On Spiritual Warfare: The Battle and the Adversary's Operations

We believe we are engaged in spiritual warfare. This is not a metaphor. The conflict between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness is real and active. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood alone but against the powers and principalities, against the authorities, against the cosmic forces of this dark age, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

The adversary is defeated. The cross is a finished victory. The keys of death and Hades have been taken from his hands. Yet a defeated enemy retains the capacity for harm, particularly against soldiers who do not know the war is over or who have not received the victory personally. The adversary's sole remaining weapon is deception. He deploys it with ancient skill, adapting his lies to every generation, every culture, every individual weakness.

His primary operations are three: the near-truth, which is 95 percent accurate and therefore 100 percent effective; the suppressed lens, which tells the truth while hiding an essential dimension; and the noise, which overwhelms the signal of God's voice with irrelevant urgency, legitimate concerns mixed with false conclusions, and the sheer volume of competing narratives.

We do not fear the adversary. We respect his intelligence and hate his deceptions. But we serve a God who cannot be defeated, who cannot be deceived, and who offers relational presence to those who abide in Him. The practice of recognizing the Spirit's voice through prayer, Scripture, and the community of believers is the primary defense against deception. The person who knows the Shepherd will recognize when a stranger's voice is calling.

On the Future: Partial Preterism and New Creation

We believe that much of biblical prophecy concerns the death and resurrection of Christ and the events immediately surrounding them. When Jesus taught about the end times in Matthew 24, He was primarily describing the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, the judgment on Jerusalem, and the vindication of His disciples through the resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost.

"I tell you the truth, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place." — Matthew 24:34 (NET)

That sentence refers to the generation alive when Jesus spoke, not to some distant future.

The covenant God made with Abraham was never revoked. Paul develops the image in Romans 11: the cultivated olive tree is Israel, the root and the promise. Some of the natural branches — Israel — were broken off in unbelief. And the Gentiles, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among them, participating in the richness of the olive root (Romans 11:17, NET). But the wild branches do not support the root. The root supports them. The church does not replace Israel. It is joined to Israel's covenant story. And what God has pruned, He is fully capable of grafting back in: God is able to graft them in again (Romans 11:23, NET). The hardening of Israel is partial and temporary. And so all Israel will be saved (Romans 11:26, NET) is not a separate chapter in the story of redemption. It is the destination of the same covenant story that includes the nations. The nations' salvation and Israel's restoration are woven into the same providential thread, moving toward the same consummation. The gifts and the call of God are irrevocable (Romans 11:29).

This does not mean there is no future. The Second Coming remains future. The bodily resurrection remains future. The final judgment remains future. But the central drama of salvation — Christ's death, resurrection, and the pouring out of the Spirit — has already occurred. We live in the already-but-not-yet of the Kingdom. Eternal life has already begun. We are already in Christ. We are already experiencing the firstfruits of the Spirit. Yet we await the consummation, when Christ returns to make all things new.

The renewal of all things is not the escape from the material world but its restoration. The promise is not that the faithful will be taken away from earth to heaven, but that heaven will come down to earth. The new heavens and new earth are not a different creation but this creation redeemed, renewed, made whole. This hope shapes how we treat the earth now. It shapes how we think about our bodies. It shapes how we labor. We are not waiting for the world to be destroyed. We are waiting for it to be healed.