Strategy of Satan
By Ray C. Stedman
The strategy of Satan is a very short work of 7 pages. Stedman deals with spiritual battle, demons, Satan’s plan of attack, etc.
Excerpts from The Strategy of Satan
Further, we have seen that we will never understand and comprehend what is going on in our world for these many centuries until we accept the biblical diagnosis of life. Paul puts this diagnosis very plainly in Ephesians 6:12-13.
Through the coming of that “stronger one,” Jesus himself, who came, as John tells us, “to destroy the works of the devil” {1 Jn 3:8b}, deliverance is obtained.
But they are not set free to live unto themselves. That is a common misconception of Christianity.
But they are set free in order to battle. That is the call which comes to all Christians. We are not set free in order to enjoy ourselves. We are set free to do battle, to engage in the fight, to overcome in our own lives, and to become the channels by which others are set free.
What are the tactics the devil employs to accomplish this dastardly destructiveness which is so abundantly confirmed as you look around at life and read your newspaper and review the story of human history? How does he do it? Well, by deceiving, by lying, by distorting, by counterfeiting, by play-acting and masquerading, by illusion and fantasy. This is what Paul calls “the wiles of the devil.”
Only yesterday I talked with a man concerning a young man who had been raised in this church, one of our own boys. Though he is only twenty-one years of age, already, because of the rebellious determination of his heart to reject the truth of God and to live his own life, he is a mental and physical wreck. Why? Because he has turned aside from the truth and he has followed the philosophy of Satan. Satan is accomplishing his aims, destroying this life which God loves, wrecking, mutilating, laying it waste, ruining it.
Battling against these forces of darkness is what makes human life possible on this earth at all. If Christians, who are the salt of the earth, are not giving themselves to an intelligent battle with Satan and satanic forces, fighting along these lines which Paul suggests – being “strong in the Lord and in the power of his might” – it would be absolutely impossible for human life to exist on this planet. If this were not going on, life on earth would be one
horrible, unending hell. It is the presence of Christians, and those who are affected by their testimony and by their teachings, and the spread of the gospel throughout the world which makes possible those moments of enjoyment of life which even the non- Christian is able to know.