, chances are they are still intoxicated with religion and will backslide sooner or later because the love of God is not in them.
Only New Covenant disciples who are conformed to his image will understand that what Jesus said about bearing good fruit, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, casting out demons, comforting the brokenhearted and visiting prisoners is symbolic language for setting captives free from religion. Only New Covenant disciples will understand that, because they are created in his image, the anointing Jesus has is the anointing that empowers them to fulfill God’s commands to do all things — even destroy religious nations, tear down high places and set captives free from slavery to religion.
To rephrase this, it can be said that New Covenant disciples have the same responsibility, authority and power that Jesus had to destroy religious nations, tear down high places and set captives free from slavery to religion. Or, to put it more strongly, New Covenant disciples must put their emotional and relational lives on the line for their religious friends or they will be like the men who, instead of producing good fruit (i.e. lead religious captives to freedom), built a house on sand and were sent away to eternal punishment because they did not feed the hungry (i.e. religious people who do not have spiritual food) or visit the spiritually sick (i.e.those who are religious) in prison (i.e. captivating religion). They do not understand that the only kind of religion that God honors is the work that helps spiritual widows (i.e. they do not have God as their spiritual husband) and orphans (i.e. they do not have God as their spiritual father).
Going back into the lions den of religion to set captives free is the true marker of New Covenant disciples. That is what Abraham, Moses and other heroes of faith mentioned in Hebrews 11 did. In fact, we find in the narrative about Reuben and Gad that God called failure to go to war on behalf of their brothers sin. This is a hard word for religious people to accept and act on.
God speaks in several places about setting slaves free. It is hard for us in these modern times to understand how these scriptures can apply to us until we recognize that anyone who participates in religion, whether as a leader or follower, perpetuates the practice of religious pride, abuse and control that God calls slavery. Therefore, anyone who is a friend of the world of religion is an enemy of God. Helping others get free from religion is the fulfillment of God’s command to remember that we were once slaves in Egypt and that we were also slave masters whenever we evangelized, encouraged or pressured someone to practice religion.
In Biblical terms, after we join the battle we enter into an eternal (i.e. seven day) Sabbath rest. That may sound like a contradictory statement, but that is how God sees it. Doubting this, all we need to do is look at the story of Israel’s defeat of Jericho. All Israel had to do was walk around the city and shout. God did the work of demolishing the walls. Of course Israel had to carry the Ark of the Covenant, but that is not physical work because the ark symbolizes the God’s laws written on the hearts of New Covenant believers. Basically, all Israel had to do was believe that Jericho would fall. God did the rest. This is real faith.
God does the spiritual work to transform us, but we must also apply the characteristics of the kingdom of God in our lives in our effort to set captives free from religion. Here is a brief summary of those characteristics:
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Clearly, these night and day differences between God’s kingdom and worldly kingdoms should make it easy to recognize one kingdom from another. But, because people in the kingdom of the world can only see what they see with their natural eyes, they cannot see nor imagine a spiritual kingdom. The only kingdoms they know are those created by men.
The problem is, however, that religion taught us, and we believed, that we were already in God’s kingdom. This is the great handicap of Old/First Covenant religionists. They have natural eyes and ears that compel them to see and do natural things created by and written by men, but do not have eyes to see spiritual truth created by God. New Covenant disciples, on the other hand, do have spiritual eyes and ears that enable them to understand the spiritual meaning of all difficult scriptures and are able to discern God’s kingdom from worldly religious kingdoms created by men. They know full well that God has delivered them out of Egypt (i.e. religion).
Getting down the basics of RELIGION, we see that the kingdom of the world (i.e. religion) consists of human organization, laws, physical props (e.g. buildings, clothing, artifacts, music, food, drink, etc.) and physical activities (e.g. singing, kneeling, bowing, eating, drinking, pilgrimages, raising hands, fasting praying, etc.) led by humans. We contrast these physical things with God’s kingdom which has no physical content, is invisible (i.e. spiritual), exists only within people, and is under his sole authority.
People who dismiss these differences as small and insignificant while holding fast to their religious practices cause great trouble for themselves and others. They do not realize that failure to see religion the way God sees it makes them enemies of God because there is no room in God’s kingdom for any other gods, no matter how spiritual they might seem to be and no matter how eloquently they can speak about God or for God.