Overcoming Death 729
Lord Jesus entirely overcame that enemy; today God wants His
church to experience this victory of Christ. We all sense we are
living in the end time. The Holy Spirit is presently leading us to
wage the last battle with death before the rapture comes.
Realizing his days are numbered Satan exerts his utmost strength
to block Christians from being raptured. This explains in part why
God’s children are being assaulted so fiercely in their bodies today.
Due to the severity of these physical attacks, they seem to breathe
into themselves the air of death, thereby relinquishing any hope of
being rapture alive. They do not perceive this is but the challenge of
the enemy, aimed at hindering their ascension. However, should they
receive the call of rapture, they naturally soon come to possess a
combative spirit against death. For they sense in their spirit that death
is an obstacle to rapture which must be overcome.
The devil is a murderer (John 8.44). The purpose of Satan’s work
against the saints is to kill them. He has a special tactic for the last
days: to “wear out the saints” (Dan. 7.25). If he can add just a little
anxiety to the believer’s spirit, increase just a trifle the restlessness in
his mind, cause the saint to lose sleep one night, eat less the next
time and overwork still another time, then he has made inroads with
his power of death. Although a single drop of water is powerless,
continuous dripping can indisputably wear a hole in a rock. Being
well acquainted with this truth, Satan incites a little worry here, a
little anxiety there, or a little neglect elsewhere to literally wear out
the saints.
Sometimes the devil directly attacks believers and causes them to
die. Many deaths are assaults such as these, though few recognize
them for what they are. Perhaps it is merely a cold, sunstroke,
insomnia, exhaustion or loss of appetite. Perhaps it is uncleanness,
wrath, jealousy or licentiousness. Failing to perceive that the power
of death is behind these phenomena, the full victory for Christians is
jeopardized. Were they to recognize them as the assaults of death and