Do you know who you are?  The devil’s trying to get us to question who we are.  The enemy will try to put you off your game, and say, “Who do you think you are?”  Tell him!  Amen?  “You know who I am?  I’m a son of God.  I’m an heir and joint‑heir with Christ Jesus.  I am the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ; hallelujah!  I want you to know who I am!  I am the light of the world.  I am an ambassador of Christ who’s been given all power and all authority over all the power of your kingdom.”  Resist the devil, and he will flee from you; amen?  Too many of the church are cowering to these principalities and powers, circumstances.  It’s like that one, we’ve heard it a number of times.  But I still love that joke where the lion is standing up before the rest of the animals.  He roars and says, “Who’s the king of the jungle?”  The little monkey goes, “You are!  You are!”  He lets out another big roar, “Who’s the king of the jungle?”  The different other animals, some zebra, “You are!  You are!”  Finally, he does it one more time to the elephant.  The elephant reaches out with his trunk, grabs him, just slams him here and slams him there and slams him down over here.  The lion goes, “Well, you don’t have to get mad because you don’t know the answer.”   The devil just needs to know we know the answer, praise God!  Do we?

Put on the whole armor of God.  “Take unto you,” (Ephesians 6:13), “the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand…” Now, the word withstand means “to set out against”.  It means to be offensive.  It’s not passive.  It’s not digging in, it’s setting out against, praise God!  This armor is made for attack on the kingdom of darkness and the gates of hell will not prevail against the church of Jesus Christ.  What do we do to prepare for persecution?  Put on the whole armor of God.  Know who you are.  Know what Jesus has done.  Know the enemy’s place.  Get your mind free from all of this temporal nonsense of what’s going on in our nation, politically.  This is not our home!  This is not what we’re fighting for.  Beloved, the kingdom of God suffers violence, and the violent take it by force!  We’re not just going to stroll into this thing.  We’re going to battle our way in. 

We’re a people that are called to put this armor on, to attack that we might withstand in this evil day, and having done all stand.  It’s those that endure to the end that shall be saved, hallelujah!  Persecution’s going to come!  It’s going to look, at times, like God is not there, that He’s forsaken us.  It’s going to look, at times, that we have no possible ability at all to withstand these hordes of people that hate righteousness, hate the name of Jesus Christ, this whore, this apostate religious system of the book of Revelation that’s going to rise up.  Professed Christians hating us for our stand on the Word of God, declaring that it means what it says, hallelujah!  This church, the body of Christ, the bride of Christ that’s being purified and becoming without spot or wrinkle or any such thing in our personal holiness, is also admonished to preach the Word in this last day; amen?