How to Defend Yourself Against Satan

I had the opportunity once to go hunting around Big Ben in Texas, and we were hunting deer.

We got the bright idea that the big deer were on top of the mountain because we hadn't seen any any on the bottom of the mountain. So a couple of us decided we would hike up to the top. So we got our tent, our sleeping bags, a gallon or two of water, and our canteens, our rifles. We looked like we were ready to fight a battle. And up we went. That night we camped out up on the top of the mountain. Now, I'll never forget the only thing we ever saw up there were sheep. And there were hundreds of them up there. I don't know how they got there, but there they were. And if you're out camping somewhere in the wild like that in the middle of the night, something comes up and starts nosing your tent, you become a little suspicious. What's going on? Well, the next day, as we were coming out of that area, we became a little apprehensive. And that's because we saw a mountain lion lair where it was obvious that a mountain lion had been laying up. And we also saw the tracks. Now, the problem with all of this was we didn't see a mountain lion. So, you know, when you don't see them, that's when you need to be concerned. So we decided it might be better to just get out and head down the hill, which is what we did. So we charged out of that area about as fast as we could go. And it just so happened that there was a dry creek bed. And we followed that creek bed all the way down. And we knew that it came out at the bottom.

So we got down. It was just as sunset. It was actually getting dark where you couldn't see well. And we looked over the edge of this creek bed, and it came behind a dam. There was about a 40-foot dam that actually was silted over. And we looked over, and we weren't going to jump over that dam to get off the mountain. And we couldn't see. We didn't have any light with us, so we couldn't really see where we were, how to get off. So we just camped on the side of the mountain that night and sat on a ledge. And we ate an apple and a candy bar that we shared. And we tried to sleep and enjoy the evening. In the Chicago Museum of Natural History are two of the world's most famous lions. I don't know if you've ever been to the Chicago Natural History area, but it's one of the nicest museums that you'll ever visit. And the museum and the lions that I'm talking about are the Sabo lions of Kenya. They're man-eating lions. There are two of them, two males. They weigh over 500 pounds. And they're just absolutely huge. They're over nine feet long and at the shoulders of anywhere between 45 and 48 inches high. So we're talking about something like this. Now, most lions are not man-eaters, which we can be thankful for. They avoid contact with men, rarely attack men, unless they're injured or they're starving. Lions generally prey on other animals.

When Norm and I visited South Africa back in 1987 and then 2002, we saw two lion kills. We went to Kruger National Park and as we were driving through, we saw lions, a pack of lions, that had killed giraffe. Actually, in both cases, giraffes had been killed. Lions will eat zebra, antelope, anything. But they prefer the bigger animals because they can feast on them for quite a while. Now, with that in mind, let's go over to 1 Peter 5 and verse 8. 1 Peter 5.

We'll begin here in verse 8.

We are told, Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

Word, adversary, means exactly that. An enemy. An adversary. An opponent in a lawsuit. And so you'll find that Satan is our enemy. And notice what he's up to.

He's like a roaring lion, seeking to eat us. I think that's what the word devour means. The word devour means to swallow up or to destroy. So he is out to destroy us.

Now, why use this analogy unless, occasionally, lions are man-eaters? And you do find that occasionally they are. In Peter's day, when he wrote, there were lions in Palestine. There were a number of them. By the 12th century, they had disappeared. Lions are mentioned 130 times in the Bible. So you find that they are mentioned, and especially being in that area. Now, I'd like to relate to you the story of the two lions of Savo.

That, in case you wonder how to spell it, is T-S-A-V-O. In 1996, there was a movie put out called The Ghost in the Darkness.

And it was based upon this story. Not totally accurate, but reasonably accurate.

There's nothing that you could do to avoid a lion if one were six feet from you.

If there were a lion over here where Brad is, and I didn't know he was there, and it's pitch dark, and I'm walking along, what chance do I have to avoid that lion? He's got me. Well, you find that you should never get that close to a lion. That's one thing.

You should avoid the enemy's territory. If you know that there are lions there, you shouldn't be out walking around. One of the things, one of the major rules in Kruger National Park, and they'll kick you out if you violate it, is you never get out of your car. I mean, you can drive through there miles of roads and back roads, and you can drive around and see the game, but you never get out of your car. Because once you do, you subject yourself to anything that there is around. If you're unarmed and you go into the enemy's territory, I'll guarantee you that you're asking for death. Now, spiritually speaking, sometimes we allow ourselves to get in that position. We get too close to Satan, to his ways. We get too close to the enemy in his own territory. Now, in 2 Corinthians 2 and verse 10, we're told this. 2 Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 10. Paul was commanding them to be willing to forgive one another. He says, "...Now, whom you forgive anything I also forgive. For if indeed I have forgiven anything, I have forgiven that one for your sakes in the presence of Christ." Talking about the fornicator and that he had repented of his sins. So Paul said, "...forgive him and let him come back." Now, why? Lest Satan should take advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices. So you and I are not ignorant of his ways, his devices. You and I need to know our enemy. The word devices means his thoughts, his evil purpose, his mind, how he thinks. You and I need to know what he's going to do, what he's up to.

