Our War Against Terror

$10.95
119 pages

By Dwayne N. Hunt

Our government has announced that the war on terrorism will be fought on many fronts, and to win, it must be waged with a combination of conventional and non-conventional forces. The first shots our government fired in this battle were with banks, not bazookas, freezing terrorists' financial assets. Coalition building, diplomatic persuasion and foreign policy have become as important as Pentagon planning. Intelligence gathering and federal law enforcement technology have been just as critical as military muscle. While F-18s drop bombs on Afghanistan, C-17s drop bread as humanitarian aid supports air strikes.

However, this multi-faceted war on terrorism is not comprehensive unless it includes the Church. The Spiritual element must be included to ensure any type of total victory, as the Church has the only army trained and skilled at fighting an invisible enemy.

President Bush clearly defined who the invisible enemy is and why the Church must be included in the war: "We are at the beginning of what I view as a very long struggle against evil. We're not fighting a nation. We're not fighting a religion. We're fighting evil."

By positioning the Church in the middle of this conflict, I am not saying that this is a "holy war." Although the Taliban has declared that this is now a "Jihad," or "holy war," and the president himself has referred to this new conflict as a "crusade." What I am saying is that the events of September 11th and the subsequent actions to spread terror through the mail are of demonic origin; thus, there must be a Spiritual response. The motivating element in this warfare can only be fought using Spiritual weapons. Our superior, conventional army is not equipped to fight a war in the realm of the Spirit.

Fear is a cruel and cunning enemy. It is a great thief that comes to sap the strength of our soul, then hold us captive. On September 11th, it stole our sense of security. We were robbed of our innocence as we became witnesses to the mass murder of thousands. The violent events revisited us in the nights to steal our sleep.

Adding to our fears is knowing that our enemies have found refuge by hiding in the open. They are among us, yet invisible. In spite of being a "Superpower," we were unprepared for these new enemies in this New War, using new weapons. However, the principle weapon being used against us is not new, we are only experiencing new implementations of old, old weapons--terror and fear!

The success of using these old weapons is that they have been proven to linger in the air to torment the mind long after the violent or vile incidents have been committed by the terrorists. The strength of fear and terror goes beyond the realities of danger; it is the imagination of a sudden, horrific thing that could happen. It allows the enemy to dominate--not because of his power, but because of our imagination (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).

Already, our anticipation of future terrorist assaults has paralyzed us, restricting our movement. The travel industry has been devastated by our fears to the price tag of billions of dollars. The plummeting stock market, in the weeks immediately following the first attack, was the barometer of our depression. We have lost what it means to "breath easy" as we open our mail with trepidation. It was only a short time ago when our greatest concerns about viruses in the mail were related to the computer. Now it seems trivial to worry about crashing hard drives, after being eyewitness to crashing planes. Now it is not as significant that you can lose information on your PC because of an e-mail virus, while those handling hard mail are losing their lives.

Terror and fear are not just evil. According to the Bible, the Torah and the Qur'an, they are principle devices of The Evil One. They have been a part of his arsenal long before there was Osama bin Laden or Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun. Through the ages, weaponry and military technology have changed, but terror has remained his primary weapon.

Terror works because it takes the fight to an unseen plane--inside of you, in your mind, in your soul. That is why I so boldly place the Church in the middle of this fight. While the battleground against terrorists may be in the Middle East, and the battlefront against terrorism may be in mail facilities, the battlefield against terror is in the mind. There the campaign must be fought and there it must be won.

Against terror and fear, our military might pales. As great as our army is, it is poorly equipped to take on those enemies, for they are internal, intangible and invisible. Our armed forces may be able to subdue the perpetrators of the horrors, but they cannot overcome the sorrow of the soul.

This internal, invisible enemy is most dangerous because long after his seen representatives have been vanquished, his spores of fear remain to 'torment you' (1 John 4:18). Infected by his deadly virus of terror, it spreads throughout the whole of your being, causing the hallucination of danger where there is none. This infection and its hallucinations cannot be cured with medication. This enemy is spiritual and can only be overcome by Spiritual forces. The Church must fight that battle.

One thing that especially equips the Church to battle on that plane is our military manual: The Holy Bible.

We find a portion of this preparation in The Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 6, Verses 24-26. The Prophet actually gives a discourse on terrorism. It speaks not just to the acts of terrorism, but even the effects of the news reporting of the terrorist events.

Jeremiah addresses how the shock of what we saw on the news overwhelmed our emotions. I refer to this as the depressive regression. It is what happens as the events begin to be filtered through our senses, then down through our emotions. Then, as our emotions send signals back to our body, we experience physical reaction such as crying, sweating, hand wringing, chest pain, heart palpitations, muscle tension and shortness of breath.

Those physiological reactions and tensions are minor compared to the psychological toll taken on the soul. "Anguish" is how Jeremiah describes it; pain and torment of the soul. All because of an act of terror.

He then shows us the social effects and behavioral changes that occur. We see how constraining the acts of terrorism can be on our ordinary daily life. It restricts our movement, narrows our world and limits our relationships. We isolate ourselves, lending to depression and paranoia.

Finally, Jeremiah addresses the lingering torment of fear and how that emotion continues to harass us long after the external enemy has been expelled. We are still held captive by the debilitating anticipation of future terror:

"We have heard reports about them,
and our hands hang limp.
Anguish has gripped us,
pain (has come upon us suddenly)
like that of a woman in labor.
Do not go out in the fields
or walk on the roads,
for the enemy has a sword,
and there is terror on every side.
O my people, put on sackcloth
and roll in ashes;
mourn with bitter wailing as for an only son,
for suddenly the destroyer
will come upon us."

Jeremiah shows us what we have now learned firsthand: that the objective of terrorism is to use the anticipation of future evils to torment the mind, completely change the way we live, and make the fear of a future terrorist attack our constant companion. Simply put, those strategies are demonic, and that is why the Church must step into its critical position in this conflict.

This is just a sampling of what is in the Church's Field Manual on the subject of terrorism. The Church has this information because we are expected to be principals in engaging this spirit enemy.

From the beginning, our response to the reports of terrorism should not parallel the responses described in Jeremiah. Ours should be different from that of the general population: "He will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the LORD. His heart is secure, he will have no fear; in the end he will look in triumph on his foes" (Ps 112:7-8 NIV).

The reports of terrorism should have generated an immediate war cry in the Church, instead of lament alone. It should have stirred our righteous rage. We knew who the perpetrator was when others were still making assumptions. We recognized his methods and his M.O. (Modus Operandi). That alone should have stirred us to the fight, for this was our old, unseen enemy. For the Church, this is not a New War Against Terrorism but the continuation of an old, old struggle against terror.

The Church is uniquely empowered on the inside for this internal battle against this invisible enemy: "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (2 Tim 1:7 NKJV).

Hugh Black adds, "The fear of God kills all other fears."

As we address our fight against fear, please bear this in mind: It is a very different struggle to keep from being overcome by fear than it is to fight to overcome fear from overcoming us. The Church must take its position on the frontline to assault fear at its root--in the Spirit realm.

Dwayne N. Hunt is a motivational speaker, highly regarded as a master teacher, and emerging as a thoughtful writer. He pastors Abundant Grace Fellowship in Memphis, Tenn. He is also a member of the National Speakers Association and Executive Director of HOPE for Memphis. For more information, log on to www.theinvisibleenemy.org .