My new book is finally out, Like a Roaring Lion: How the Evil One Works to Destroy You, published by Locke Press. As I say on Amazon,

“This is not a theodicy. Many books on the issue of evil seek to try and harmonise the issue of evil with the idea of a good God. But the thesis of this book is that Christianity does not have an evil problem, but that evil has a Christianity problem. That is to say Christianity exposes and explains evil, and also provides the solution to evil. In fact, without the Scriptures, and especially their culmination in the account of Jesus, we would not have the understanding of evil that we do today.

This book seeks to explore a broad understanding of how evil works in this world, and even delves deeply into issues that the modern church has either forgotten, downplayed or even been deceived on. The book is a thoroughly scriptural examination of the strategies of evil, and is a vital handbook for those wanting to understand how it works in this world, how it affects us, how it has deceived us, how it wants to destroy you and how to fight against it with spiritual weapons.”

I thought to help promote the book, I would publish the introduction, because it gives some good insight into what the book is seeking to do. This book also has a special guest chapter by author and teacher R. L. Watson on how the new age has snuck into the church. This book is not meant to be a comprehensive theology of how evil works, but really a starting effort on that topic, one that others can build on. I have also made sure this book has practical application for everyone reading, no matter where you are at life. I hope you enjoy this and are encouraged by this book.

God bless.

Introduction

Wherever you look, you can see the twin images of beauty and decay. In the most beautiful forests in the world, you can see the debris of the dead leaves and plant matter everywhere. Throughout the oceans of the world, the beauty of the reefs and ocean floors is littered with the signs of dying sea life and the grime of decay. We live in a beautiful world, but it is a world of marred beauty. This speaks to us of an important reality: This world is broken in some way. It has been corrupted.

This corrupting power is what we Christians call sin. Sin is the force that has subjected this world to decay. It is ever groaning under the pain of the marring force of sin, and this decay affects us in multiple ways, from diseases, to storms and floods, to earthquakes and shifting climates throughout the aeons. The Scriptures are clear that this force of sin is not simply a passive force inflicted on humanity. It is an active force at work in our flesh, and we are subjected to it by our very own rebellion against our Lord and creator.

But there is also another clear reality in this world: the presence of an evil malevolence that goes beyond the decay we see in this world and the fallenness we see in human nature. There is a consistency of this evil force observed throughout the civilisations of humanity that is spreading from continent to continent. We can see this with the human sacrificial rights of the ancient Amorites in the Land of Canaan, amongst the Scandinavian people’s commonly called Vikings, and all the way across lands and sea in the realms of the tribes of the Americas where the Mexica peoples of the Aztecs sacrificed humans with such gusto that many people did not believe such evil could be real until the piles of skulls were uncovered. All throughout the world, again and again, we see people offering up the innocent flesh of infants and virgins, and the captured bodies of defeated soldiers as slaves.

It had been observed that there is a remarkable consistency in these kinds of sacrifices. They are done to appease the wrath of the gods, or at least malevolent cosmic forces, that these people live in fear of. The Canaanites offered their children into the fires of Molech; the Israelites then followed suit, taking on this same evil practice, sacrificing their sons and daughters in the fire to demons as the Bible phrases it. The Vikings sought to appease the gods of their forests and the fearsome chief of the gods, Odin. The Anglo-Saxons, Wodin and many more people from a wide range of countries and lands lived under other gods, other demons. Across nation to nation and land to land, we see this same desperate and, let’s face it, evil offering to turn away wrath, or bring blessings for war, wealth and crops to a people with golden overlaid idols.

There is even an observation of the same kinds of sins and degraded practices that turn up from culture to culture. Things like homosexuality, bestiality, child abuse and more. These kinds of sins transgress peoples and cultures and are found to infect even widely varying cultures. But what makes them even more evil is that in many cultures, they are either accepted or at least not actively frowned upon as they should be. Remarkably, it has been observed throughout history that wherever people worship a female deity, this is followed by the emasculation of men, literally, in the practice of castration. We see this with eunuchs across nations, and also ritual eunuchs like those who worshipped the goddess Cybele in Rome. It is as if the same spirit were whispering the same kinds of messages into the ears of people from disparate places, all to achieve the same kinds of evil and oppression.

The consistency of this evil across millennia and continents points to a force that transcends the lifespan not only of human individuals, but even human societies. It is clearly a malevolent force because it consistently demands religious policies, practices and rites that harm the flourishing of individuals and societies. Communities that execute their infants in the fires to appease a terrifying divinity are neither capable of long-term survival nor deserving of it. It is a dyscivilisational policy. As is making eunuchs of some of your best and brightest young men, or to protect the king’s harem. It does not take a person with a genius level of understanding of human descent to predict what will happen to the gene pool of a society that practices such polices; an ever-declining gene pool, inbreeding and genetic decline. Encouraging things like homosexuality and transgenderism have the same effect on a society. When joined with war and the violence and death that this propagates, you can see how these consistently malevolent forces steer humanity towards destruction again and again.

That is not to say that human sinfulness does not play a part; it clearly does, and it is a significant part. Perhaps the best exploration of this theme outside the Bible is found in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and to a lesser degree the Hobbit. Tolkien was versed enough in the scriptures, theology, philosophy and history to understand the difference between the fallen nature of man and the extreme wickedness of evil.