If you've ever played sports before, you know if you play another team in football, that you need to know what kind of offense they run, what kind of defense they run, so that you're prepared for them. You need to know what your opponent does. If you're an army and you're going out to fight, you need to know how big the other army is, what kind of tactics they have, firepower, you know all of these things. And so it is, when it comes to Satan the devil, we need to be aware of his treachery, of his approach.

We need to know how he operates. And there are six basic tactics that Satan the devil operates by that we will see today. We need to know how to defend ourselves from him. So it's not enough to know his tactics. We need to know what we need to do to defend ourselves, so that he cannot get an advantage of us. And the word advantage means just that.

If he's six feet away, it's pitch dark, and you don't have a weapon, he has the advantage. If you have a high-powered rifle, and somebody behind you has a high-powered shotgun, and you've got a dozen of you there, and you see him a hundred yards off, and he doesn't see you, you have the advantage. So we need to make sure that we have the advantage, not him.

I'd like to relate to you the story of these two lions, because in so doing, I think we will come to see what the tactics of a lion truly are. I'm going to be quoting and referring to a book titled Death in the Silent Places. I've referred to this before by Peter Hathaway, Capstick, Death in the Silent Places. It's a story about Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson. If anybody thought about buying the book, I'm not saying you, it's an exciting book. It's full of various stories. This is only one of them, about people have gone to Africa, people have gone to India, people have gone to South America, killed leopards with their bare hands or with spears or a knife, all kinds of things in here. The book is a little violent gory and grisly, from that perspective. The setting of this story is in Kenya, in East Africa, and it involves the Mubasa Victoria-Uganda Railroad. This is a railroad that the British decided back in 1896 that they were going to build, that they were going to build it from the east coast of Africa, right into the heart of Africa, 580 miles, and that they would open Africa up this way for trade and for transportation. And so they decided to begin. Now, the problem is when a railroad meets a river, you got to go across. So they had to build bridges. And so, what you find, the British had no idea of the perils that they were actually facing at this time. To just give you an idea of some of the work that was done, most of the work done on this railroad was done by hand labor. They imported 35,000 Indians. These were coolies or Indians from India to do the work. Out of that number, 9,000 were killed. 24,000 were maimed, injured, or taken ill. You add 9 in 24. I think that you get, well, actually it was 25. That gets you up to 34. That means there were only 1,000 who escaped some type of harm, injury, sickness, during that period of time. So they started in 1886. It was completed in 1901. So it took about four and a half to five years to complete this. In March of 1898, they touched the Savo River. They'd come 132 miles up line. On this railroad, there are 162 bridges. Patterson was an engineer, and it was his job to build the bridge across the Savo River. Now, the British, again, had no idea what they were facing. And these two lions brought the British Empire to their knees, as we will see. Let me just summarize. The first initial attack by one of these lions occurred in 1898. It was a warm March night. They were camped. There were about 3,000 camped around the rail lines, and on this side of the Savo River. And it was around midnight. They were all sleeping. And one tent was just like the rest. There were seven of them, seven Indians in this tent. One of them was a supervisor. His name was, he was, Gemadar Ugon Zim. The title noted that he had the rank of a lieutenant, and he was snoring quite loudly. And as a result, he woke one of the other fellows up. This individual, you know, looked around, was just about to go back to sleep when something caught his eye. Something was moving outside of the tent. Couldn't make it out, but as he stared, he could see something on the ground slowly creeping towards the tent.

And at that moment, the lion lunged into the tent and grabbed Ugon Zim by the throat, and began to pull him out. He cried out, Charo, or let go, and he was pulled off into the bushes. Now, he was a big man. He was a strong man, and apparently he did not die easily. Says the men back in the tent could clearly hear the repeated gargle attempts to scream and the sound of the struggle was terrible. After a hundred yards, fate had some dark mercy in the shape of another huge lion who came up and bit him deeply into the chest and killed him. But now, the two lions are struggling over the body, and they put so much pressure that they decapitated the man, and they found his head the next day straight up, eyes wide open, staring in terror, and he had died. And while they were listening, they could hear these lions consuming the body off in the bushes. Now, Patterson, being the strong man that he was, said he would rid the camp of the lions.

Did I mention to you that they killed 135 people that we know of? I mean, these were the ones that they counted. 135 people. So, victim number one, obviously Patterson didn't kill these lions too quickly. Every night, or every other night, a new victim fell. And generally, after a period of time, you can imagine there was absolute terror in the camp. At this point, when you took a look at the camp, you had realized there were 3,000 Indians basically camped here. They were in eight sub-camps, and Patterson got to where he would stay up all night, and he would be hiding somewhere. If he were north, the lions would attack south. If he were west, they would attack east. And it got to be to where the natives began to become very superstitious, and they called these two lions demons, or devils, because nobody could get near them. And yet, they were attacking the camp every night. And so, they had the reputation. You might remember back in Mark the fifth chapter, in verse 11, that it is possible for Satan, or one of his demons, to actually possess an animal.

