D20-6: Do NOT Confuse ‘Holy War’ With ‘Spiritual Warfare’

Alrighty, from today we’re going to begin an in-depth study into one of the most difficult and controversial subjects in all of Scripture.

I’m talking about HOLY WAR.

At the risk of being overly repetitive, let me stress once again that a true Holy War per the Biblical definition is a war that is started by God at His direct command, is overseen by God and then is CONCLUDED by God at His direct command.

Over the centuries, countless wars have been fought all over the globe and if the truth be told many of these conflicts were actually for good and just causes.

And many of these wars were also fought in the Lord’s Name.

Yet, per the true Biblical definition they were NOT holy wars.

Again, as I’ve already stated like about 20 billion times, flesh-and-blood man does NOT have the authority to declare anything “holy” or anything “godly” no matter how righteous he may think it to be.

This seems to be something the gentile church has forgotten when you look at their attempt to change the Sabbath to a Sunday.

The prerogative to declare something HOLY and define what is COMMON or UNCLEAN lies with God alone.

So for crying out loud, just understand that all the wars fought over the millennia in the name of some organized religion were NOT Holy Wars.

Got it?

There are special rules that apply to Holy warfare as defined in Torah and that’s what we’re going to begin studying today starting from verse 10 of Deuteronomy Chapter 20.

Oh, and you should also know that there have been whole books written on nothing but this section of Torah.

Why?

Because of the far reaching effects and impact this portion of Scripture has had on pretty much all recorded (and unrecorded) history of Israel in the land of Canaan.

In addition, minus a solid grasp of the Holy War protocol we’re about study here, you can forget about ever properly understanding the Bible books to follow, especially the Book of Joshua.

Remember, Joshua was Moses’ successor and the military general who was tapped to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land.

He will be the man leading the charge to conquer the Canaanites in the Biblical Holy War.

And by the way, did you know that Joshua and Yeshua are exactly the SAME spelling in Hebrew?

But that’s another incredible subject that belongs in a separate class all by itself.

One final point.

Recently, a new realm of theological understanding called “spiritual warfare” seems to have gained quite a bit of steam these days.

Heck, just do a quick search on Amazon and you’ll find a whole category of books dedicated to the subject of Spiritual Warfare.

Honestly, a lot of these books are just mere fanciful products of men’s wild imaginations that have little if anything to do with what is written in the Holy Scriptures.

And some of these books are just downright dangerous as they’re filled with the occult and witchcraft which is forbidden by Torah.

While there is no doubt that warfare obviously has a spiritual component to it seeing that it is God Himself who is leading the charge AND…

…while there exists in Scripture a type of warfare that is confined to the heavens or the spirit world, understand that this is actually not “spiritual warfare”.

Spiritual warfare is about flesh-and-blood human beings coming into direct confrontation with evil spirit beings who proceed from another dimension that is not visible to the human eye.

I guess a good example would be Yeshua casting demons out of people.

So we can see that spiritual warfare is a kind of mysterious mix between the human and spiritual.

On the other hand, the Holy War to take the land of Canaan is about flesh-and-blood men fighting against other flesh-and-blood men but behind the scenes God is working to ensure that His People will be victorious in the end.

Therefore, at times, mind-blowing supernatural events will occur such as the time when the walls of of Jericho came tumbling down to the ground.

But again, understand that this is NOT spiritual warfare and I don’t think this is a topic I’ll be getting into during our Torah studies.

To conclude, here’s a key point I want you to burn into your cranium.

The Holy War to take Canaan establishes the pattern for how the Lord is going to eventually establish peace on earth.

And it begins right here in Deuteronomy.

See you all next time.