The Invisible War

We live in a real world. In fact, one of the sayings that people will often speak is, come on man, get real. This is the real world. You're right. But there's another world.

Let's call it the really real world. As Paul the Apostle said, we do not look at the things which are seen but the things which are unseen. For the things which are seen are temporary while the things which are unseen are eternal. The Bible says that you're in a war against the spiritual forces of evil.

Are you prepared for the fight? Today we continue our countdown of Skip's top 40 messages on the Connect with Skip Heitzig YouTube channel. In the number 24 spot is the message, The Invisible War, in which Skip gives you a glimpse into the spiritual warfare and shares how you can make a difference on the battlefield.

Now we want to tell you about a resource that will help you feel a deeper sense of purpose as you explore God's love for you. The year was 1962 and the United States was behind in the space race. Boldly, President Kennedy threw down a strong claim. I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. Three, two, one, zero, and liftoff. When JFK made this challenge, America had little space experience.

Here's Lee Vilesco with some background. The most incredible thing that mankind's ever done. The late President Kennedy makes this outrageous goal. We're going to go to the moon and not only that, we're going to do it in the next 10 years, and it's going to end in safety when the man comes safely back home.

I mean, what an incredible thing to say when all of our space experience at that moment amounted to 15 minutes in space. The Last Supper on the Moon is an epic new hard cover book by Levi Lusko, and it is our resource offer this month. Receive your copy when you give a gift of $35 or more to support this program. Just go to connectwithskipp.com or call 1-800-922-1888.

That's connectwithskipp.com or 1-800-922-1888. Okay, we're in 1 Peter Chapter 3 as we join Skip Heitzen for today's study. Several years ago, there was a scientist named Bruce Davison who was on a research vessel out in the Pacific Ocean. He was lowered overboard in a one-man submarine called Deep Rover. He was doing research, and they lowered him in this little one-man submarine equipped with an acrylic shield and lights on the front of it to a depth of 1,500 feet below sea level, down to an area where the water is an inky black. They wanted to find out what was down there, and as he was looking out of his little windshield, suddenly out of the shadows, out of the darkness, comes this semi-transparent creature, 120 feet in length, thousands of tentacles, dozens of stomachs, and appears before that research scientist. He had never seen anything like it or known something like that even existed. As he keeps watching it, studying it with great interest, he's joined this creature by his friends. Others come and surround that one-man submarine, and then they attacked and killed him. No, I'm just kidding. That would be a Hollywood ending.

He survived quite nicely, actually. But I'm making a point in all of this that there are things that go on around us that we are not aware of, even though they are very real. Unless somebody saw it with specialized equipment and then revealed it to us, we wouldn't know anything about it. So there's things happening around us that are unknown to us, unless they're revealed. So it is in the spirit world. There's a whole other world going on around us that unless God would reveal it to us, we wouldn't know anything about it.

And this text is one of those areas that takes us behind the veil. We live in a real world. In fact, one of the sayings that people will often speak is, come on, man, get real. This is the real world.

You're right. But there's another world. Let's call it the really real world. As Paul the Apostle said, we do not look at the things which are seen, but the things which are unseen, for the things which are seen are temporary, while the things which are unseen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4. So in the real world, it's all the stuff we see.

The really real world are all those things we do not see. Last week, if you were with us in 1 Peter 3, we noted that Peter is talking about suffering, using Jesus as an example of his crucifixion, his resurrection, his exaltation. But he does mention that between Jesus' death and his rising from the dead, he preached a sermon. He visited somewhere. He went somewhere and made a proclamation. And then Peter moves on from that and draws it to a close. It's because of the fact that he mentions this strange ministry of Jesus Christ between his death and resurrection that makes this passage hard to understand, at least for us, 2,000 years removed from it.

