#BlackLivesMatter: High Time to Put on the Full Armor of God

^{Ephesians 6:11, 12}

Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.  For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

 
IN HONOR TO THE FOOT SOLDIERS IN STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE AND FREEDOM IN FERGUSON AND BEYOND

This happened today while I was prepping for prayer meeting.  As I was taking in the news and meditating upon the protests, my mind was directed to Ephesians 6 and the fact that we are wrestling against principalities; against powers; against the rulers of the darkness of this world; against spiritual wickedness in high places.  Satan invented greed, hubris, racism, and hatred between brothers.  He  masterminded and controls the principalities of White supremacy and chattel slavery whereby Whites kidnapped, robbed, plundered, enslaved, raped, tortured, abused, and murdered Africans and her descendants with impunity.  He operates through human agencies that choose to operate on the principles of his dominion:  coercion; deception; falsehood; abuse of authority/authoritarianism;  and every work of darkness and evil.  He is, according to the bible, the prince of this world who works through those who refuse to embrace goodness and God.  

So when those who protest and actively resist the oppressive powers of this world - powers that blindly carry out Satan's agenda of world deception, domination and destruction - it should be no wonder that those powers use every dirty tactic in the book to suppress their God-given, constitutionally-protected rights to freedom of speech, protest, and to simply be.  Slavery, Jim Crow and the new Jim Crow (s/o to Michelle Alexander) were and are insidious evil systems designed by Satan and carried out by human agencies to suppress and keep Blacks at the bottom of society and oppress us social, physically, emotionally and spiritually. 

Make no mistake about this: protesting for these rights is even more than fight for our humanity, democracy, justice and truth.  It is more than standing for a right cause.  It is engaging in the cosmic, eternal struggle for the kingdom of God to at last prevail against Satan's kingdom.  As Jesus taught us to pray:  "Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." 


Civil freedom works for God's agenda but against Satan's kingdom agenda.  So it is not hard to see that these things - the protests for civil rights and the violent state response - are happening within an even broader context of the impending final conflict between the kingdom of God versus Satan's kingdom. See Isaiah 14:12-14; Ezekiel 28:12-18; Revelation 12, 13, 16.  We are engaged in one great final struggle of light against darkness.  So we must put on the whole armor of God and fight in that armor, the armor of light and truth.  We must fight according to the principles of light in order to overcome the darkness and the prince of darkness.  We must fight the right fight and on the right front.  This is spiritual warfare.  And because #Blacklivesmatter to God, if to no one else, let's be sure to honor Him and fight under His banner.  And do not doubt that He will fight our battles as we stand on His side, the side of love, righteousness and truth.

"Careless seems the great Avenger; historys pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness twixt old systems and the Word;Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own." - James Russell Lowell, "This Present Crisis" (ca. 1833)