And here you find, in Mark 5, verse 11, Christ cast out some demons out of a man who was wild. In verse 11, there was a large herd of swine, or pigs nearby. The demons, vague in verse 12, sent us into the swine, which he did, and they ran violently down the steep place into the water and died. So, it is possible that something like that could happen.

Now, I don't know if that were true of these lions, but they were very unusual. John Pierre Halley, some of you will remember that name. He was the founder and director of the Pygmy Foundation, was once attacked by a man-eating lion, and he killed it with a knife. He had this to say, pathological phenomenon, talking about man-eating lions, that never had been fully unsatisfactory explained. Nobody's been ever able to explain why these lions act this way. Now, even Patterson, after a while, began to wonder, since this, of course, was at first considered by Patterson and his cohorts as ignorance. Typical, the coolly labor, but after a while, even the colonel began to wonder, because even though hundreds of shots were shot after these lions, they were never hit, and they began to wonder what was going on. Patterson even commented in five different places. He wrote two books about this event, five different places. He said that at night, when there was no light, no moonlight, no firelight, nothing around, he could see the eyes of the lions glowing. Now, this was all poo-pooed, later on by people, as being extravagant or something, but he very much claimed that he could. He tried many tactics. He would tie a goat or some type of an animal at the base of a tree, hoping that the lions would come up and attack it, and he'd sit up all night in the tree. Night after night, the lions would attack where Patterson was not. It was almost as though they knew where he was. And temporary work on the bridge was completed, and a good part of the labor force moved on and left only a few hundred of the Indians and the native workers back at Savo. And the main workforce moved on up the track to work on the other side of the bridge.

And what happened here, the dynamics changed greatly, because instead of having something like 3,000 to attack, you think 3,000, you know, I'm pretty safe, now you have something like two or three hundred. And all at once, the odds became tenfold of you being attacked. And so the lions continued to attack. Those who had stayed back decided that they were going to prove themselves against this lion or lions. And so they went out and they began to build thick bomba fences. These were thick, what do they call them here?

They were thick fences that had a lot of spikes in them. They had spikes five, six, seven inches long. They piled these things six, eight, ten feet thick, 12, 14 feet high, and said nothing can get through these fences. Well, every night a lion slipped through the fence. And how they got through, they could not make out. You know, these lions just came through and occasionally, Patterson would get off a shot. And yet, he never hit them. It says, these lions, even with their relatively thin skins and sensitive paws, have some Houdini-like method of penetrating incredibly thick, dense thorn barriers soundlessly with little more than a few scratches. Or as they didn't even make any noise as they were coming through. Adding insult, they then normally pulled their kill back through the barrier on the way out. There was only one time that a human body ever got caught in the thicket and got stuck, and they couldn't pull it out. Otherwise, they would pull a body back through. And so, how they were able to do this, they didn't know. The lions became celebrities from all over the world, you know, all over Africa. They're game hunters, military men, professionals came to hunt them. Some of them got shots, but nobody ever hit the lions. And so, they continued.

You'll find that Patterson began to become very frustrated. Notice one account that he wrote. I could plainly hear them crunching the bones. The sound of their dreadful purring filled the air ringing in my ears for days afterwards. The terrible thing was to feel so helpless. It was useless to attempt to go out, and of course, the poor fellow was dead. And in addition, it was pitch dark, so it made it impossible to see anything.

So, you know, here he goes out, and he gets very frustrated over this. Well, I mentioned about the big game hunters and all. Well, one individual came.

He had more than 50 shots at a lion, not very far away. They could hear it. They could hear the sounds, and he shot where the sounds were coming from. The purring and the eating and the crunching. And he never hit. Never even put a skin mark on the lions as they were sitting there. So, you find that something miraculous happened, though. About this time, the lions disappeared.

And a week went by. Two weeks went by. Three weeks went by. There were no lions. Patterson began to wonder. The Indians, the laborers, decided that the lions had gone off, so therefore they were safe. And they did a stupid thing. They began to come out of the thickets, out of the thorn thickets, and began to sleep outside in open tents or in the open grounds.

Now, they began to hear of other people being killed elsewhere, so they thought that the lions had moved away. Well, Patterson knew that this was not true, and he knew that they would be back. So, therefore, he decided to build a trap for these lions. And it was written that the trap was so strong that even King Kong and three of his buddies could not get out of the trap. What they did, they took railroad ties, sleepers, tram rails, telegraph wire, heavy chains, and they divided this, like a railroad car, into two sections. One section was to hold the lion, the other was to accommodate the bait, which were two human beings. So, they sent railroad ties in sleepers, going up and down, no way that they could be moved, and three inches apart. So, they're only about this far apart. You know what a railroad tie, you know how big that is? And the men were behind it, so they were to attract, their scent was to attract the lions in. Once the lions got there, then there was to be a big, heavy door dropped down behind.