The world Tolkien built consists of a vast array of mythical creatures such as elves, orcs, goblins and more, alongside the more mundane human races of Middle Earth. There is an evil force, a corrupted and corrupting force, that emanates from the dark lands of Mordor, from an evil being not unlike one of the devil’s more powerful servants. This being is called Sauron, a remnant of a once more powerful dark lord. He is pure evil and is opposed to all that is good, beautiful, and true. He hates life, and when he does not outright destroy it, he corrupts it, twists it and reshapes it for twisted purposes. Sauron’s evil is an irredeemable evil; it is demonic in every true sense of the word.

There are also great beings of light in the lands of Middle Earth; the elves, Tom Bombadil, the Maiar, of which Gandalf is the greatest and wisest, and other beings and creatures. They are mythical, otherworldly beings who stand above the dross of Middle Earth. Not always perfect, and not completely incorruptible, but their ways of life and their philosophies are far above that of mankind.

Mankind, represented by the races of men and the pigmies, the hobbits, is very different to the higher creatures of Middle Earth. They are much more base creatures. Mankind had once stood with similar dignity alongside that of the elves in the great lands of the West. But after rejecting their one true lord, their creator, they began to diminish. The men of Middle Earth are far more easily corrupted than the elves and the Maiar.

They have in themselves an inherent flaw, an inherent corruption, as a result of their wilful rejection of their creator. They are far more easily tempted, and many of their kind are lacking in all dignity and nobility. There are exceptions to this, of course, a note of eminent nobility still exists among some, but it is a diminishing and fragile nobility in comparison to that of the elves. This fragility places mankind in far more danger from the manipulations and temptations of the dark Lord Sauron, and the temptation of the Ring of Power. Man is capable of evil in his own right, but he is capable of a far more insidious and powerful evil when under the sway of the evil one. However, he is not irredeemable in his fallenness. Even men once under the sway of evil, or temporarily under the sway of evil, can cast off the influence of evil and redeem themselves in their last acts, such as the last acts of Boromir the nobleman of Gondor.

These twin dangers, these twin evils, the corruption of mankind and the irredeemable poison of the evil of the fallen angel, Sauron, both present the heroes of Middle Earth with all their challenges and trials. They must face the enemy from without, the evil influence and power of the evil one, and they must also face the enemy from within, their own corrupted and fallen nature, which remembers and resembles its former glory, but in a diminished way. The realm of Middle Earth is a decaying world, a world where evil can still be opposed, but it is also a world where many within it are cognizant that it cannot last forever. Men live in the midst of the ruins of greater kingdoms, greater times and greater achievements. The energy of mankind is not yet spent, but it does face many challenges.

Tolkien presented us a world at the same time, like ours, but also unlike ours. It is populated by majestic and mythical beasts, beasts like those recounted in the ancient tales of man. But at the same time, the way that man responds to those beasts is precisely how we would expect. Indeed, Tolkien presents us with a world not unlike the world of the Scriptures. A world of Leviathans, and Behemoths, Rahabs, and Tiamats. A world of giants and fell beasts under the sway of evil spiritual forces, well beyond the abilities of even the most capable warrior. But also, a world where humanity is not left to fend for themselves against such beasts, as we are reinforced by angelic messengers and arch angels. Beings, who like the Maiar, tip the battle against evil back into man’s favour as long as men take advantage of these supernatural powers.

And this is what is incumbent on us today. To recognise the reality of the twin evils that humanity must face in this world, how they interact, and how we are trained by the Scriptures to oppose them. Tolkien’s world, as marvellous as it is, is a mythologised version of the real world we are in and which the Scriptures give us a behind-the-curtain view of.

There is a remarkable example of this in the book of 2 Kings in the Scriptures when Elisha and his servants are trapped in a city surrounded by the army of the King of Syria. When Elisha’s servant becomes worried, this is what we read,

“15 When the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city. And the servant said, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” 16 He said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” 17 Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”[1]

The Lord opened the man’s eyes, and he instantly became aware of the army of the Lord that was surrounding the Syrians. It was not Elisha and his servant who were outnumbered, it was their enemies.

But we should not scoff at the danger of being opposed by a pagan king and his armies. Evil has done great harm in our world, and it did in ancient Israel as well. Not just because of their foreign enemies, but because the leaders and people of Israel were besieged by the same twin evils that faced the heroes in the Lord of the Rings, the twin forces of the power of the evil one, Satan, and the indwelling corruption of sin in the heart of man. We face the precise same kind of evil that Aragorn and Frodo faced, only our enemies are not mythological.

This is why we need a good understanding of how evil works in this world. It is becoming more and more clear that most Christians are defenceless against the evil that exists around them and in them precisely because many Christians do not know, or even reject, the means with which God says to fight evil. The decline of the church, the decline of the Christian home, the decline of Christian education, denominations and more in the modern West, show us that the Dark Lord has been running amok and the opposition to him has been rather ineffective.

Churches across the West have increasingly become platforms for anti-Christian and even outright Satanic propaganda. Instead of crosses hanging central in many churches, rainbow and transgender flags are starting to fly. The patriarchal leadership taught in Scripture and handed down from generation to generation is now being replaced by a feminist leadership that has further hastened the acceptance of “alternative” (aka rebellious) lifestyles. Men are leading the church and the home less and less, and people are looking to men less and less for such leadership, because they have been trained to do everything their own way and scorn the leadership of men.

The West sits besieged and declining and is in a not much better place than Gondor in The Fellowship of the Ring. We need an effective understanding of how the evil one works. This is what this work is going to set out to do.

This is an excerpt from the book Like a Roaring Lion.

You can purchase this book internationally and locally here now, and locally in Australia here as well, after December 1st.