A guest review of a classic book on revival, the power of God, and the decline of spirituality among the people of God. Linda Williams urges you to read a book she feels has been overlooked by the church for too long.

This cover is from the 2017 Whitaker House edition.

Jessie Penn-Lewis, War on the Saints (Whitaker House, 1996).

Written in 1910, following the acclaimed Welsh Revival, Jessie Penn-Lewis analyzed the reasons for the eventual decline of the spirit of revival. She comes to the conclusion that “Revival is the hour and power of God, and of the devil, for the descent of the Divine power brings the accompanying onslaught of evil supernatural powers. It means movement in the spiritual realm. Revival itself is the hour of God, when heaven is opened, and the power of God works among men, but when the Divine power appears to pass away, and evil supernatural powers manifest their workings in a man, or a church, or a country, then men marvel that the devil’s work should be where God had been so manifest, not knowing that the devil was planting his seeds, and doing His work, from the dawn of revival. Revival ebb began with its flow, but all unseen” (Chap. 12: “Revival Dawn and the Baptism of the Spirit,” emphasis hers).

In this way, Ms. Penn-Lewis proceeds to systematically rip off the scales of deception and self-delusion that are the causes of spiritual bondage, and the effects it has on the spiritual man.

Used as a practical diagnostic tool, War on the Saints identifies the many forms of spiritual deception to which every believer is susceptible, and gives practical instruction on how one may uncover such falsehoods in one’s own doctrines, practices and belief systems.

This is not “spiritual warfare” in the common, misused term. There is no instruction on how to cast out demons, or how to pray “properly” for the healing of the sick. On the contrary, this book focuses exclusively on the idea that spiritual warfare is very much like real, military warfare, and that we must “take back ground” that has been lost to the Adversary in our own minds, lives and congregations due to false teachings and the conclusion which have been drawn from those false teachings.

While the sentence structure occasionally requires some concentration, the book is written in brief, easily digested snippets. Ms. Penn-Lewis provides excellent “meat” for the experienced and inexperienced believer alike. Her style of writing simply and logically addresses the various forms and methods of spiritual deception used by the Adversary to coax, confuse, blind, and entrap the man of God, to either limit his usefulness or derail him/her completely from God’s path for his/her life. As the book delves into the shockingly successful methods and processes used since the beginning of time, the reader will discover, if honest, that s/he too may have been duped by the Adversary. Once the deception is uncovered, practical suggestions are given for the “renewal of one’s mind” by means of focusing on “rightly dividing the Word of Truth,” God’s peace, and God’s expectation of how we are to live our lives. The instruction contained within targets specifically how to fight against the wiles of the Adversary, but leaves the application and the practice of these devices to the believer. As such, an individual can take this concept as far as s/he may desire to go.

Dr. Michael Brown is a well-known figure in Pentecostal/Charismatic circles. He travels the world preaching, is the host of the Line of Fire program, and has written numerous books. His books address a wide variety of topics. Some of these topics he has written quite extensively about, these include: revival, Jewish apologetics and evangelism, and the LGBT issue. In Jezebel’s War With America, Dr. Brown addresses some of the major forces that are contending for the soul of America.

The book is comprised of a preface and twelve chapters. The premise of the book is that the characteristics that marked the life of the biblical Jezebel are at work in our day in America. The Jezebel of the Old Testament was an ungodly and controlling woman. The woman that Jesus called Jezebel in Revelation 2:20 was also an ungodly figure, she led the Christians of the first century into sexual immorality and idolatry. This is the “spirit of Jezebel,” that stands opposed to the Word and will of God and it is active in our day. The activity of this spirit can be seen in a number of the major issues that are currently confronting our culture. These issues include: idolatry, sexual immorality, abortion, radical feminism, the war on gender distinctions, the rise of witchcraft, and the silencing of the prophetic voice (that is, biblical truth). A quick survey of these topics reveals that a number of the challenges we are facing as a nation are sexual in nature. Subjects that fall into this category include sexual immortality, abortion, and gender distinctions. Radical feminism might also be included in this list.