The trap was rigged, the heavy door was to come crashing down, the door was made out of chains and logs, and once it fell into place, it would actually take eight or ten men to pull it up and to move it. So, there was no way that the lions could get out. Well, sure enough, the lions returned, and they began to terrorize the people again. Now, prior to this, only one lion was attacking. Now, something different happened. Every night, both lions came into camp. Instead of one person dying, now two are dying, and they're hauling two individuals out.

And again, you find that the workers, after a while, decided they just couldn't put up with this, so they all quit. And when the last train left, they climbed on board the train, they hung from everything they could hang from, and all of the workers, except for a small handful, left Patterson there. Okay. There were a few who stayed, and what they started doing is putting their sleeping bags up into trees. They dug big holes in the ground and put logs and everything over it to try to hide themselves, to have lion-proof shelters. There were so many of them in one tree one night that the tree fell over to the ground, and it almost fell on top of a lion. There was a lion actually killing someone under the tree, and when they fell out of the tree, there was a lion, and they all started running in different directions. Well, one night, Patterson heard a clunk. He heard a roar, and he knew that the trap had been sprung. Now, there were two Indians in the trap. Each one of them had hunting rifles with them. All they had to do was to stick their rifle through one of the holes, shoot the lion, and he's as good as death. Patterson kept waiting for somebody to shoot. Never heard anybody shooting, just heard the roars going on. Well, after a while, he ran over to the trap, and he kept yelling, shoot, shoot, shoot! And finally, they started shooting. They fired 20 shots into the ground, up in the air, through the walls. Everybody outside of the trap had to hit the ground because they were almost hit with shots. They shot 20 times and never hit one of the lions.

Now, you'll find here, and let me read this, at last, as they could load and fire, they blindly opened up with the martini 450 caliber bullets whipping and whining in every direction, but the right one. At complete right angles, they were hugging the ground, and then something happened that nobody thought could happen. A bullet blanged into one of the door rails, where it was secured with telegraph wire, cut it, and the end of the rail fell free, and the lion squeezed out.

No bullets, no harm, he's gone. And Patterson just simply could not believe. On another occasion, Patterson had a clear shot that somebody spotted the lion. They got one of the African tribes, and they started chasing the lion, pushing it. Patterson got in front. He was hiding behind a termite mound, and they pushed this lion out in the open, and it was within 15 yards of him.

Now, 15 yards isn't very much. 45 feet, maybe to the back here. And he decided that day not to bring his trusty rifle, but he borrowed a shotgun because he thought this is going to be very close shooting. And here's the lion. He rears up. The lion rears back on its hunches. He's got it in his sights. And this is a high-powered bullet. It would be the same as putting a stick of dynamite in his mouth. He said it would blow his head off. So he thought, you know, I'm going to get this one.

But he wrote, should you be under the impression that the most terrifying sound of the world of big game hunting are the close snarls of a man-eater or the shrieking trumpet of a bull elephant right over your head? You're wrong. It is the cold, dead, metallic click of the firing pen falling on a defective cartridge primer. There is no sound quite like it. So Patterson had him clearly in his sights and click. Click. He's got a defective weapon. It doesn't work. Here, the lion is 15 yards away. Well, thankfully, the beaters, the drivers, were right behind and they forced the lion to run.

So again, he began to wonder, was this lion living a charmed life and operating on forces beyond what one would think? There were other close calls. One night, he got the brilliant idea that he would build what was called a Macon. It's a platform. Put four poles in the ground, bend them up, put a board across the top, and go sit on it.

So he did this, and they tied a donkey down below. Now, he was rather stupid in this particular case because the platform was only 12 feet tall. Now, the lion could stand on its back feet and put its paws 12 feet in the air. I mean, it could have just leapt right up on top of that thing, which it almost did.

And here he is, sitting. Try sitting up in your living room some night in your easy chair, motionless in the dark. Don't make a sound. Don't move. For the whole night, and you'll get an idea what Patterson was going through, but he's out in the wild sitting on a plank, and he's waiting for a lion to come by. It says, crack the snap of a twig sounded like a sonic boom, and Patterson lurched out of his revelry. He realized that there was something around.

He began to hear the padding of feet, and then it got silent again. It was so silent that it was loud. I don't know if you've ever been out deer hunting, but I've been out deer hunting. You can sit in a tree or a blind or just be somewhere. If you stand there for a few hours, you can hear leaves falling.

