The Protocol of Spiritual Warfare: Engaging the Spiritual Forces of Evil in the Heavenly Realms

By John Lee Yates

It may be difficult to accept, but many Christians today have been robbed of their ability to connect with God and one another.
John Lee Yates offers a measure of encouragement to Christians seeking to develop a closer relationship with God in this commentary on living a godly life.
It starts with refusing to live in a perpetual state of weakness and blaming your problems on others. Drawing on the Bible for inspiration, this book will help you:
Repent in order to find favor with the Lord.
Use prayer as a weapon to achieve goals.
Understand how Satan seeks to divide and conquer the people of God.
Win disciples to succeed in spiritual warfare.
In terms of earthly wisdom, it seems crazy to pursue an invisible God in the face of vehement opposition from society, culture, and an enemy who is trying to destroy us, but is it?
Discover what Jesus demands from you and help your brothers and sisters in Christ wage battle against the enemy with the guidance in The Protocol of Spiritual Warfare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973647003

John Lee Yates

John Lee Yates is an aspiring author who lives in St. James, Missouri. He is happily married to Angie Yates. Together they own Ashlar Custom Remodels, a small home renovation business. John has two children; Haleigh and Jarred, and two step-daughters; Taylor and Jordan. John and Angie also have three grandchildren whom they enjoy very much. John became a Christian at age twenty two after a four year enlistment with the U. S. Navy, two years later God called him into ministry. He enjoys his work, and outdoor hobbies, but articulating the word of God is his passion. Whether through preaching, small group discipleship, or writing, John feels a burden to share the message of Jesus Christ. He is currently earning his credentials with the Assemblies of God. For speaking engagements contact him via email: [e-mail].

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 John Lee Yates.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission. www.Lockman.org

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-4701-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-4702-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-4700-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018914081

WestBow Press rev. date:   12/17/2018

Lar

ry and Mae Yates, who for years have prayed with tears in my behalf

Haleigh and Jarred, whom I love as Christ loved me

Craig Rippy and Allen Smith

Alan Wynn, my dear friend

Tony who has never failed me

Jesus who ransomed my soul

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am blessed. I am thankful to my Father in heaven for His grace, which has proven much greater than my failures and deficits. Over the last several years, I have had the pleasure of being influenced by several great men of God, and I am thankful for them.

This book was the result of many scars, failures, and heartbreaks, but through these things, I found a truth that has set me free. At times when I felt alone in the battle, my Lord was the still, small voice in the shadows. When I deserted my post in His kingdom, He pursued me.

Among those who have supported my aspiration and call to ministry is my lovely wife, Angie. You are on a journey of your own, and I pray that as He fits you with His armor, I can be the same encouragement to you that you have been to me. I came to you with nothing, and you took my mess. I love you, and I am ever grateful to you.

Haleigh and Jarred, you have experienced the realities of life at a very young age. When things came crashing down, you never abandoned me. You are precious gifts from God. I love you.

I thank those who have helped in my development over the years by giving me a platform from which to preach the gospel. I am indebted to you.

Angie and I owe a debt of gratitude to our friends who have spoken life into us over the last year, thank you for believing with us, and thank you for your support. We often pray for your ministries, both foreign and here in the states, asking God to cause a desperate hunger in your churches. We believe He is working to bring a greater revelation of Himself to those who await His coming. Lord hasten the day.

I am thankful for the writings of my ancient brethren, who have given me courage and strength through the inspired word. Over the years I have gained confidence from the scriptures, and those who preach unadulterated truth, as an invitation to know Christ in the fellowship of His suffering, that I may know Him likewise in the power of His resurrection.

It is my hope that this book will challenge the reader to seize the opportunity to grow in Christ. I pray that a greater understanding of who Jesus is, and who we are in Him would be given. I continue to pray for the American church, asking we seek the wisdom, and spiritual revelation of God, so we could know Him better. In Christ we are enabled to see the unseen, this is my prayer for you.

I pray the providence of God over my fellow laborers abroad. Through many tears and afflictions you have worked to grow the kingdom, be encouraged because the day of our redemption is near.

May the hand of God bless the persecuted church. You are never alone.

In the dead of the year 2004 and into the spring of 2005, the Spirit of the Lord spoke to me, saying, Take these things that I will teach you, and write them in a book.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1   A Change of Perspective

Chapter 2   Understanding the Enemy and the Threat He Poses

Chapter 3   Preparing to Engage the Enemy

Chapter 4   Counting the Cost

Chapter 5   The Weapons of Our Warfare

Chapter 6   The Plight of Nehemiah

Chapter 7   The Whole Armor of God

Chapter 8   The Smart Bombs of Spiritual Warfare—Being on the Offense

Chapter 9   The Battle for Ephesus

Chapter 10   Contending for the Faith Once and for All Delivered to the Saints

Chapter 11   More than Conquerors

Chapter 12   Swords into Plowshares

INTRODUCTION

It has become our instinct to blame the devil for hard times and bad circumstances. It is our human nature to find a scapegoat when life doesn’t meet our expectations. When there is no scapegoat, we become victims in our own minds. Whether it is as victims of some kind of injustice, sickness, or just victims of an unfair world, to regard ourselves as victims seems to relieve the burden of objectivity and finding the truth. The belief that we are victims of hard times and tough circumstances sent to us by a God who does things to people is a lie.

