The enemy of the Church

By Guest Blogger

“I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it”
Matthew 16:18

The Church has an enemy who will do everything in his power to destroy her - the devil obviously doesn’t have such a low view of the Church as we often do. 

Some of the methods he employs are to undermine, dilute and divert from the preaching and teaching of the gospel; infiltrating ‘churches’ with ungodly and even unsaved leaders; distracting with gimmicks and apparently good things that subtly replace God’s Word; substituting man’s ideas for God’s clear commands.   

Another tactic is to keep genuine believers out of the Church local, so they stop contributing to the growth and building up of the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:14-16) and are no longer benefitting from the means of grace ordained by God for their edification and growth in holiness (Acts 2:42). The enemy may use discouragement or disillusionment, distraction by earthly concerns, or personal divisions among Christians.  He may magnify the shortcomings in different fellowships until we are convinced that we could not possibly commit ourselves to any of them. 

The reasons we sometimes find ourselves outside of the body may be diverse and complex, but the outcome is the same: the local expression of the body of Christ is weakened, and so are we. 

​The remedy is simple, though not necessarily easy: obedience to God.