Anything that rustles, a squirrel sounds like a herd running through the woods. You know, it's just amazing the sounds. And it got quiet, which meant that the lion had spotted the man, and instead of looking for the donkey, he now started hunting Patterson. And it was a war of nerves, in a classic sense. For two hours, the lion circled the platform, looking for a weakness, looking where to attack him, getting closer and closer. He could not see the thing. And then all at once, he's sitting there, and something hits him in the back of the head. And he thought, I've had it.

The lion has jumped on me. Well, it turned out to be an owl. An owl thought he was a tree and landed on his head. Now, if you can imagine the tension he was under, and an owl landing on your head, how you would feel. Well, going on, it says, when the startled owl flew off, the lion continued circling, but now so close, that Patterson could actually hear the feet padding softly as the lion readied itself to leap.

He raised his rifle. The cat gathered itself, just a mere few feet below. And he shot. And when he shot, there was a roar. He had hit something. And it seemed to rock the platform. And the cat began to thrash and jump in all different directions, and began to go off. And he fired as fast as he could at the sounds. And then finally, it subsided. Now, what do you do? Do you jump down and go check the cat out? No, you've got to sit there in the dark until it gets daylight.

And then you carefully get down and begin to look for the lion. Well, after waiting for hours, he gets down and the first lion had been killed. It said it was a tremendous animal, 9 feet 8 inches from tail to nose, 45 inches at the shoulders. It required 8 men to carry it, weighed over 500 pounds. It was extremely heavy. He had hit it twice. Once, he had broken the back leg. The other time, he had hit it through the shoulder, into the heart, and had killed the animal. Well, there was a lot of rejoicing.

Everybody was happy, but they had forgotten that there was another lion. So even though one lion was dead, the other was not. Now, he decided that he was going to sit up in the top of a tree one night. The moon was full. It was perfect weather and perfect scene. He had his trusty servant there. He fell asleep. His servant slept first. After a while, Patterson woke him up, asked him to keep watch.

Patterson went to sleep. Somewhere during the middle of the night, he awoke somewhere around 2 o'clock with the strangest feeling that something's not right.

So he asked his servant, is there anything going on? No, I haven't heard a thing. Haven't seen anything, but Patterson still felt that way. So he began to listen, and after a while, he began to hear a little twig or something snap, and he knew that there was a cat out there.

Well, again, there was a war of nerves. When the cat got within a mere 20 yards away, he took his .303 and shot. He shot the lion in the chest. There was a tremendous growl. The lion began to run away. He could see it, and he shot three other times at the cat.

Now, again, you don't get down. They had to stay right there until the next morning. Then they got down, and there was a blood trail. So they followed this blood trail for about half a mile, and they came up on the lion line right in front of them. Here was this ferocious roar. The lion began a termin flat-out charge at Patterson, so he took his .303.

Boom! He hit him, knocked him down. He jumps up. He keeps coming. He hits him again. He keeps coming. Boy, his servant had a bigger rifle. He decided the .303 wasn't knocking the lion down, so he turns around and reaches for the big rifle, which his servant is supposed to put in his hand.

There's nothing but air back there, and he turns around. His servant's up a tree.

He decided that that's where he should be, and so he immediately darted for the tree. He just got up into the tree, and the lion lunged at him. His favorite shot, he broke the hind leg of the lion, and so he wasn't able to climb the tree. He grabbed the other gun, shot again, and shot again, and the lion went down. Just like a novice, he jumps out of the tree, goes up to the lion, and the lion jumps up again, and he shoots him again. He shoots him the tenth time, and the lion finally died chewing on a stick.

He was a hard one to bring down. This one was even bigger than the first one, and he had killed both lions. Both of these were stuffed, presented to the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History. It just so happened that John Henry Patterson's son, Brian, was working at the museum there, and as a result, was able to see the lions that his father had killed.

What you find, the bridge work continued on, and they eventually finished building the railroad. Now, you may think, why have I taken so much time explaining this in some of these stories? Because I think they illustrate how a lion operates, how Satan the devil operates, and what you and I need to be aware of. Let's look at the six ways that Satan is like a man-eater. Number one is camouflage. You can't see much of this book here, but it shows, in this case, a leopard out here in the middle of a grassy field, or a lion. When you have an animal out in tall grass like that, it's almost invisible. You can't see it, especially if it lies down. The lion is able to blend in with its surroundings, and as a result, can sneak up on you. This is what happened to those who were taken in the daylight. This was their undoing. Lion, or Satan, I should say, has perfect camouflage. His camouflage is, he's invisible. You don't see him. So, how are you going to detect him if you can't see him? Now, there are other people in society who don't even think he exists. So, if you don't think he's existing, you're not going to be on the lookout for him. Therefore, they're not alert. Well, brethren, we in the church need to be extremely alert.

You and I know when the lion is around because we see the lion, you and I know when the lion is around because we see the effects of a man-eater.

And we see that, in some cases, by those who leave the church.

