The Bible Study Podcast, episode 44. This is the third episode in a series about the church,

what it is and what it's called to be, and this episode will focus on the church is called

to be victorious. Welcome to the Bible study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen.

Before I go on with this episode, I should tell you that if you don't listen through to the end,

it'd be easy to misconstrue what I'm going to talk about here.

So if you're not going to listen through to the end, just skip this one.

And I say that because

this particular topic has words, I believe, of hope for the church, as well as potentially

words of a rebuke. And so it's important to listen to both. There are a number of places in the

Bible where it talks about the church as being at war. The most obvious ones are

those verses that talk about putting on the whole armor of God, but there are also verses as strong

as the verses from Revelation, which seem to indicate that the church is involved in the struggle between God and Satan in a very

spectacular way. And I'm going to read here from Revelation chapter 12. And there was a war in heaven.

Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.

But he was not strong enough and lost

their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down that ancient serpent called the devil or

Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him.

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say, Now have come the salvation and the power and the

kingdom of God and the authority of His Christ.

For the accusers of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.

They overcame him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony.

They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.

...