This sermon by Joshua Daniel emphasizes the spiritual battle Christians face against principalities and powers, urging believers to put on the whole armor of God and engage in the real fight against darkness. It highlights the transformative power of Christ in history, from the abolition of cruel practices to the triumph of truth over superstition, calling for a bold stand for Jesus in a world increasingly hostile to the Gospel.

Welcome to the Lord's Challenge with Joshua Daniel. The Layman's Evangelical Fellowship International is a ministry reaching people from all walks of life since 1935. After a life-changing encounter with Jesus Christ at the age of 16, Joshua Daniel has been declaring the marvelous deliverance from sin, which is freely given to all those who turn to the loving Savior. Wherever this message has gone out, broken relationships have been restored, sickness healed, ill-gotten money returned, and thieves turned into givers. We now invite you to watch and receive the invaluable blessing that God has for you. Now, dear friends, when I see the scriptures telling us where the battle really is. Now, suppose I keep firing off a few crackers, and what have you, you have all kinds of rockets, they call them, they go right up into the sky. But, and I claim that we are total conquerors, and the battle is settled because we have fired off a few crackers. It would sound absurd, isn't that so? Because some of the great absurdities of history are being enacted before us today. Now, can you imagine when a world is dying around us, the big debate appears to be, hey, ah, what's wrong about having a homosexual as the head of our diocese, or our church, or the president of our board? Now, is that a matter which should engage our thinking at all? The Bible tells us holiness unto the Lord, holiness unto the Lord. You know, instead of dealing with some of these big currents and battles of today, at best, we are only skirmishing, you know, just doing a little here, doing a little there, and imagining that we are doing a great job. Now, that doesn't sound very honest to me at all. You see? I don't, if one of the big three automobile manufacturers claims that they have won 85% of the market from all comers, you know, the Asian manufacturers and the Russian manufacturers and so on. Well, if they make a claim like that, it has to be factual. You know, the books have to show that, hey, the recovery in Detroit has been so wonderful that we have, one of the big three have captured, wow, 85% of the market. It's done. Now we'll head for the 95 and the 100. Well, you know, you can't bluff there. You can't talk through your hat. So, when it comes to Ephesians 6 chapter in the 12th verse, I say to myself, what, am I at all in this kind of battle, or am I playing around the periphery? Ephesians 6 from 10th verse, Finally, my brothers, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might, whose might, his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Okay? Against principalities, against powers. Can we really say we are fighting or wrestling against, you know, the little battles within the heart, the little battles in the family? Oh, I won't call them little battles. They are overwhelming battles, aren't they? The battles in our families, you see, that seem to take up all our strength, and we seem to be capable of nothing else. Now, that's painful. But where lies the real battle? The battle is against principalities, against powers. You know, my dear friends, if a book can be really written of Christ made the difference. You know, I'm not a great researcher, and I'm a very poor kind of peripheral historian. Just pick up a little here, pick up a little there. You won't call that a historian. Anyway, Christ made the difference. If a factual record can be written of what the coming of Jesus and the preaching of the gospel did to this world. All right, take just the blood sports, blood sports of Rome, the gladiatorial fights, the bloodshed, the entertainment that was derived by the supposed rulers and enlightened Romans who sat up in the galleries of the Colosseum. You know, the Colosseum still stands there. As a matter of fact, I sat there in the Colosseum. It was a humbling moment to me that so many thousands of Christians had been killed there, had been given to the wild bees, and they were faithful to the Lord. All right, the elimination of these blood sports, oh my, it took almost three centuries, and the despised Christians, the Christians who had to go underground and dwell in those dark labyrinthine caves under the city, that they should become the predominant rulers. It was nothing more than a classic historical victory of truth triumphing over superstition. All right, take some of the heathen nations of the world to think that their temples were just centers of vice and immorality before the Lord Jesus Christ was proclaimed. The millions of girls that were butchered, you know, defective girls born weak, children born to Spartan mothers, both the child and the mother were killed. Oh, this was a revelation to me. I did not know well, I did hear that in Africa, when Mary Slessor went there from Scotland, she saw how the orphaned children were being killed and the mothers, because orphans were supposed to be born of demons and so on. Some of the customs of the heathen were so redolent of abject cruelty and darkness, being overthrown, customs that had ruled their thinking and their societies for centuries. Christ made the difference. And what are we ashamed of Jesus Christ today? And what right have we to be ashamed of Jesus Christ today? And there is a battle on hand. And here is a battle where the issues are pretty clear. You know, when AIDS surfaced, we said, oh, how