This may be difficult to accept, but many Christians live in a perpetual state of weakness because for the most part, they have been robbed of their ability to connect with God and one another. They have become deficient of many needed things in the body of Christ, and they live like victims.

We tend to spread our blame equally on a number of culprits. The notion of victimhood for Christian people is also a lie. I will advance my belief that the Western church is on the whole oblivious to certain spiritual truths, and because of this, we find ourselves lacking in our mission. Great and thriving ministries in the United States systematically define the standard for fulfilling the Great Commission, but there could be more. We have arrived at a point in America that the word church has become a proverb and a byword of the masses.

In the meantime, church people are struggling to understand why their sanctuaries are empty and why their kids are on drugs. We grapple with issues that pertain to sexual orientation and gender fluidity in the church. The younger generation blames the older generation for being too rigid, while the elders blame the youth for being disrespectful, and the saga continues. The house of God is struggling for unity, and there are no clear signs of progress. It seems that the further we move away from scripture, the closer we get to a feeling of satisfaction and happiness. Our worship services have become obscured with the smoke and mirrors of pop culture, and we are starving from lack of nourishment. The kids blame parents, parents blame kids, Christians at large blame the culture, the church blames public education, and public education blames kids. The cycle is perpetual.

These examples illustrate symptoms of a very real issue in the body of Christ. The symptoms are confusion, division, lack of a consensus in the authority of scripture, and a general disregard of spiritual development to name a few, and there seems to be a widespread lack of concern about, or a blatant denial of these symptoms. Behind the issues, the symptoms, and the oblivion is a reality many Christians deny because it is a threshold that separates the seen from the unseen.

The enemy lurks beyond the threshold; it is our distorted thoughts, fears, and doubts. The enemy is every rumor, every aspersion, and every jealousy. It is every inclination to deny God and pacify the flesh. The enemy is every disease and every social injustice, every crime and every atrocity. That serpent of old—the devil, Satan—infiltrates relationships, households, churches, and nations. Some minimize his opposition to the saints of God, and some deny his existence.

We do not know the exact origin of the war between God and Satan, but we know it began in the spiritual realm of eternity past. We know that Lucifer determined to be like God and attempted to exalt himself in the heavenlies. In the failed attempt to usurp God’s glory, Lucifer was cast from heaven and thus became the enemy we call Satan. Myriads of angels joined him in the rebellion and were cast out of heaven as well. Consequently, Satan and his demonic forces brought battle and opposition to the Lord of the angelic hosts, and the battle continues. Scripture does not tell us how long the war had been occurring when God created the heavens and the earth, nor does it tell how long the man and woman had lived in the Garden of Eden prior to Genesis 3, but scripture does tell us they were not alone.

Until a certain point, the war between good and evil was spiritual and fought in the spiritual realm between the Lord of hosts and the enemy, his fallen angels. The difference now is that there was a prize, a trophy, and the enemy wanted it. The spiritual war inevitably pierced the spiritual realm and touched the human race. The man and woman fell to the deception of the serpent; the prize became the soul of humanity, and it still is. The dynamic of the battle has changed, but God’s sovereignty has not. He handed down His judgment on Adam, Eve, the ground, and the serpent; hence the curse.

The battle did not end here. Satan stopped at nothing to secure authority over Adam, but God has always been ahead of Satan’s schemes. To carry out His will, He clothed Adam and Eve with tunics to hide their shame. Before that, however, God delivered a blow to the serpent that would be eternally binding and from which the serpent would never recover. This blow was His spoken word delivered by a prophecy. At that point, God initiated His plan for the redemption of humankind, and the enemy would go to any extreme to thwart it.

This was a plan the Godhead had carefully blueprinted from the foundations of the world, and it would require a selfless act of love on God’s part. Adam labored in the ground from which he had been taken, and it brought forth thorns and thistles, but he fed his family by the sweat of his brow. Eve brought forth children in much pain, but she nursed them to health, and her desire was for her husband just as the Lord God had said.

Generations continued under the curse for their sin, and people began to inhabit the earth. There remained, however, an unfulfilled prophecy over the enemy God had spoken, and it carried a promise. God watched patiently from heaven’s throne and grieved the fallen condition of His prized possession.

In His mercy, the Lord preserved a righteous seed so His purposes would be carried out in time. This did not go unchallenged, though, because the prize was in the balance, and the enemy wanted it far more than anything else. In time, Eve gave birth to Seth in Abel’s stead, whom Cain had murdered. Through Seth, God preserved a seed of hope, but it was met with much opposition from the enemy. Through Seth’s lineage were born the guardians of God’s will, people like Noah, Abraham, and his sons who became the patriarchs of God’s chosen people. Moses the lawgiver, and King David; they were testimony of the Lord, and He navigated them through history to set the table for His divine plan.

