Because of the urgency of the hour in our nation, I am re-posting the second half of a message (We Are At War: Wake Up) by Ralph Nault given shortly after the trade towers fell. As God’s children, we can use the full armor of God in this spiritual battle waging for the heart of our nation.
Here is Ralph in his own words:
I’m sure the scriptures in Ephesians 6 are some you’ve heard many times, but I want to cover them once again, because this is a time when we need what they have to offer us: knowledge and wisdom.
1. Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might
In Ephesians chapter 6, verse 10, it says:
Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might
Don’t rely upon our own strength. Don’t rely upon just the natural strength of our nation. But look to something far greater than that, because we need something far greater than that: Be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. Rely upon His power now to give us the victory in this situation.
2. Stand against the schemes of the devil
In Ephesians 6, verse 11, it says:
Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil
The devil’s schemes are in all of this that is going on. Put on the full armor, that you may be able to stand firm. There are many Christian people right now who are not standing very firm. They’re filled with fear. They’re filled with worry. They’re filled with terror.
You see, this attack (911) has accomplished some of what the enemy wanted to do. You see, it ministers fear and terror. It murders and kills—that’s what it accomplishes and that’s what it wants to accomplish. Even though those buildings are down and all those poor people have died, but, yet in spite of that, those spirits are still at work. Somehow it loosed a whole group of spiritual beings in this United States and they are spirits: spirits of terror, spirits of fear. They’re murderous things.
We’ve seen some of this already. People right in this country, have turned against neighbors they have known all their life, even though they’re not the killers or murderers. The instant something terrible happens like this, you can see that spirit of murder come and try to find people to use. It’s trying to fill people with that fear and terror, and it’s doing a good job of it right now. And many, many people are being affected by it—some of you maybe, a fear is in you, a terror is in you, and the worry is in you. It’s there. Recognize it for what it is, and recognize it for where it comes from, and don’t allow it to stand!
This is where the armor of God comes in: “put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm” and not be afraid and not be worried and not be terrified and not have murder in your own heart.
I hope you are hearing me! It’s vitally important.
This is not the scheme of just one man, or fifty men or a hundred men around the world. Yes, they’ve been scheming, but that’s not where the scheme came from. The scheme came straight from the devil and he put it in the hearts and minds of these people, and they were open to it and they’re moving with it. They are filled with hatred, they are filled with bitterness, and they are filled with murder. They are filled with all of these things. That’s what they’re full of right now. BUT the scheme did not come from them! It came from a higher source than that, a greater power than that.
But isn’t that what we get our eyes on and we say, “Oh, they are the enemy; there’s the enemy.” But right now in this situation, the enemy is hard to see and the enemy is hard to find—what nation, what country, what city is he in? See, he’s all over the world and he is spiritual! He’s not just flesh and blood. He uses these people from all over the world, but yet the enemy himself is something different from that.
3. Struggle against spiritual forces
Ephesians 6, verse 12:
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 the heavenly [places]
One of the things I heard many years ago, way back at the early years of our ministry, was that the spiritual and the natural are a kind of mirror of one another. When you have a tremendous spiritual warfare, a spiritual battle going on in the spiritual realm, then it also breaks out in the natural and in the physical world.
During the Second World War, there was a tremendous spiritual war going on in the heavenlies, and as a result, we had this world war that stretched on and on and on. I believe with the First World War it was the same thing, just a tremendous warfare going on in the spiritual realm. And now once again, we are confronted with the same thing.
There seem to be lulls in between these wars where it kind of drops off for a while and there seems to be some major victories. But after a while, the forces seem to build up once again, and then all of a sudden, it comes again, and we’re confronted once again with it, perhaps in a totally different and unexpected way than we’ve been confronted with it before. Remember, the enemy schemes, he’s very subtle.
So what’s going on now? There’s another tremendous spiritual warfare going on in the heavenlies, not just in the physical, natural realm. And the church is the one that needs to stand in the gap in this situation of the spiritual part of the battle.
We can send our armies and take care of the physical part of it, and hopefully have some wonderful victories, but without the underlying backing of the church using the spiritual authority that God has given us, we’re in trouble. There could be many, many losses of life.There could be years and years and years with no real victory from it. BUT I believe that if the church wakes up and says, “We have the authority, we’ll use that authority, and we will bind these things,” then the victory will be much quicker for us—and maybe, even cheaper.
I wish I could proclaim this message to the nation, because I think the whole nation needs to hear it; maybe the whole world needs to hear it. I hope and pray that God will lift up hundreds of pastors, ministers, teachers, evangelists, whoever, to strongly bring out this same message to every church. And that every one of them will hear the message clearly, and the church will rise up in its full strength. It’s so important that happens right now for us, for this nation, and for the world, and for peace.