And when somebody leaves the church or gets bitter or gets upset, you need to realize that there's an influence there also. Many don't realize that an independent spirit, a lack of authority, or believing in authority, no one's going to tell me what to do attitude is from the man-eater. This is his attitude. This is his approach.

Satan will give you any reason you want to to leave the church and not to be a part of the body of Christ, to go off on your own and do your own thing. So, brethren, we've got to realize when he's around and that you're not just going to see a lion sitting down here, but you will see the effects of a lion.

A second point is visual appeal.

You might not think of this, but a lion, when it's not killing, looks like a big pussycat. I mean, the visual appeal. You wouldn't think that he was a menacing lion. Once there was a train of Europeans going through Africa, it was pointed out a man-eating lion to them. They didn't believe it. They said, this thing doesn't look menacing. You know, how could that be a man-eating lion?

They looked playful in a cage. You know, they might even play around in a cage. P.T. Barnum had a man-eating lion in his sideshow, and people didn't believe it was a man-eating lion. You can't trust a lion today. Now, in the world tomorrow, we'll be able to, but not today. You might remember back in 1980, we had a feast film in which there was a lion, a child, and a lamb. Well, in the filming of that, a lion turned on the lamb, and the people who were there had to pull them apart.

Now, in 2 Corinthians 11.14, 2 Corinthians 11 and verse 14, I want you to notice here, talking about Satan the Devil and his visual appeal, if you want to call it that, for no wonder, for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.

So, Satan doesn't come looking like a vicious lion, showing you his teeth and snarling, but he comes as an angel of light.

When you look at the world, you look at its customs, its traditions, they're very appealing. What about Christmas or Easter or Halloween? All of these types of things. People look at this and they get very appealing to them. I remember once a woman that Norm and I visited, who had told us about a vision she had of her mother, that her mother would come and sit at the foot of her bed and talk to her. Her mother had died. We explained that that's not possible, that when a person is dead, they're dead, they're in the grave, and God is going to have to resurrect them. We explained that that was a demon, and what she should do is to rebuke it. She did, and this apparition, vision of her mother, immediately turned into a horrible looking monster and went after her and disappeared. And disappeared.

When she saw it, she asked God to rebuke it in the name of Christ, and it disappeared.

What we need to realize is that Satan the Devil will not show you his true colors.

We have people today who play dragons and dungeons, who do Ouija boards, who go to soothsayers, who have their cards read, things of this nature. The Bible very clearly in the Old Testament spells out that that's something that we should not be doing, because what we're doing, we're playing with fire.

You find that when people begin to dabble in certain sins, illicit drugs, sex, pornography, they do those things because they're appealing, and they don't realize the side effect. Satan only appears as a ferocious lion when he's about to kill, and that's when his true nature comes out. So he will use guile, and he will attack suddenly and viciously. So visual appeal is one of the things that he has.

He also loves darkness. Satan loves darkness. At night, the advantage is with the man-eater. It's with the lion. You have a chance to spot him in the daytime. Now, I want you to notice here in Ephesians 6.

Ephesians 6, verse 12, it says, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places. So Satan is called the ruler of darkness. His ways are dark, are wrong, evil. And so you find that he is the ruler of darkness. Now, Jesus Christ is called the light of the world. Back in John 8.12, he said he's the light of the world. You and I need to stay in the spiritual light and away from the darkness.

You need to stay as close to the light as you possibly can.

Even a heavenly armed man has no chance at night on a surprise attack. No matter how strong we might think we are, if we wander into spiritual darkness, we have no chance. If you begin to dabble and play with the things of darkness, then they will begin to overcome you.

Remember, the man-eater was able to sneak right up to the tent. He snuck right up on Paterson on several occasions, and they can sneak up. We do not want to get so close to this world. Too often, this is what happens. People get as close to the world as they possibly can, instead of saying as far away from it. So, you and I need to make sure that we stay close to God, His way, His word, His way of life.

Point number four is the use of surprise or stealth. A use of surprise or stealth.

A lion is very silent. If you've ever seen pictures on wildlife programs, a lion stalking, they will get down and they'll crawl and they'll stop.

And when the animal looks away, they'll take another step. I've been out deer hunting before, and it's amazing. You can be hunting a deer. You can sit there for two hours. You can have binoculars. You can look all over the landscape. You would think that there's nothing there. And all once a deer pops up, well, where did he come from? Well, he just sort of appeared. And if they are afraid that there's some danger around, you will see a deer. It'll lift one foot up and it won't even put it down. And it'll slowly work it into the leaves and stop. And it'll listen. And then it'll lift another one up. And it'll just very carefully walk. You don't hear a thing.

Now, the thing is a lion will appear when you least expect him. So you and I cannot get careless.

We cannot be careless. Notice what is said here.

