The Three Battle Zones – Weapons of Mass Deception
“in order to avoid being taken advantage of by the enemy, we should not be ignorant of Satan’s devices” (2 Corinthians 2:11).
In natural warfare, there is a commonly used military tactic that employs what is called, “military or tactical deception,” which refers to “attempts to mislead the enemy forces during warfare. This is usually achieved by creating or amplifying an artificial fog of war via psychological operations, information warfare, visual deception and other methods. Tactical deception allows the commander to gain an advantage over the enemy either by facilitation a surprise or by tricking the enemy into acting or inaction in many cases, in support of the commander’s objectives. [1] One commonly used tactic used in the act of military deception is to trick your adversary into believing that the attack is coming from one front, while all along, you are actually attacking on a different front in which the enemy is completely oblivious to and has not set up any defenses.
The idea being to influence the enemy “to think” that the attack is being waged on one front, while all along the actual attack is being waged on a different front in which the enemy has not been prepared to defend. In other words, through the use of deception, a commander is able to distract and divert the enemy’s attention away from where the actual attack is being waged.
Arguably the most famous example in modern military conflicts was the highly successful elaborate deception conducted during Desert Storm famously known as the “Left hook deception” which was devised by General Norman Schwarzkopf that many believe actually hastened the war’s end. After coalition forces drove Iraqi occupiers out of Kuwait in February 1991, United States Special Forces discovered an intricate sand-table model used by Saddam’s Republican Guard to plan for the defense of Kuwait City. Most of the defenses displayed on the mockup were pointed toward the nearby sea coast from where the Iraqis believed, as did most of the world that had been watching that United States Marines would mount an amphibious assault. With the anticipation of this coming assault, the Iraqis mounted artillery and lined the shoreline with concertina wire.
However, this anticipated amphibious attack was an illusion, an elaborate ruse concocted by General Schwarzkopf’s planners to conceal the real main attack, which happened to be a roughly 150-mile sweep west by United States Army ground forces into Iraq that cut off supply lines and avenues of retreat for many Republican Guard troops. More than a month of bomb strikes had largely blinded Iraqi surveillance capabilities, allowing the U.S. to manipulate what the enemy still could see. A week before the main ground attack began on February 23rd; Marines had crossed over the Saudi Arabian border to conduct attacks on the Republican Guard defenses. But these attacks were a feint, although powerful enough to keep Saddam Hussein’s forces believing that they were the main ground attack to support an amphibious landing.
General Schwarzkopf skillfully used the media to distract attention away from the planned offensive. Operation Imminent Thunder employed thousands of Marines for a phony amphibious task force, which began posturing in the Gulf in January. The media were invited to cover the amphibious rehearsal in nearby Oman. It is not so much that Schwarzkopf lied to the media, he just misdirected the media a little bit and they ran with this idea about how the Marines were sitting out there in the Gulf already to go and storm the beaches. The United States led coalition also dropped propaganda leaflets on the occupying Iraqis about how the Marines were going to swarm the beaches and destroy all before them. Schwarzkopf later admitted that “everything that we did, led them to believe that we were going to attack the beach.”
And of course, Schwarzkopf’s forceful persona went a long way in selling the deception. In the days after the Republican Guard was routed from Kuwait, news accounts gushed over how the surprise sweep to the west, an exploit General Schwarzkopf likened to a football “Hail Mary pass,” would be studied by military planners for years to come. Ultimately, the plan fit neatly into the Army’s “Air Land Battle doctrine,” whose basic tenet was that by synchronizingmobile air, land and sea forces multiplies an attacking force’s advantage in overcoming stationary defenses. [2]
Likewise, in the same way that this strategy of deceiving the enemy using deception and diversionary tactics is so effective in natural warfare, it is also precisely the same tactics that Satan has employed on the spiritual warfare front. The primary difference being that our current conflict is a spiritual war that is being waged in the battleground of our minds. In other words, we are at war with weapons far greater than any bomb, missile or gun. We are at war with an enemy whose primary objective is to “steal, kill and destroy” on a generational level. And he has been effectively using the satanic version of the left hook deception by manipulating our minds, and attacking the family and at the same time, minimizing the impact and influence of the church on the culture.