do we trade? Where do we trace this back? All right. It was traced back to the bathhouses in San Francisco, which were largely used by the homosexuals. Okay. We have not gotten a hold of that scourge, only it is increasing and claiming millions of deaths year after year. And strong young fellows reduce to mere skeletons, just being kept alive through expensive medication, which is being too much of a burden to the medical systems of everybody, till whole governments are running into awful debt. You know, my dear friends, for a couple of dollars, you could be thrown into prison in Britain, not too very long ago. Yes, you were not supposed to be a debtor. And here we are, unashamed of running up a debt for which we have no notion how we are going to pay back that debt. And a debt which includes and involves all of us, every taxpayer. Now, what right has anybody to run up a debt on my name? I don't want to owe any man anything. It's too much of a burden. But now, when we are passing through times like this, you know, Christianity today doesn't seem to touch any of these real troubling issues. No correction can be offered to the nation. We are just beating about the bush, talking about, oh, our little finances or whatever. Is that wrestling against principalities and powers? No, it's not. Plainly, it is not. And when I see the minds of fellows who say they are Christians and so on and so forth, they are completely absorbed with themselves. What are they wrestling with? They are just wrestling with their base nature. That's about it. They are not able to enter into any other field or fight anybody's battles. Their battles are overwhelming for themselves. Now, do you call that Christian? No, it's not. You see, their minds are so localized. What is this talking about? Principalities and powers in some little township. Is that all? See, there are issues which towns also have to settle. Licensing issues and other issues. Okay. When it comes up before a board, you know, for a small area or whatever, there are not even righteous voices. You know, that little place where we had revival meetings, Brother Candle is in heaven now. He came and told us of how that revival took place years ago, not very far from here. And the outcome of that revival was all the beer joints within 10 miles radius had to close. And the children of those, you know, publicans, they would be called publicans, you know, there were in England, the innkeepers are still called so. Anyway, this, these publicans, the children of these publicans, one or two of them became missionaries. All right. It's just a small area. And I don't know whether a thing like that has stood these 50 years. I have no way of finding out unless I personally go there to see how things are. But one thing I know, where there is revival, the devil comes in like a flood. And seven other spirits worse than the first take over. That is normally the case. And that is the case with America today. And Britain. Seven other spirits worse than the first taking over. Now, that's also in general the description of our present civilization. A civilization which is totally subservient to the flesh. The flesh seems to dictate everything. As though man has no soul or spirit. And what? Even in a place like England, nurses are told not to talk about Jesus Christ in the hospital. And there are nurses who are ready to still earn their bread that way. I would say, hey, listen, you are not going to dictate what I think. And what I think, I will say. And you are not to control that. Well, you want to be a super communist or something? I'm not going to kowtow to it. I would rather starve than kowtow to your tyranny. Well, my dear people, now that was a reaction of the early martyrs. And the early Christian church produced so many martyrs. And to this day, it continues to produce some marvelous men and women who have been dying for their faith. They're not like the butchers that set off bombs in marketplaces to kill, in the name of their gods. Innocent people. No. These wonderful people, born out of Calvary's travail, are rescuing and helping so many in our present day. Let's pray. Loving Father, we want our hearts to be fixed. Oh, Father, teach us to carry the battle to the gates of the enemy. Thou has told us that the gates of hell will not prevail against you, against the church. Oh, my Father, have mercy upon us. These powers of darkness, people becoming Satanists, people proclaiming that they are Satanists. Oh, my Father, I do not know all that is happening. I pray for the Archbishop of Canterbury. Lord, what an abomination. The man is guilty of, oh, teach him to renounce every wickedness and vanity that has to do with the Druidic priesthood. How can a man say he is a Christian priest and still be a Druidic priest? Oh, Father, have mercy, I pray. Here is a situation where people do not want the truth, where they are not allied to the truth. They are not hurt by the fact that truth has become a fugitive. Oh, my Father, forgive us, forgive us. Hear our prayer, in Jesus' almighty name. Amen. Mountains touch the sky. Many things about tomorrow I don't seem to understand. But I know tomorrow, and I know it's my end. This program is brought to you by the Layman's Evangelical Fellowship International, an interdenominational missionary and prayer group working for revival around the globe. We invite every layperson to become God's ally in changing his or her corner of the world. Please write, and if you have a prayer request or concern you would like to share, please do let us know. You can email us at post at lefi.org or visit our website at lefi.org. Our mailing address is LEFI P.O. Box 1072 Armidale WA 6992. Until we meet again next week, may God bless you.