So what we're going to do is comb over it again, but put on different glasses this time and consider an invisible world with an invisible war. Let's go to verse 18 of 1 Peter 3, where Peter writes, For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit or by the Spirit. By whom he also went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. There is also an anti-type which now saves us. Baptism, not the removal of the flesh, the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been subject to him. Having been subject to him.

Now I want to make four statements based on that. There is a coexisting invisible world. Just consider the text that we read. In verse 18, Peter speaks of the flesh and spirit. Those are two different realms. Flesh, that's the realm of what you see. Spirit, that's the realm of what you don't see.

Flesh, that's the real world. Spirit, that's the really real world. He speaks about heaven, you don't see it. He speaks about angels in verse 22, you don't see them.

In verse 19, he also mentions, and we're going to go back over this, the spirits in prison. It's as if Peter, for a moment with these words, would take us behind the veil of the real world to see the really real world. You see folks, there is a parallel universe, if you want to look at it that way. A real world of angelic beings, both good and evil, demons and angels that are out there.

Just like you didn't know about the asteroid, you didn't see it, or you wouldn't have known about those creatures unless somebody saw and revealed it to you, so it is with this world. We open our Bibles and we discover that 34 books in the Bible, 34 out of 66 books, speak about angelic beings. 17 in the Old Testament, 17 in the New Testament. The word angel appears 103 times in the Old Testament, 165 times in the New Testament.

Very, very real. Angels, the Greek word ongalos, means a messenger. It could actually refer to any messenger, even human, but typically the word ongalos speaks of spirit beings, a special class of being. What is an angel? An angel is a non-corporeal spirit being.

How's that for a definition? I like that word, non-corporeal. In other words, it's a being without a corpus, without a body. It's an unembodied real being that is spirit. In Hebrews chapter 1, angels are called ministering spirits who are sent to minister to those of us who inherit salvation. Because they don't have a body, they don't have the restrictions of a human body.

They're not subject to decay and they are therefore invisible most of the time. On some occasions, to suit God's purposes, they are made visible or they can assume human form, and we see that in the Scripture as well. We know that they are great in number because when Jesus was born, a multitude of the heavenly hosts were over Bethlehem singing praise. How many angels are there? Well, we don't know, although I find it interesting that in the 1100s, one particular theologian by the name of Albertus Magnus was very precise with the number of angels, saying that there were 399,999,000,000 angels.

Don't ask me how or why. When we get to the book of Revelation, John sees the throne of God and he says, I saw myriads of angels. Listen to this, 10,000 times 10,000 plus thousands of thousands. So well over 100 million angels were recorded in that scene alone. And by the way, do you know that you may have met an angel? You might say, nah, I don't recognize an angel.

The halo and the wings would have given it away. The long flowing robes, dead ringer for an angel. Not so, that's all mythology. The Bible says, be careful, the book of Hebrews says, how you minister to different people, strangers, show hospitality to strangers, for some have entertained angels without recognizing it.

It's a beautiful thought. Somebody that you run into could be an angel. Satan began as an angel. Two Old Testament passages describe him quite in depth. Ezekiel 28, Isaiah 14, in Ezekiel passage, it says he's called the anointed cherub who covers or who guards. He was some kind of guardian being and many scholars presume he was a guardian over God's throne. A very powerful, beautiful, wise and influential being who fell from that position. And that's important you understand that because some people say, why would God create such a wicked person or being?

He didn't. He created something very good with a will of its own and Satan usurped God's authority, acted on his own will and he fell. Jesus said, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. And when Satan fell, he took a bunch of his buddies with him. A lot of his evil friends, they all fell as well. They joined the coup. The Bible indicates in Revelation as many as a third of the angelic host fell in that rebellion with Satan.

And when they fell, they became a highly organized network that have actual rankings and titles. And they would have to be to get any work done effectively. Paul gives us insight into that in Ephesians chapter six. He says, we do not wrestle with flesh and blood or struggle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, rulers, authorities, spiritual forces of evil in heavenly realms.