Furthermore, in a spiritual battle there is much more at stake because the ultimate objective is to not only win in the here and now or to defeat a particular land army, but to win the hearts and minds of current and future generations. In other words, we are at war with weapons that are aimed at targets far more strategic than any building, land mass or army. We are at war with thoughts, ideas, principles, values, and worldviews. We are at war with thoughts that are raised up against the knowledge of God. And the enemy’s objective is the breakdown of the family and the weakening of the Church. And this battle is being waged using diversionary tactics that are designed to distract our attention away from the enemy’s primary objective.
The satanic Hail Mary Pass
In America today, we have been consumed with a variety of diversions and distractions. However, there has been no other distraction that has dominated our attention more than America’s current social and political preoccupations and resulting confusions that has been so successful in distracting and diverting our attention away from Satan’s real objective. And as I’ve stated and will continue to emphasize, that objective has been to infiltrate the two most fundamental institutions in society which are the family and to church.
In other words, while most Americans have been preoccupied and distracted by a laser focus on the political and social distractions that have dominated the media, our enemy the devil has been covertly “synchronizing” his attacks on these three fronts. He has launched a fierce attack against the two most divinely influential institutions in history, which are: The Family and The Church of Jesus Christ and the Word of God. And the central battle ground for this attack is being waged in our minds, or our worldviews, our belief systems, our doctrines, our knowledge base, and our understanding. And as a result, the family has been weakened and the church is losing its impact and influence in America right under our noses. Because the enemy knows that when the family and the church go, then so goes our communities and so goes society at large.
Furthermore, Satan has been able to be successful with this strategy because he has taken advantage of our ignorance or our indifference and apathy. In other words, the enemy has capitalized on the fact that most people including most Christians are completely unaware or uniformed about the divine correlation or symbiotic relationship between these three areas: The mind the family and the Church. And while many Americans are not focused on this divine symbiotic correlation, our enemy the devil, nevertheless, has been masterfully manipulating this “lack of knowledge.”
To put it another way, Satan realizes that without strong, growing, anointed, Bible believing and sound bible teaching local churches that have an emphasis on evangelism, discipleship, the rightly interpreted and correctly applied exposition of the word of God, and the development of families, it will be impossible to have a high rate of strong families in the various communities throughout the country. And when the family goes, so goes the culture. In other words, when God’s divine order for the family is circumvented, devalued and diminished, then the result is the dysfunctional disposition of the culture at large that we see now.
The enemy also is well aware of the fact that, without strong families that have a husband and wife, mother and father that are led by God and are living within their biblically defined roles where wives are in subjection to her husband’s and the husbands love their wives like Christ loved the church, then it will become difficult to have strong growing churches in our various local communities. Subsequently, Satan knows that by influencing and by keeping us distracted and ignorant of God’s word through manipulating the minds, the beliefs, the worldviews of people (as in the case of Eve), he can in turn, exploit man’s ignorance resulting in a negative impact on the family and the church, which in turn will have adverse ramifications that have been felt throughout all of American society.
To put it more succinctly, when the family fails and when the church fails, there is a domino effect that is experienced in communities, in schools, in government, and throughout all of society. Moreover, for those believers, Christian leaders and activists, who focus the majority of their social and political activism efforts focusing on just a single front such as race, class, politics or any of the other preoccupations that have dominated our discussions and the media, without taking the time to consider the bigger picture, we will never be able to have the impact that we could and should otherwise have if we were to expand our discernment and perspective of the full magnitude of the battle that we are facing.
Furthermore, concerning the role of the Church more specifically, our Lord left clear and explicit instructions regarding the influence and impact we as a Church are to have on the culture. Just prior to His ascension back to Heaven, Jesus said, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Math. 28:19-20). Regrettably however, far too many church leaders have had their minds influenced to establishing their own agenda, based upon their own traditional ideologies. As a result, their respective communities and families have suffered.