Michael Brown’s PneumaReview.com author page

In chapter 4, “Jezebel and the Sexual Seduction of America,” Brown cites figures about how widespread pornography is. Some of the statistics on this are staggering. One of the reasons for this is the availability of porn on the internet. It can be viewed discreetly, on a cell phone, or from the privacy of one’s home on a computer. Pornography is a contributing factor to extra marital affairs and problems in marriages. It thus creates problems for the viewer and others as well.

Chapter 6 is titled “Jezebel and Radical Feminism.” Brown admits that not all feminism or women’s movements are bad, some have been very helpful with regard to issues that concern women. The author’s issue is with radical feminism. Their agenda is very different. Brown quotes a number of radical feminists in this chapter. It is clear from some of their statements that these women have little regard for men or marriage. For example, Brown quotes Sheila Cronan as saying “Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women’s movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage.” Brown says that radical feminists are extreme. It is clear that their goals, if achieved, would negatively impact marriages and family.

Pastor Wes Shortridge presents a short history of the astounding revival that occurred on both sides of the American Civil War and how it impacted the nation for decades.

Introduction

America in 1861 presents a painful and complex chapter in history. God, however, had a plan for the American people, and God remained present during the painful chapter. God appears most in this period in the soldiers fighting the Civil War. Along the banks of the Rappahannock River in 1863, both armies faced one another in battle; however, both armies also faced a revival of religion. The paradox of revival in two armies facing one another presents an example of God’s ability to use revival to accomplish His purposes in spite of human conflict.

“Prayer in ‘Stonewall’ Jackson’s Camp” (1866).
Drawn by F. Kramer, Engraved by J. C. Buttre.

The Circumstances of the Revival

Pre 1861 America While many modern interpreters of the American situation before the Civil War view the war as a simple moral war in which one party supported slavery and the other party arose as a benevolent deliverer of an oppressed people, the actual situation in America proved much more complex. Americans, from both North and South, had sanctioned or at least ignored slavery for nearly a century. White men ruled the country, and obvious examples of misogyny and racism rarely arose as issues in a land that voiced the values of liberty and equality. The powerful elites from both North and South worked to protect the prominent position of the light-skinned and masculine. The first and second Great Awakenings had revived religion in America, but paternalistic racism remained unaddressed. Religion focused mostly on benevolence within the paternalistic system rather than valuing or empowering all humans.

Slavery in America found support in the hermeneutical principles of American religion in both the North and the South. Mark A. Noll describes the unique hermeneutic of America:

Americans held to a hermeneutic that was distinctly American. The reason they held it so implicitly was precisely that this hermeneutic—compounded of a distinctly Reformed approach to the scope of biblical authority (“every direction contained in its pages as applicable at all times to all men”) and a distinctly American intuition that privileged commonsense readings of scriptural texts (“a literal interpretation of the Bible”)—had functioned as the vehicle through which the Bible was unleashed in the creation of the American civilization.[1]

In Part 2 of “Which Way the Trolley: America’s Hot Wars During the Cold War,” William De Arteaga continues to challenge assumptions and asks if the Korean and Vietnam Wars could have been Just Wars.

Read Part 1 of “Which Way the Trolley”

The Indochina Wars

1886 map of Indochina, from the Scottish Geographical Journal.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The First Indochina war (1946-1954) began right after the end of WWII as the French tried to reclaim their Empire in Indochina (Laos, Cambodian and Vietnam) after having ceded it to the Japanese. French forces quickly regained control over most of the area. Indo-Chinese nationalists, led by Ho Chi Ming, did not like the idea much and began a guerrilla resistance. This moved from guerrilla warfare into a combined guerilla and set-piece battles after the Chinese Communists triumphed over their Nationalist enemies and arrived at the Chinese-Vietnam border (1949). Chinese and Soviet supplies and weapons, including artillery and anti-aircraft guns flowed south to the Viet Minh Communist army.[1]

The French Army fought with determination, while slowing losing home support. The French had several major victories, but the Viet Minh were persistent and won a major battle at a crossroads called Dien-Bien Phu (1954). After that, a newly elected French socialist government negotiated a peace. In that settlement France left Indochina, with South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia under local, non-Communist rule, and the North ruled by the Communist Viet Minh.

The treaty allowed the civilian population of Vietnam to go to the area they deemed best, and this resulted in a mass migration of several million Vietnamese Catholics fleeing from the North and into South Vietnam. They did so fearing Communist persecution, which had already been fierce against Catholics in Communist China.