A quote, If there's anything more courage-draining than listening to a pair of man-eaters, advertising as they close in on your position, in other words, they're out there growling and rumbling, then it's the sudden stop of the roaring, leaving you no idea of their location, although their silence means that they've begun to hunt. See, when there's silence, they're hunting. Well, brethren, we've gone a long while without major problems in the church, you know, major difficulties, this type of thing. We need to realize that when things are going well, that's when we tend to become careless. That's the time we tend to let down. We tend to not pray and study as we should. And that's the time when we need to be praying, when things are going well, and you have time to pray and time to study, you're not under a lot of pressure, that's when we need to be doing so to stay close to God.

We need to realize, 2.5, and again, we're looking at the things, the characteristics of a lion, preference for larger victims, as a preference for larger victims. The two kills we saw in Africa, again, were giraffes. That's because they have prolonged good eating.

Large games, game, when I'm talking about large game, when it comes to Satan the Devil, we're talking about church members.

Satan already has the world deceived. So everyone is deceived in society.

Large game would be members in the church. Church members are the big game that Satan is coming after, because he wants to take us out of the church. Inside the church, Satan is after the big game within the big game. He's after those who he can take out the biggest of the game. So the preference is for the members of God's church. He will try everything to discourage, dislodge you. And then, the sixth point, both Satan and man-eaters are drawn toward weak victims. The weak victim.

You find a lion will attack animals that are weak, been injured, you don't have much strength.

They look for those whose defenses are down.

Rather than we all have weaknesses. It's not one of us sitting here who doesn't have a weakness, spiritually speaking. This would be like an injured animal, malnourished animal, weak animal. And this is where Satan will attack us. When they start attacking a herd of animals, the weak fall behind or get separated. And then they are sorted out, and they become the ones that are attacked. We are attacked many times by temptations, stumbling blocks put in front of us, things that will cause us to fall.

And you'll find that Satan the devil will attack us in these areas. He will come after us in our weak areas. So that ought to tell us something, that we need to be doing something about our weaknesses. Now, very quickly, there are six points of defense that you and I need to be applying.

We found out how Satan operates, but what do we need to be doing?

Well, let's go through these very quickly. We've already touched on them, but I'll summarize them for you. Number one, we need to know our enemy and recognize him. We need to know our enemy and recognize him.

Know your enemy, recognize him, and recognize how he operates. As we read in 2 Corinthians 2.11, we're not ignorant of his devices. Our ZNAS translation says, we're not ignorant of his schemes. We know what his tactics are, and so we understand. So the more you know, and that's why I went through what I did before, so that we are aware and we know how he operates.

Point two, you need to stay away from the enemy. Stay clear of him.

He will find us. We don't have to go looking for him. If he's too close, we don't have a chance.

So take heed when you find yourself getting into the danger zone. If you begin to dabble in things, like I mentioned, dungeon or Ouija boards or things of this nature, you need to take heed. If you begin to look at pornography or get involved in things that you shouldn't be, think of the magnet. The further away the magnets are, the less likely they will attract. But when they get close, there comes a point where you can't stop them. They pull together. And the same thing is true here. So what this means is stay close to God. James 4, verse 7, James 4, chapter 7 tells us this. Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee. So you resist him, he flees. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. So we want to be close to God. And if we stay close to God, we stay away from the enemy.

Too often, people mingle with those who have wrong attitudes, wrong approaches, and those attitudes can rub off on us.

Point number three in our defense. We need to be constantly on alert and on guard.

We don't know when he will strike.

As 1 Peter 5, 8, said, we read that earlier, we need to be sober.

We need to be vigilant. The word vigilant means to watch.

If you are a guard, if you were in the military during war, and you're a guard and you're on duty and you go to sleep, you're in deep trouble because the enemy could slip up on you. You and I have to be always alert. R is the new Revised Standard Version. It says, discipline yourself, keep alert. NIV says, be controlled and alert. So you and I need to be alert.

Weeks went by on one occasion without any incident, and yet Patterson was very much aware of the danger and built a trap.

Now, as I said earlier, this is when we need to pray and study and not let down. Remember, silence doesn't mean the lion has gone away. It just means he started to hunt. He's out hunting.

I could give you another example of a man who led down his guard, who was not diligent.

On the last story that's in here is about Harry Woahutter.

He's in South Africa. He's on the Oliphant River.

Norm and I have been there. This was up in the Kruger area. In fact, I think on the Oliphant River is where we saw some hippopotamuses. He was in the area of the Sabi Reserve.

He and three other men, he was a ranger, and three other men were leading donkeys. They were packed animals. He was on a horse, so he decided to go ahead to the waterhole. He had ridden about six miles, and all at once something jumped up in front of him. He was a couple of rebocks. But instead of running away from him, they started running toward him. He realized that there were two lions. He turned his horse around, spurred it, took off, and just as he did, one of the lions jumped on the back of the horse, hit him in the back, and knocked him off of the horse. The other lion went for the throat of the horse. He also had a big dog with him. There were three dogs with him, but one of them had followed him. The horse ran off. A lion was after the horse and a dog after the lion. And one lion grabbed the wolf-hutter in the right arm and chest, and bit down and started dragging him.

