Recently, I wandered on to the site of what must have been a horrific battlefield. From near the dawn of man’s habitation of earth through the present, warfare has raged with little relief from its consequential atrocities and devastation. Battlefields, both ancient and modern, continue to yield artifacts carelessly discarded by fallen soldiers.
Many battlefields have been memorialized to commemorate the principles for which armies fought and the soldiers who became casualties of those conflicts. I have visited several such sites, including: Kings Mountain, associated with our nation’s war of independence; Fort Niagara, involved in the War of 1812; the Alamo; and Gettysburg. One of the most widely known memorialized battlefields is at Pearl Harbor.
Especially one battlefield in biblical history was noteworthy, in part, for the things left behind by the Syrians as they fled Samaria (2 Kings 7). The battlefield on which I happened was the auditorium of the meetinghouse after worship. Scattered about and unattended were spiritual swords, or Bibles. The “. . . sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God . . .” is part of the Gospel armor (Ephesians 6:12-17).
The sword was an effective weapon of both defense and offense. The Word of God is depicted as such an effective tool. “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).
No good soldier of antiquity would walk away without his sword. To do so would make him unable to defend himself (or his comrades) and equally unable to press forward an offensive. Ordinarily, a soldier’s sword was surrendered only involuntarily in combat.
Yes, I must have come upon a spiritual battlefield. In view of the swords that lie everywhere, the King’s army must have been vanquished. There were evidently no survivors!
Surely, the soldiers of Christ are not wandering about unarmed — defenseless — and unable to fight. I shudder to think that soldiers of Christ will need to resist the devil (James 5:8) and rescue the fallen (James 5:19-20; Jude 23) during the interim between assemblies — without the sword of the Spirit! Do you know where your sword is?