The Communist Viet Minh capture the French headquarters after the Battle of Dien-Bien Phu.

After the division of North and South Vietnam the Emperor of South Vietnam was overthrown by a coup engineered by his own premier, Ngo Dinh Diem. He was Catholic and ruled the majority Buddhist country autocratically and with the Catholics as his base of support. Unfortunately, his regime was allied with the land-holding class, and would not further land reform (as happened in China). These factors ultimately created major difficulties when warfare resumed.

What the American public calls the Vietnam War should really be called the Second Indochina War, because it was fought not only in Vietnam, but in also Cambodia and Laos. American Green Berets and CIA backed groups struggled in Cambodia and Laos against the increasingly well-armed Communist armies in those nations.[2] Under President Nixon, the US Army made an incursion into Cambodia to destroy supply bases that were feeding Viet Cong forces.

The Communist cadres which had remained in place in every town and village in South Vietnam since the partition rose up in insurgency in 1960. President Kennedy, who had suffered a defeat in his handling of the Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion, did not want to lose another country to Communism under his watch, and sent in advisors to help stiffen and support the South Vietnamese Army.

Kennedy was continuing the Truman-Eisenhower policy of the containment of Communism. He was much junior to both Truman and Eisenhower, but shared with both the belief that opposition to Communism was a duty. His inaugural address (January 20, 1960) was a graceful, poetic expression of American anti-Communism and its sense of crusade that had earlier been proclaimed by President Truman.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans – born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage – and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose and foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.[3]

After Kennedy’s assassination, President Johnson continued this policy. He increased the number of advisors and quantity of materials supplied to the South Vietnamese. But the Communist Viet Cong insurgents and the North Vietnamese continued to gain the upper hand. Like Truman before him, Johnson was forced to a decision to either see another country fall into Communist hands or intervene directly with American ground units. He chose to intervene. Also like Truman, he chose not to declare war, but relied on the American public’s strong anti-Communist sentiments to support the war.

Introduction

This article is a spiritual and historical reflection on the two American wars of the Cold War, Korea and Vietnam. Many younger American readers may not be aware that the British successfully fought a Communist insurgency in Malaya (1948-1960) and the French fought the First Indochina War against Communist insurgents from 1948-1953 (described below) – all part of the not-so Cold War that I have not the space to adequately acknowledge in this essay. I will also deal with the difficult moral issue of civilian casualties in wartime, whether accidental or intentional.

For the sake of transparency, let me state that this is written from the perspective of Christian Just War theology that goes back to St. Augustine, and ultimately to St. Paul’s understanding of the state in Romans 13. Christian Just War theory was masterfully articulated by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in the 1930s and extremely influential in the period under discussion (see below). For a more recent articulation of the Just War theory one should consult Nigel Biggar’s work, In Defense of War. [1]

In this essay I take a positive view that the hot wars of America’s Cold War were Just Wars. I do not apologize for, or disguise this viewpoint. I believe within a few decades, and as the history of the Twentieth Century becomes clearer, the American role in these wars will be viewed more positively then they are now.

But in historical perspective, both wars were important in countering the attempt of Germany and its racist expansionism from becoming the predominant power in Europe and then on the planet. In World War I, Imperial Germany had not yet morphed into the vulgar and Pagan manifestation of Hitler’s Nazism. But the seeds were there, as in its Germanic contempt for the Slavic peoples. This disdain dated as far back as the Middle Ages and the Teutonic Knights. It was manifested in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1917 when Germany triumphed over Russia. (The treaty was annulled one year later with the defeat of Germany by the Allied powers). The definitive countering of Germanic imperialism took place at high cost to Americans in World War II. Not waging that war might well have resulted in a disaster for the whole of mankind.

Second, a major, and indeed unprecedented event, was in the positive and merciful occupation of Germany, Italy, and Japan. In these countries the military was disbanded, war criminals prosecuted and some executed (after generally fair trials).[3] The population was treated with respect and without vengeance, and democracy and economic recovery stimulated. Under the Marshall Plan, large amounts of American money was spent as seed money to aid in the reconstruction of our devastated European allies as well as our former enemies. This was a manifestation of Christian ethics on a global political scale. There was also self-interest, as by 1948 it was obvious that Soviet Communism would be an adversary and a restored Germany and Japan could be assets. But that does not negate the Christian and sacrificial elements of these policies.