Those are all rankings of angelic beings. We're hinted at that in verse 22 of our text. Notice that Jesus ascended into heaven at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to him. So there is a coexisting invisible world the Bible reveals to us. You would know about it.

You would never see it. And you wouldn't know unless it was told to, revealed in scripture. Second thing to notice in our text, there's a conflict in the invisible world, a conflict. Verse 19, Jesus went and preached to spirits in where?

In prison. There's some group of spirits that are incarcerated in some prison somewhere. Ever since the fall, there has been an ongoing conflict.

Let me restate that. Ever since the fall of Lucifer, that fall. Ever since that fall, there has been an ongoing cosmic conflict between the angelic forces of good and evil. One day, Daniel got a peek behind that curtain. He was praying. And as he was praying, an angel came from heaven and in human form appeared to Daniel and said, Daniel, from the day you started praying, I was dispatched to give you some insight and revelation into the future. But it took me 21 days to get here, Daniel, because on the way, I had to fight as spirit prince of Persia.

Took me 21 days to withstand him. But I was here. I'm giving you revelation. And then at the end, he says, we've got to go back and fight the prince of Persia and the prince of Greece. And Michael, the angel has to come and help me. And I think Daniel's going, what? What?

What was that about? He got insight into that invisible war that is going on in areas where we don't see. And I've always been fascinated by that passage in areas where we don't see. And I've always been fascinated by that passage because the angel said, I fought the prince of Persia, as if to imply that demons by Satan are actually assigned geographical regions. So if the prince of Persia was that bad, what do you think the prince of Hollywood is like?

Or San Francisco or Las Vegas, Nevada, or Albuquerque, New Mexico, or Amsterdam or whatever. The spirit world. One of the first rules in warfare is you got to know who your enemy is. Not only that, but you need to know how your enemy works. The Bible says we are not ignorant of his devices.

I don't know if that's true of all of us. We're not ignorant of his devices. Back in World War II, one of our generals, General George C. Patton, was fighting the German forces of Erwin Rommel, General Rommel. And it was in North Africa. And as the battle went on, these two generals got close enough so that Patton could actually yell out to General Rommel. And he said, Rommel, I read your book.

I read your book. What he was referring to was a book that the German General Erwin Rommel had authored entitled Infantry Attacks, where Rommel details his wartime strategy. And our general is saying, I read your book. So he knew what was coming, knew what to expect, and planned his counter move accordingly. And he won the battle. Well, Satan didn't author a book. But God did. And in the book, God lets the cat out of the bag, reveals what his plans are for the future. And if you think strategically for a moment, Satan would have taken every bit of that information and mounted a counterattack so that he, not God, would win. Now let's put that lens on and view scripture.

You ready? Let me take you back through a few scriptures. You don't have to turn to them, but I want you to follow me now. Back in Genesis chapter 3, after Satan caused the fall of mankind in enticing Adam and Eve to do what they did, then God made a promise and said to Satan, I'm going to put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed, your offspring, and her offspring. And he, that is her offspring, he, whoever he is, eventually a he will come, and he is going to bruise your head. And you, Satan, will bruise his heel. In other words, he is going to have a minor setback. You're going to have a major blow.

His heel will be affected. Your head will be crushed. Now, if I were to make you a promise, I would never do this by the way, but let's just say before the service, I came up, gave you a hug, shook your hand and said, hey, listen, after the service, I'm going to crush your head. God bless you.

Have a nice day. If you were even remotely believing that I was going to do that, you would want more information and then you would strategize a counter move based upon the information you receive. So Satan gets a promise. You're going down.

You're going to be crushed. So what does he do? Well, in Genesis chapter 4, I believe it's Satan that inspired Cain to kill Abel. Abel was righteous before God.

God received his worship. Cain kills Abel. Abel is now dead. Cain becomes cursed.

They're out of the picture. Satan probably wiped his brow and said, I just averted the one who's going to crush my head, thinking maybe that's the one. God raises up another line through Seth.