God chose these people to preserve the promise of a covenant that would someday alleviate the curse. This promise was given to Abraham in a covenant based on faith. As the years and the generations came to pass, this covenant was stipulated on a law that was given to Moses, God’s servant. This law did not restore humankind or lift the curse, but it was necessary for Israel to prepare its people for something greater that would impart restoration and life itself. The Law of Moses served only as a reminder of the fallen estate of humankind and that without the shedding of blood, there was no remission of sin.

In His mercy, the Lord raised up Joshua to lead the Israelites into their promised inheritance, but they never completely subdued it. God sent judges to deliver the people as they cried for reprieve, but they always went astray preferring the gods that could not save. To become like other nations, they cried out for a man to lead them, so God gave them King Saul, who eventually fell at the hand of his enemy. Throughout these generations of rebellion by His people, God never relented His intended purpose for humankind; thus, He raised up David to shepherd His people. With David’s kingdom came a promise—that he would not fail to have a son on the throne.

In times of sorrow and joy, God never turned His heart from His people. They rejected Him, but He loved them the same. The societies of the world had increased greatly in number; people had built great kingdoms and large cities. Along with these things came a renaissance of sin and perdition. The world had become engulfed in evil. Culture had resigned itself to gods of wood and stone, societies reveled in sexual immorality and sorcery, and people sacrificed their children to idols and were bending their knees to kings as if they were gods. The prophets of God were slain, the temple was desecrated, and the Law of Moses was shunned, but the promise remained.

It would seem that Satan had prevailed. God had forgiven, restored, and chastised His children for generations, and they would return to Him only to fall away again and again. In the chaos of human depravity, an unfinished song was quietly being hummed. A gentle breeze that would become the winds of change was beginning to blow ever so subtly. The words spoken by the Lord God in the garden had been all but lost in the verbiage of humankind, but they would soon be dredged up from the vestibule of the ancient past. The tide was beginning to shift in the spiritual realm as a pregnant woman beginning labor; the heavens and earth were teeming with anticipation. The crescendo of destiny was nearing its peak when prophecy met divine appointment. It was as if the distant gaze of ancient warriors had met over an ocean of casualties and the sands of time. The Lord God’s expression was one of contempt and judgment. But the expression of the serpent was one of dreadful expectation.

A young girl lifted a piercing scream of pain from a filthy stall in Judea, and the command came from the throne of the Commander of the legions of heaven: Present arms! Angels stood at attention to pay homage to the newborn King. Order arms! They prepared for the next offensive.

The time had come for the prophecy to be revealed. The seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. Those words had resounded in the mind of Satan since the dawn of humankind and had haunted him without reprieve, but they were then coming to pass. The mystery of God was being revealed, and the allegory was being unveiled in the person of Jesus Christ, the wisdom and power of God. Jesus was the Seed that would crush the head of the serpent. He would fulfill the law and the prophets thus preparing the way for humankind to be restored to God.

The serpent would try to devour Him even from His infancy by the hand of an evil king, Herod the Great, who ordered the massacre of every male infant and toddler in Bethlehem. As Jesus grew, the enemy schemed to destroy Him but to no avail. John the Baptist preached a message from the wilderness: Make ready the way of the Lord! The people were baptized and repented for the remission of their sins. As the Author and Finisher of our faith, Jesus was baptized also and then began a ministry of about forty-two months in duration that would reveal the character of God to humankind and turn the world upside down. Jesus would minister to the deepest needs of fallen humanity. For the dead and the living, for the leper and the prostitute, He was the fountain of living water, the Bread from heaven.

The Lord’s words were a healing balm for some and a sword for others, but never did fear of rejection deter Him. Jesus understood what His mission was. He knew at some point his disciples would refuse Him, but He loved them anyway. The enemy stayed on His heels from Judea to Samaria, Galilee, and Perea, then on another journey into Judea, where Jesus would celebrate a Passover meal with His disciples a final time before His death.

They sought to convict Him of blasphemy but found no solid evidence. The Jews then fabricated false charges under false pretenses by false witnesses and brought Him before the Roman authorities, who finally found reason to execute Him for conspiracy to lead a rebellion against Rome because He had claimed to be a king.

Jesus hung on the cross as a display of public humiliation. He painted a picture of suffering for a captive audience that would define God’s justice and mercy. It seemed Satan had won the battle. There must have been revelry in the corridors of hell and celebrations in the abode of demons, but the prophecy still resonated with the serpent, and something was amiss. When the enemy thought he had finally destroyed the carpenter from Nazareth, the sun began to rise on the first day of the week.

The stillness was shattered by the sound of a stone rolling away from the mouth of the tomb, and with it, the sound of a chain being severed from captive souls. A new day had dawned for humankind, the victory had been won, and the head of the serpent was being crushed. The spiritual war for humanity was being waged under different terms, and those terms are the same today. The terms are victory for the children of God—no negotiations or peace treaties with the enemy. We must destroy his influence any way we can.

This is the protocol of spiritual warfare, and every born-again Christian is a part of it. This war is at any place and at any time, and it has many faces and manifestations. There is no rest; we are called to undisputed triumph. We are appointed to greatness, and we are appointed to an inheritance that the enemy wants to steal as he has from so many. Having scattered the spiritual realm with