Dr. Biggar is Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford University. Although too young to remember WWII, his childhood memories were filled with stories from relatives and neighbors of the “good war” that England fought to prevent the unspeakable evils of Nazi world domination. His approach to the moral issues of war is that of Augustine’s “just war” tradition.

For the sake of full disclosure, I have been solidly behind the Augustinian “just war” theory since childhood, before I knew the term. Like Dr. Biggar, I grew up in the 1950s, in awe of our veterans, assured that the war against Nazism was indeed honorable and justified. I also accepted that the wars against Communisms were “just wars.” I joined the Army during the Vietnam War and served in the 101^st Airmobile Division in a civil affairs unit. Although the Vietnam War ended in defeat, I have always considered it an honorable part of the war against communism. In this regard I am in kinship with Dr. Biggar’s assault on “Christian pacifism,” including the many critics of the Vietnam War.

William De Arteaga with children in Vietnam.

Dr. Biggar’s book consists of an introduction, seven chapters and a brief concluding section. The chapters originated from various articles and lectures the author has given over the past decades. The introduction is subtitled “Against wishful thinking,” and together with chapter one, “Against Christian pacifism” counters the opinion, widely popular in university settings, that pacifism is the default setting for the Christian. Biggar deals with various Christian authors who are pacifists and systematically counters their arguments. Among Christian pacifist theologian examined are Richard Hays, John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas. Hauerwas is given particularly severe criticism, as his views on war are short on scriptural analysis and heavy with his left wing political assumptions.

Biggar concludes this section:

Each of the pacifists under consideration assumes that violence is all of one piece. They do not distinguish violence that is well motivated, rightly intentioned, and proportionate from that which is not. Nor do they distinguish anger from vengeance and hatred. …
When our conceptually indiscriminate Christian pacifists turn to the New Testament and read that Jesus repudiated some kinds of anger and violence, they assume that he must have repudiated all kinds …

Such an understanding of Jesus’ social ethics stand prima facie in contradiction of Paul’s affirmation of the divine authorization of sword bearing in the 13^th Chapter of his Epistle to the Romans (p. 59).

Chapter two is entitled, “Love in War.” It records stories of soldiers acting with righteousness and kindness in war situation. A moral soldier can “…regard their enemies with respect, solidarity, and even compassion – all of which are forms of love” (p. 91).

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Jack Hayford preached a sermon at Church on the Way in 1982. He chose Ephesians 6 for his scripture from which he described the armor of God, and how we were to embrace and wear that armor to ward off attacks of the enemy of our souls. I was 51, single, lonely and living in Los Angeles at that time. I owned a major part of a successful construction consulting engineering firm that was growing nicely. I had become a Christian in 1961.

Toward the end of the sermon, Pastor Jack advised there were times when the devil was out to steal our future and when that was the case, we had to more than put on the armor; we had to declare war on the devil, and refuse to surrender our future.

I played golf later that Sunday. I got to the club late in the afternoon and played alone. I got to the fourth hole and hit the ball well. I drove down the cart path and stopped where the cart path to the eighth tee intersected the path I was using.

I got out of the cart and looked around. No one was close by or about to come my way, so I took that moment to declare war on the devil. By then, I had decided that he was not going to steal any more of my future, and I challenged him at the top of my voice. No one heard me and when I was done, I got back in the cart and played on.

I got home that evening and instead of going across the street to my customary restaurant for supper, I got busy and never bothered to eat. I got up the next morning and felt checked about breakfast, settling for a cup of coffee.

I did not know much about spiritual warfare at that point in my life. Oh, I had heard about it, but somehow it was beyond my level of experience or interest. My two skipped meals lead to a third, a fourth and soon I knew I was fasting. My recollection is that I sort of fell into this fast; at least, I have no recollection of making a decision not to eat.

I went over to my friend’s home on Thursday. His name was Chuck Shoemake, and at that time he pastored the Canoga Park Foursquare church. His wife Ruby joined us, and we sat around their living room talking. Our custom to close one of my visits was to kneel around their coffee table and have a prayer.