President Obama has been criticized for his failure to name the enemy by saying the words ‘Islamic terrorism.’ He has even gone on a denial/apologetic tour to deflect any blame for the actions of Muslim terrorists, and his Administration even went so far as to say that climate change is the real enemy. While we can speculate as to why he is doing this, the fact is no corrective action will ever succeed if the enemy is not properly identified. Or if we put it another way, if the cause of a problem is wrong, it follows that any solutions to fix the problem will also be wrong.

 
This brings us to the present day with a view to the upcoming November elections. Up to this point, there has been a lot of in house fighting among conservatives about which candidate to support, but now that Ted Cruz and John Kasich have suspended their presidential campaigns, the way is clear for Donald Trump to receive the Republican nomination. There has also been a call for all conservatives to unite behind Trump and concentrate on defeating the Democrats and Hillary Clinton, who is now being billed as the real opponent we must now defeat. This is another misidentification of who the real enemy is, and I would like to show why this reasoning is part of the problem and not part of the solution.

 
We may live in a physical world, but the word of God tells us this physical world is not all there is. An unseen spiritual world also exists along with our physical world that we do see. Paul writes that “while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor 4:18). These different worlds also interact with each other, and events on one world can influence events in the other. We see this after Yeshua sent out His disciples to minister to the people; they returned with joy and said “’Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.’ And He [Yeshua] said to them, ‘I was watching Satan fall from Heaven like lightening’” (Luke 10:17-18). Lastly, there are spiritual beings that are good and bad. The evil spiritual beings seek to blind people to the truth of God’s word so that they will perish: “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor 4: 3-4).

 
Having said all this, we know the state of America in 2016 is not good. Today we have strife, division, variance, idolatry, divorce, avarice, debt, deception, hypocrisy, rebellion, disrespect, hatred, covetousness, pride, arrogance, and foolishness at levels that were unheard of in American history as this nation continues to exchange the light of God’s truth for the deceptive ‘freedom’ to do whatever is right in our own eyes. We are seeing the consequences of what happens if people believe there’s no God. As Dostoevsky wrote, if God doesn’t exist, everything would be permissible, and people would live their lives as if there is no governing moral code that applies to everyone. Conservatives have linked liberal politics and agendas with the decline of our nation, but does this make Hillary Clinton and the Democrats the ‘real opponents’ that they speak of? The answer is no.

 
The reason why Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are not the real opponents we should focus on is because they have been blinded by spiritual darkness, but people have become so polarized about the November elections they won’t acknowledge the work of the real enemy like President Obama won’t recognize Islamic terrorism. The Adversary has persuaded many people to accept and do things that are at variance with God’s word by blinding them spiritually, and since the problem is spiritual, it would be foolish to think this situation can be corrected at the ballot box. It must be stopped in the spiritual realm, so if you want to stop corruption in its tracks, we must exercise the authority Yeshua gives us over the enemy and take on the spiritual forces of darkness. Paul reminds us where the real fight must be fought when he wrote: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). If we will do this once again like the disciples Yeshua sent out, Satan will once again fall from Heaven like lightening as he did before, spiritual blindness will be cured, and people will be set free to love God and their neighbors again. The Adversary knows that this is what will happen God’s people use their spiritual authroity, and he dreads it. But that won’t happen if all our focus is on politics and the ballot box.

Nisan 26, 5776