And it is my prayer that the Church will once again become the church once again. In other words, we have become the masters of putting on programs, building buildings, raising money and so on. However, God is calling His church back to being a disciple making institution which, according to the “great commission,” should be the primary function of the Church of Jesus Christ.
Understandably of course, because of our inherent Adamic nature, most of us would rather preach or hear sermons about Christ and his love and grace, His blessings, His goodness, and how to be blessed and prosperous in this life, rather than to preach or hear sermons about about our enemy the devil and his plan, strategies, and tactics and how these strategies effect how and what we think and live today. And it is even less popular to speak about or hear sermons that expose man’s inherent Adamic sin nature as being the central factor in all of man’s dysfunctions. However, Paul in his second letter to the Christians in Corinth makes a strong appeal that “in order to avoid being taken advantage of by the enemy, we should not be ignorant of Satan’s devices” (2 Corinthians 2:11).
Paul understood just how critical it is for believers to not only know about God’s love and mercy, but also warned that we should not be ignorant or unaware, uninformed, misinformed or ill-informed about the about the subtitles, deceits, strategies and devices of the enemy and how he uses his cunning tactics in specific and strategically targeted ways for the purpose of not only deceiving mankind the way he did in the Garden of Eden, but also to undermine and hinder God’s plan for man’s ultimate redemption both individually as well as globally going forward.
Very often, in those occasions in which we do speak of the enemy’s tactics, we generally relate those tactics to how they negatively impact us individually or as a family. However, Satan’s ultimate strategies extend much more generationally and globally than most people realize including most Christians. In fact, the Bible acknowledges that Satan has been given deceptive influence not only over individuals, but also over the kingdoms of this world (see: 1 Chronicles 21:1, Isaiah 14:12, 2 Corinthians 4:4, Ephesians 2:2, John 12:31, 14:30, and 16:11, Daniel 10:13, Revelation 12:9 and 20:7-10).
Now while these passages make it clear that Satan’s influence extends far beyond his influences upon individuals. In fact, arguably the most succinct example is the example recorded in Daniel 10. The prophet Daniel had received a troubling vision concerning a great war. He went into a three-week period of mourning, fasting, and prayer. In response to Daniel’s prayer, God sent a heavenly messenger to explain the vision.
However, the messenger was delayed for those same three weeks, as he explains to Daniel: “But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia” (Daniel 10:13). Later, the angel speaking to Daniel predicts further fighting: “Soon I will return to fight against the prince of Persia, and when I go, the prince of Greece will come; but first I will tell you what is written in the Book of Truth. (No one supports me against them except Michael, your prince)” (verses 20–21).
Taking this passage at face value, it seems that the prince of Persia is a fallen angel who in some sense had authority or influence over the physical Kingdom of Persia (modern day Iran). In Daniel 10, the prophet is praying about the future of his people and their exile in Persia. A heavenly angel is dispatched with the answer, but a demonic “prince of Persia” obstructs the messenger. This action would make sense, as the divine answer involves the overthrow of the Persian Empire. The angelic messenger finally gets some help from the archangel Michael, who is apparently the prince of Israel in the angelic realm. Then this angelic messenger says he will face even more spiritual warfare, returning to fight against the prince of Persia.
After that, he will face another spiritual enemy, the prince of Greece (Daniel 10:20). We later learned from history (and as was prophesied in Daniel) that Greece would be the next world power after Alexander the Great defeated Persia in 331 BC, and that Greece would then dominate Israel for a time before they were defeated by Rome. In this passage, three spiritual entities are mentioned in relation to three earthly nations: the prince of Persia, the prince of Greece, and the prince of Israel (Michael).
Finally, what we can learn from this, as the New Testament reminds us, “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 other words, it seems that, as events play out on earth, there is corresponding activity in the spiritual realm that is responsible, and that we as believers in Christ, should not be apathetic, ignorant, unaware, uninformed, misinformed or otherwise deceived by the tricks and subtle subversions of the enemy.
Left Hook Deception Hastened the War’s End, by Wyatt Olsen, Stars and Stripes.
Soldier’s magazine, Strategic Trickery: The U.S. Army’s Use of Tactical Deception, by Jacqueline M Hames.
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