Chapter 11—The Character of the Conflict
The will of man is aggressive, and is constantly striving to bend
all things to its purposes. If it is enlisted on the side of God and right,
the fruits of the Spirit will appear in the life; and God has appointed,
“glory, honor, and peace, to every man that worketh good.”
When Satan is permitted to mold the will, he uses it to accomplish
his ends. He instigates theories of unbelief, and stirs up the human
heart to war against the word of God. With persistent, persevering
effort, he seeks to inspire men with his own energies of hate and
antagonism to God, and to array them in opposition to the institutions
and requirements of heaven and the operations of the Holy Spirit. He
enlists under his standard all evil agencies, and brings them into the
battlefield under his generalship to oppose evil against good.
Call to Oppose Powers of Evil
It is Satan’s work to dethrone God from the heart, and to mold
human nature into his own image of deformity. He stirs up all evil
propensities, awakening unholy passions and ambitions. He declares,
All this power, these honors, and riches and sinful pleasures will I give
thee; but his conditions are that integrity shall be yielded, conscience
blunted. Thus he degrades the human faculties, and brings them into
captivity to sin.
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God calls upon men to oppose the powers of evil. He says, “Let
not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it
in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments
of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those
that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of
righteousness unto God.”
The Christian life is a warfare. But “we wrestle not against flesh
and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers
of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high
places.” In this conflict of righteousness against unrighteousness we
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