Spiritual warfare

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

⁸ Be sober-minded and alert. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

⁹ Resist him, standing firm in your faith and in the knowledge that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.

³ For though we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh.

⁴ The weapons of our warfare are not the weapons of the world. Instead, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.

⁵ We tear down arguments and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God; and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

¹¹ Put on the full armor of God, so that you can make your stand against the devil’s schemes.

¹² For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this world’s darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

¹³ Therefore take up the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you will be able to stand your ground, and having done everything, to stand.

¹⁴ Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness arrayed,

¹⁵ and with your feet fitted with the readiness of the gospel of peace.

¹⁶ In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

Then Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.

The one who practices sin is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the very start. This is why the Son of God was revealed, to destroy the works of the devil.

¹ Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world.

² By this you will know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,

³ and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and which is already in the world at this time.

⁴ You, little children, are from God and have overcome them, because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.

³ For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome,

⁴ because everyone born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world: our faith.

⁵ Who then overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made the good confession before many witnesses.

¹³ For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ.

¹⁴ And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.

¹⁵ It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their actions.

Then Saul said to his servants, “Find me a woman who is a medium, so I can go and consult her.” “There is a medium at Endor,” his servants replied.

And he said, “Listen, all you people of Judah and Jerusalem! Listen, King Jehoshaphat! This is what the LORD says: ‘Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army, for the battle does not belong to you, but to God.

¹⁰ If you forgive anyone, I also forgive him. And if I have forgiven anything, I have forgiven it in the presence of Christ for your sake,

¹¹ in order that Satan should not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.

Then they will come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, who has taken them captive to his will.

²⁶ “Be angry, yet do not sin.” Do not let the sun set upon your anger,

²⁷ and do not give the devil a foothold.

And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

I am not asking that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from the evil one.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’

They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. And they did not love their lives so as to shy away from death.

¹⁴ We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.

¹⁵ I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.

¹⁶ And if I do what I do not want to do, I admit that the law is good.

¹⁷ In that case, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

¹⁸ I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh; for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.

¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want to do. Instead, I keep on doing the evil I do not want to do.

¹⁶ One day as we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl with a spirit of divination, who earned a large income for her masters by fortune-telling.

¹⁷ This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation!”

¹⁸ She continued this for many days. Eventually Paul grew so aggravated that he turned and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” And the spirit left her at that very moment.

³³ In the synagogue there was a man possessed by the spirit of an unclean demon. He cried out in a loud voice,

³⁴ “Ha! What do You want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!”

³⁵ But Jesus rebuked the demon. “Be silent!” He said. “Come out of him!” At this, the demon threw the man down before them all and came out without harming him.

²⁸ When Jesus arrived on the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, He was met by two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs. They were so violent that no one could pass that way.

²⁹ “What do You want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have You come here to torture us before the appointed time?”

³⁰ In the distance a large herd of pigs was feeding.

³¹ So the demons begged Jesus, “If You drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.”

³² “Go!” He told them. So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and died in the waters.

²³ Suddenly a man with an unclean spirit cried out in the synagogue:

²⁴ “What do You want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!”

²⁵ But Jesus rebuked the spirit. “Be silent!” He said. “Come out of him!”

²⁶ At this, the unclean spirit threw the man into convulsions and came out with a loud shriek.

⁷ Then a war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.

⁸ But the dragon was not strong enough, and no longer was any place found in heaven for him and his angels.

⁹ And the great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field that the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’”

¹⁴ So the LORD God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and every beast of the field! On your belly will you go, and dust you will eat, all the days of your life.

¹⁵ And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

The tempter came to Him and said, “If You are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Then the devil left Him, and angels came and ministered to Him.

When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to Jesus, and He drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick.

Then Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed from that moment.

²⁶ And they took the bull that was given them, prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, shouting, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no sound, and no one answered as they leaped around the altar they had made.

²⁷ At noon Elijah began to taunt them, saying, “Shout louder, for he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or occupied, or on a journey. Perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened!”

After the Spirit of the LORD had departed from Saul, a spirit of distress from the LORD began to torment him.

¹⁰ The next day a spirit of distress sent from God came upon Saul, and he prophesied inside the house while David played the harp as usual. Now Saul was holding a spear,

¹¹ and he hurled it, thinking, “I will pin David to the wall.” But David eluded him twice.

So Saul disguised himself by putting on different clothes, and he set out with two of his men. They came to the woman at night, and Saul said, “Consult a spirit for me. Bring up for me the one I name.”

He sacrificed his sons in the fire in the Valley of Hinnom. He practiced sorcery, divination, and witchcraft, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did great evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking Him to anger.

But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite, “Go up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria and ask them, ‘Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are on your way to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?’

⁸ But Elymas the sorcerer (for that is what his name means) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul from the faith.

⁹ Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked directly at Elymas

¹⁰ and said, “O child of the devil and enemy of all righteousness, you are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery! Will you never stop perverting the straight ways of the Lord?

¹⁴ Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this.

¹⁵ Eventually, one of the evil spirits answered them, “Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?”

¹¹ But Pharaoh called the wise men and sorcerers and magicians of Egypt, and they also did the same things by their magic arts.

¹² Each one threw down his staff, and it became a serpent. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up the other staffs.