Through the Gates

 “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18).

 

What a wonderful and powerful Scripture God has given to The Church of God! It contains wonderful promises in which we have rejoiced over the years. It is easy to read this verse and get excited about divine revelation, the only avenue for us to have understanding of who Christ is and of who the Church is, and the mutual understanding between Christ and us as individuals that we know who He is and He knows who we are. He built the Church on these two facts that make up the rock He mentioned here. Also written into this verse is the promise that, no matter what trouble the Church may experience, nothing will prevail against us!

 

Oftentimes we have preached this promise as if the gates of hell are the weapons that Satan carries out to battle against us. While it is true that sometimes the term gates, as it refers to a city, would mean the army of the city, the proper use of the term would be the gates that were meant to keep the armies of the enemy out of the city. When Jesus gave this promise to the Church it was an indication that as we march into the territory of the enemy that his defenses cannot stop us. The devil is not interested in us marching through his gates so he spends a lot of time bringing the battle to us. As we win those victories we can begin to feel that we are winning the war and forget that we have not marched on his territory yet. It is time that we put on our armor, take up our shield and sword and begin our offensive push against his gates.

 

Another promise of Jesus to the disciples comes to mind here, “... I be-held Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you” (Luke 10:18-19). It is true that following this statement Jesus told them to rejoice in their salvation and not in the power over the enemy that He had just promised them, how-ever, this instruction does not diminish the power that He gave to them and has passed down to us who still hold the doctrine. It is not that He does not want us to use the power and rush through the enemy’s gates—that is exactly what He wants us to do. If that had not been His plan then He would not have mentioned this power to them.

 

When Jesus established the Church He com-missioned her “…to preach, And to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils” (Mark 3:14, 15). This is the command to utilize the power promised in Luke chapter 10. Our charge is to “tread… over all the power of the enemy” and we must fulfill this charge. We want his kingdom destroyed because he is the enemy of our King. Everything that he has done since he rebelled against God in heaven has been an effort to undermine God’s authority and influence in the world. Jesus came to “… destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8) and He did that on the Cross and through the Resurrection. Now the responsibility is ours to carry that power and continue the destruction of the devil’s kingdom. We go “Through the Gates” for the sole purpose of destroying his kingdom, we will not leave one stone upon another and the only spoil that we will take are the souls of men, women and children trapped behind those gates. We are not in this for personal gain but for the benefit of the Kingdom for which we fight.

 

Part of the promise recorded by Luke is the statement, “… and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” It is a wonderful thing to be able to go into a battle that we know we cannot lose! That does not change the fact that it is still a battle and battles are difficult. The enemy will muster all of his forces against us as we march, he will fortify his walls and strengthen his gates, the closer that we get to those gates the more soldiers and weapons that he will place at the top of his wall hurling fiery darts our way, we will feel every defense that he has because he knows the promise too, but he will not go down without a fight. The gates cannot stand against us but if his defenses succeed in turning us away then he has been successful, and there have been times in the past that this seems to have been the case. His only chance is to scare us away from the gates with his defenses convincing us that if it is that difficult to get to the gates it will be much more difficult to go through them. We must press through the defenses trusting in the promise that nothing can hurt us.

 

When we do make it to the gates they look tall, thick and impenetrable. The devil is a master of disguise and confusion and he puts all his cunning into making these gates look impossible to breach. As we stand in front of them we may feel in awe at their size and wonder how we can ever get through them. “Surely God meant for another generation to go through these, we are not strong enough,” we might think. We may size ourselves up in comparison to the gates and begin to look for someone else to go through them. It was and is God’s will for other generations to go through these gates just as it is His will for us to go through them. The devil is constantly building, fortifying and expanding so God’s army must continually be marching and treading. As we stand there staring at them we also wonder what we will find on the other side. It looks dark over there and we have no way to know what awaits to fight hand to hand against us. The devil surely holds his strongest forces to fight inside once we have made it through everything else. We must hold to the promise that we have the power to tread over whatever is on the other side and we must leave the kingdom in ruins because our Commander has ordered that it be so.

 

It will be a difficult fight to get through those gates but what is behind them is well worth the fight that it takes to march through them. We are not looking to go “Through the Gates” because we want to be in those dark places, but because we want to bring the light of the gospel into those dark places and rescue what is trapped there. We can take courage “because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4). It is time for someone to lead the charge “Through the Gates!” What do you say, young person? Will you allow God to raise you up and make you part of the army that will do it?

Dustin T. Hays, General VLB Coordinator