Totally destroyed his arm and tore his ligaments out. His right arm was just totally useless.

He tried putting his furs in the ground. He thought, well, maybe I can stop the animal. Well, all that did was hurt more because the animal just jerked and kept pulling him. So he decided that was a bad idea. He remembered somewhere that if you hit a lion in the nose, that it would drop you.

It would have to smell. And he was concerned because then he thought, well, if I do that and he drops me, next time he'll grab me around the throat, so I don't want to do that. So he's thinking this cat drug him over 60 yards. And he remembered he had a knife, but it was on his right side. He couldn't do anything. So as he's being drug along, he puts his left hand behind his back. And sure enough, the knife is in the sheath. So he pulls it out, but he's on the wrong side. You can't stab. The heart's not on this side. So he has presence to put the knife across his body, and he feels for where the heart should be, and he strikes. He does that twice, and the lion let him go with a roar, and then he struck and cut the juggler vein. And he killed the lion.

So, you know, he's happy, but then he remembers there's lion number two. And if that lion doesn't get the donkey or his horse, he'll be coming back. So he climbed up in the top of a tree, and in extreme pain, gets his belt, lashes himself to the tree, and sure enough, the lion comes back and starts up the tree.

Well, about that time, the dog comes along and starts nipping at the lion, embarking at him, and the lion gets down and chases the dog. This goes on for an hour. Lion up the tree, the dog after him, back down, up the tree, back down. And here is Woolhutter, up in the top of the tree, just about to pass out.

Finally, his men came along, and, you know, they were able to chase the lion off, build a fire, get him down. It took something like seven days before they could get him finally to a hospital, what they called a hospital. They didn't have any painkillers or anything. And finally, they had to put him on a train, send him off. He wrote that his putrefying flesh was such a stench that he couldn't stand himself, and he would have to turn away from himself. Well, they thought he was going to die on several occasions, and he didn't. He actually lived another 40 years, or he served another 40 years as what we would call a game warden. And at the last year of his job, he killed another lion with a knife. So he was quite a remarkable man. He recovered from all of those injuries, but he could never raise this shoulder beyond this. He could shoot, but that was about all that he could do. Well, he realized that he made a strategic mistake. He wasn't on guard. He wasn't alert, and he paid the price for it. Okay, that brings us to point number four. And, brethren, you and I need to work on our weak areas. Work on your weak areas. A lion will seek out a weak animal, those whose defenses are down. When he was stalking Patterson, he was looking for a weakness to be able to attack him. What is your weak point? We all know what our weaknesses are, our failings. We need to be working on that. Principle of warfare, you never play defense, you attack. You and I need to attack our weaknesses. Attack the areas that we know we need to work on. Never let the enemy pick the battlefield. You pick the battlefield.

And Satan can pick us off very easily if we've got a lot of sins and weaknesses.

That brings us to point number five, and that is, realize you need help.

You and I are not big game hunters. We need help. And where do we get that help? Well, we find, in Ephesians 6 again, that we're told to put on the full armor of God. We need God's Spirit. We need the armor of God. If Jesus Christ in John 5.19 said He could do nothing, what can you and I do? We can do nothing of ourselves. We need God's help. We can become overconfident in who we are, what we've accomplished, what we've done, and that can lead to spiritual self-righteousness. You and I sometimes need the help of one another. Rather than there are many times that I've called other ministers in the church, men that I respect, that I know who are known for their wisdom and ask for their guidance and direction in certain areas or areas of counseling, because I didn't feel that I knew what to do or didn't fully know what to do and just seek advice. There are times that we need to help one another. There are times that we need to even come and seek counseling if we're going through a difficulty or a problem, because there are times that we all need help. We need God's Spirit, and sometimes we need help and encouragement from others. Then that brings us to the sixth point, and that's simply stay close to God and far away from the lion. Remember, draw near to God. He'll draw near to you. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. We want him to flee. We want to stay close to God, so we have to rely upon God's strength. We have a big game hunter on our side. He's called in the Bible the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Jesus Christ, back in Revelation 5 and verse 5. So, brethren, let's realize that we have an enemy out there. There is a man-eater on the loose. He is prowling around. He's out to destroy God's people. We're the ones that he's looking for, but yet we have many defenses. The biggest defense that we have is to stay close to God. I'll guarantee you, if a lion comes around and hears God, and you're right next to him, the lion doesn't have a chance because you've got all the fire and power of the universe right there next to you. So, you draw close to God. He'll draw close to you. You resist the devil, and he will flee, and he will find nothing in you. So, brethren, we have six months before the next holy day comes up. During that six months, it happens to be wintertime also, and it's easy to get down or discourage as we go through that period of time. But you and I need to stay close to God, realize what we're faced with, but we have the strength and the power. We know what we need to do. So, let's make sure that we resist Satan and draw close to God.