4. Take up the full armor and resist
Continuing in Ephesians 6, verse 13:
Therefore, take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm
The resistance has to come from within us, because that’s where the battle’s going to be waged. It’s going to be waged against you.
I don’t believe that we can even begin to comprehend the amount of spiritual beings that have been released somehow, that have gathered and somehow been released into this nation to torment and trouble individuals. Can you imagine the amount of them there has to be for someone to torment every individual in this nation? To trouble their minds and hearts and trouble their homes? But they’re there! Believe me they’re there. It’s for real.
We need to put on the armor, not just a part of it, and not just one or two pieces of it. We need that full armor, so we’ll be able to stand firm in this battle and have the victory: “take up the full armor of God that you may be able to resist in the evil day.” Whenever these things come against you, you’ll be able to stand firm and have a victory. And you will be able to stand in the gap with the rest of the church for a victory for our nation!
5. Gird our loins with truth
In Ephesians 6, verse 14 it tells us to:
Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth
Pray for discernment. Pray for clear discernment because there are a lot of lies out there, there’s a lot of propaganda. You’re going to hear it from all over the place, from every direction. Not all of it is lies, some of it is truth, but yet there are a lot of it that is lies and you’re going to have to be able to discern the difference between the truth and the lie. You need to discern that clearly.
This is a part of the armor that we need to have so we are able to see the truth, to know the truth, and to recognize the truth for what it is, no matter where it comes from—something somebody has written, or said on TV, or spoken by the people around you, from your neighbor or even your pastor. You need to be able to discern the truth and walk in it.
That is a part of the armor: it’s knowing and seeing the truth and ministering the truth to yourself. It is making sure that you recognize the lie and not allow it lie to work through you and affect some of the people around you. You don’t want to allow the enemy to use you without you even being aware of it: to spread the lie and to spread the untruth to some of the people around you or to spread fear and worry to some of the people around you.
6. Put on the breastplate of righteousness
Continuing in verse 14:
Put on the breastplate of righteousness
May God help us to function as a righteous people so that we don’t have these horrible things happening that we are seeing on TV now against these different people. Our battle is not against flesh and blood. It’s not against someone because of their color or their race. No, that’s not where it’s at. We must really guard ourselves. We must walk in a righteous way; we must see into people’s hearts, instead of just seeing the outside, the external.
There are a lot of innocent people who are being terrorized now; they are literally being terrorized by citizens of this country. This is bad; it’s wrong and not good at all. We need to be aware of that; this is not the route to take. May God root out the anger in our hearts.
There’s something about a righteous anger that is fine, but when it becomes an unrighteous anger, it turns to hatred and murder. This is a totally different thing. In the church we should not allow it. We should not allow it to touch our hearts. Whatever it is, we should banish it just as quick as we can and recognize the fact that there’s some unrighteous anger and hatred in our heart and say, “God, help me to get this out of my heart.”
7. Shod your feet with the gospel of peace (the good news)
In Ephesians 6, verse 15:
And having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace
Make sure that even in these desperate times, we spread good news and not bad news. Hopefully every one of you have enough understanding of the Bible so that you know what it teaches. It doesn’t teach us war and killing as such. It says that we are to spread faith and hope and love, and we are to even love our enemy and pray for them. That’s what they need; they need prayer. They are bound, they are deceived, they are tools of the enemy, and they need salvation too.
We need to somehow get this in our heart that these people right in our country are being terrorized by citizens in our country, and they need our prayer. They need our intervention on their behalf, right at this point. We need to love them; we need to care for them.
The church has been asleep too long and it needs to wake up. It’s been asleep for quite a long time, maybe since after World War II and things came to a place of peace and then it kind of lulled off and went back to sleep again.
We have not been watching ourselves very clearly and one of the tremendous things that sneaks in very subtly is greed. I believe this nation has become greedy. Not every person individually, but yet, as a whole, everybody all had to get rich, all had to get greedy—a tremendous amount of greed in our country.
Values and morals slipped tremendously from what they were in the 50’s, 40’s, after World War II. They just kind of plummeted downhill, the values and morals of this nation. All the thousands of millions of children that have been aborted. What an evil thing!
The church stood by and allowed God to be taken out of the schools. We wanted witchcraft and everything else in schools, and now we cannot talk about God or pray in schools. And we wonder why, why do we have our kids killing one another in our schools? Because we took God out! Because we didn’t have the strength there any more to resist the enemy and keep him out.
We’ve done the same thing with our government. Our government has become very corrupt, because we took God out—you can’t talk about God around here, you can’t pray around here, you can’t do that around here.
We took him out of everything and now our protection is gone. Our strength that we need to withstand the enemy is gone. I hope that what just happened to the world trade towers is enough of a wake-up call so it makes us aware of it and bring this country alive again. And it says, “Hey, we need God.”