Time goes on. We come to Genesis chapter 6. Satan inspires such a wickedness on the earth, such violence that the race becomes unredeemable and God decides I'm going to destroy the entire population of planet earth, except for eight people who are kept alive on an ark. And they repopulate the earth and a new civilization emerges and Abraham comes and Isaac comes and Jacob comes and we come to Genesis 27.

And I believe it was Satan that inspired Esau to want to kill Jacob because Jacob was the promised seed that the scripture speaks about. We come then to Exodus chapter 1 and the Pharaoh in Egypt has this crazy rule that every Hebrew male child should be killed. That's radical. He says, if it's a girl, let it live. If it's a boy, kill it. Throw it in the Nile and let it drown.

Why? I think he was an agent of Satan trying to destroy the Jews through whom the seed, the Messiah, would come. We keep going in the Bible where we read passages like the book of 1st St. James, where King Saul wants to kill David. Why David?

David's the royal lion. God promised all of his hope would be found in the seed, in the offspring of King David. We keep following history and we come to this really crazy passage.

In fact, if you've read it, you probably passed over it and not even noticed the fine print. There was a king named Ahaziah who died. When Ahaziah died, his mother Athaliah, this is 2 Kings 11 or 2 Chronicles chapter 22, Athaliah, she decides, listen to this, to put to death all of the royal heirs in Judah. All the royal heirs. If all the royal heirs are killed and David has no offspring and the promise that God made to David for the Messiah can't happen, all of them are killed except one. One little baby named Joash, still nursing, is hidden until he's seven years old and he emerges as the king and the lineage continues. And this stuff happens throughout the Old Testament until we get to the New Testament. Jesus is born in Bethlehem, so what does Herod say? All those baby boys in Bethlehem, kill them all.

What's that about? It's a satanic attempt to destroy the seed. Jesus emerges, grows up, Satan takes him to the pinnacle of the temple, and says, you know, you ought to jump down. Quoting a scripture out of context, hoping that Jesus would jump and perhaps, you know, you ought to jump down.

You know, you ought to jump down. Hoping that Jesus would jump and perhaps end his life. We come to the Gospel of Luke chapter 4. Jesus is in the synagogue at Nazareth, proclaims himself to be God's chosen one.

They take him to the brow of the hill on which the city is built and they want to thrust him over. And this happens throughout the Bible because it's attack, counter-attack, attack, countermeasure. It's an invisible war. And it's all framed, by the way, in the last book of the Bible.

You know, my teacher used to say, all the answers are in the back of the book. And thus it is in the book of Revelation, listen to this warfare. He says, John says, I saw a sign in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun and the moon and the 12 stars. We know that to be an image of Israel from Genesis 37. I saw that. Then he said, I looked and I saw a large red dragon with seven heads and 10 horns. His tail dragged down a third of the stars, which he threw to the earth. He stood before the woman as she was about to give birth to her male child to devour the baby as soon as it was born.

Satan, the dragon has always wanted to kill any offspring and if necessary, all of the Jews to prevent the Messiah from coming so that the promise could not be fulfilled. That's Skip Heitzig's number 24 message on our Top 40 Messages countdown. It's from the series Rock Solid. Find the full message and more of Skip's teachings organized into playlists that take you through the entire sermon series at youtube.com slash calvaryabq. Right now, here's Skip to share how you can keep these teachings coming to you while connecting others to the gospel. We are called to worship the Lord with our lives, surrendering ourselves over to Him so that He can work in and through us. We want to encourage and inspire you in your walk with the Lord. That's why we share these messages to equip you in your faith and your generous support today means we can continue to connect you and others to God's Word. Here's how you can make that possible. Visit connectwithskip.com slash donate to give your gift today. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate or call 800-922-1888. Again, that's 800-922-1888. Tune in tomorrow as Skip Heitzig shares another Top 40 Message about several important principles to help you build a mature faith that lasts. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.