I want to tell you, if we’re going to win this battle, we need God. We need Him active in our schools. We need Him active in our government. We need Him active in our businesses. We need Him active in our churches. We need Him!
I think even in many churches, it’s like God is asleep, but we’ve allowed this to happen. It’s not that God is asleep, it is we the church who are asleep, and we’re not using any of the things that God has given us to use.
May God wake us up and make us aware of it, or we’re in deep trouble.
I think in a time like this, we need to be very careful, even with one another, that we minister peace and faith, love and encouragement, and hope one to another, not fear and worry and distress or anger and resentment. It’s so easy to give that to other people. NO! We need to minister the gospel of peace, that’s what we need to do. May God help you to do that.
8. Take up the shield of faith
Ephesians 6, verse 16 it says:
in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil [one.]
The shield of faith. What’s the opposite of faith? Worry, worry, fear, they all enter in. We must stir up our faith, each one of us individually. We must stir up our faith and we must stir up the faith of people around us and say, “Hey, you know, we have to believe, we have to trust in God. We have to stir up our faith and believe.”
Faith has a lot to do with trust. Who are we going to trust? Who are we going to apply our faith in at this point? Am I going to apply all my faith in my government? In my president? In my church or in my pastor?
Well, we need to have faith in those things, but above all, the greatest area we need to have faith is faith in God. Trust in God: confident assurance, that’s what it is. Do you have it? Do you have faith? Do you have confident assurance, so that the worries, the fears, the distress, and all this can’t enter into your mind, into your thoughts, into your soul, into your heart? That is our defense; that is our shield.
If you’re not using your faith, you’re going to be filled with worry. You’re going to be afraid. You’re going to be nervous. You’re going to be frightened, thing after thing, as you hear this bit of bad news or that bit of bad news. It will enter in and get hold of you.
It doesn’t have to happen. You can stand firm if you put the shield of faith up there. The faith that says, “No, no, I trust God. No, I trust God. I choose to put my faith and trust in God.” And in doing that, all of a sudden, the shield is up. And the fear and worry cannot enter into our hearts and get a hold of us. Then we don’t have to spread it to our children, to our families, or to the people around us.
9. Take up the helmet of salvation
Ephesians 6, verse 17:
Take up the helmet of salvation
The helmet of salvation. You know, it is so important in this situation and in this war that we’re in, this war that goes on and on and on, that we have the full armor on.
Part of that armor is salvation, part of that armor is being born … whatever label you use, whether you use the label of being born again, having a conversion experience, or whatever your particular church uses for a label of drawing close to Jesus.
Make it simple. Do whatever, but you need Jesus! You need Jesus Christ in you, the hope of glory, the hope of salvation, the hope of healing, the hope of victory: Christ in you. Are you saved? Have you turned your life over to Christ? Are you relying upon Him? Have you invited Him into your heart?
And have you said, “Lord, just baptize me, fill me with your Holy Spirit and with power. Give me that—whatever I need, Lord, so that we can be victorious in this situation, so that I can be a part of your church that’s active, and alive and awake, and for the building up of the whole body. Thank you, Lord, as you’ve given me all that I need, and that I’m not lacking any good thing whatsoever, that I have everything I need through you, Lord.”
The helmet of salvation means to be saved, become a new creation in Jesus Christ, be born again of his Spirit. We can be just church goers, we can be just religious people—believing God and everything—but we need more than that. We need the helmet of salvation. We need to be born of His Spirit: we need to be that new creation. We need to have salvation.
We need His Spirit within us, working strongly and powerfully. This is the helmet of salvation. Not just being religious and going to church! Christ in us the hope of glory: that’s the helmet of salvation. May God help us to understand that.
10. Take up the sword of the Spirit, the word of God
Ephesians 6, verse 17:
and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
I think this is talking about several things here. I’m sure that I don’t have all the answers, in fact I think I know very little, but yet I know a little bit and I have some faith. I believe this verse is talking about the Scriptures, but not only the Scriptures. It’s talking about us knowing and understanding the Bible, reading it and letting the Holy Spirit teach us and show us some wonderful things.
The Bible holds some wonderful things and has some wonderful answers for all of us. It can bring us comfort and peace and do a lot of things for us. It can give us a greater understanding of God and of the Holy Spirit and what He can do for us.
But I think above all, the Bible teaches us … I’ve stated this before many times: if you had to put the message of the Bible in just a sentence or two it says, if you want to live, go to Jesus. That’s the message of the whole Bible. It’s pointing us all the time to Jesus Christ.
You need to understand this. The Bible gives us a lot of principles, it teaches us and tells us how to pray and all kinds of wonderful things; it gives us a new and deeper understanding of God and of yourself. This is part of what the sword is.
But not only that, I believe it’s talking about the living word, the sword of the spirit. I think it’s also talking about Jesus in us, about the sword, the word, the living word. About the Holy Spirit who brings the words to us and puts it our mind and in our heart and in our mouth. Those words are a sword and they’re powerful.
In Hebrews 4:12, it talks about the word of God as a sword again:
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, [it’s calling it a sword once again there] and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
It’s so important that we have a hold of this understanding about the sword, because it is the very thing that will help us to see clearly the things that are before us, to give us discernment so we can tell the difference between the natural, the fleshly, the spiritual, the Spirit of God, and the spirit of the enemy, the devil. It gives us the help that we need. It is the sword of the spirit that divides and separates all these things so we can see them clearly.
I think this sword can help us even with other people around us. When we understand and have taken this to ourselves, then we are able to look at others and see where they’re at. We are able to discern properly, not only ourselves, but others: we can discern the intentions of their hearts and of their minds also.
I think it’s vitally important right now to see the thoughts and intentions of hearts. We have to see that there are terrorists in every country, all over the world, and that they come in all different colors, and all different nationalities: they’re in America, they may be Americans. Or they may be English, they may be French, and they may be anything else. But yet, they are terrorists and they terrorize people. So it’s important for us to be able to recognize them individually.
There may be someone in your church who is a terrorist. They are not going out there bombing buildings, but they are a terrorist just the same, because they bring terror to people. They might be some of our pastors, ministers, and priests across our nation and around the world who are ministering terror to people or are terrorizing people by what they say.
Maybe this sword of the spirit might even reveal if there’s a little bit of the terrorist within us, within you or me. If we can see it, then we can do something about it and not allow that terrorist spirit to work through us.
In Hebrews 4:13-14, it says:
There is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
Notice that this scripture is relating the word of God, the sword, and everything else to Jesus the Son of God. And what is this confession we are to hold fast: our faith. We are to hold it right up in front of us firm and steadfast.
Hebrews 4:15 says:
For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as [we are, yet] without sin.
If Jesus was tempted, are we tempted? Can we be tempted to function in an evil way, to terrorize others? Absolutely, we can be, but do we have to do: No, we do not!
Hebrews 4:16 says:
Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need.
There’s a great time of need right now, a tremendous time of need. So all the more reason for us to draw close to God with faith and for undeserved favors to come from Him. Pray for many undeserved favors for the hundreds of thousands of people who are out there right now, who are hurting, suffering: their loved ones are lost; they have no parents. All kinds of things like this, and they need an abundance of grace. They need an abundance of undeserved favor.
May God help you to become a part of that undeserved favor, to help others in their time of need. And in your time of need too, may God give you the grace. And around the world, all the people who are suffering: this is a worldwide thing, it affects everybody.
I pray that this message will get hold of your heart. I believe with all my being that this is so important. It’s the most important message I’ve ever given, the most important message I’ve ever delivered through my years of ministry. I believe this is it. This is the most important one of all!
Pass it on to somebody else, and get this word in your own heart and share it. Speak it out to other people: speak it in your church, speak it to the people at work, and speak it to your family whether they are believers or not. Do it while you’re at the table or something, simply share and speak these things about who our enemy is and how we can defeat him. I pray God will help you and put the words in your mouth to do that.
I pray for our nation’s leaders: for our President, for his cabinet, for the leaders in the armed forces. I pray they’ll have great wisdom from God—not the wisdom of the world which is foolishness—but the wisdom from God. I pray that they’ll have great discernment. I pray that God will pour His graces upon them in so many different ways and protect all of our people who are in these armed forces—our young people all across this country who are involved there and whose lives are at risk now as well.
And Lord, I pray for them, and I pray that they will not become terrorists through all of this, that this will not cause them to become the same as what the enemy is. I pray that they’ll all be strong in the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray that they will all come to a deep, close walk with God. I pray that the Lord will be lifted up throughout our nation and through our armed services, and prayer will become a common thing everywhere.
And for these blind people who have caused God to be thrown out of our schools and have caused God to be thrown out of our government in all these different ways, that their eyes will be open, that they’ll see, and they’ll hear, and they’ll understand, and that some changes will come about. And I thank God for that.
And I pray for all these individuals who have lost loved ones, those who were injured themselves, and those who were deeply touched and distressed and in a lot of pain and suffering because of all that happened. I pray for every last one of them. I pray Lord that your grace will be extended to them, that your healing will be extended to them, that your comfort will touch upon them. Father, I pray that their needs will be met. I thank you, Lord Jesus, for it. Amen and amen.
(Transcribed from Ralph Nault’s audio tape, “We Are At War: Wake Up,” September 22, 2001)