There is a story in the Bible in 2 Kings 6:15-20 in which the Prophet Elisha’s servant awakens one morning and goes outside only to see several thousand well-armed enemy troops surrounding their little town. Overwhelmed with fear, he cries out to the prophet, “Alas, what shall we do?”

A vast number of American Christians are beginning to feel the same way, especially as they look about at the rising tide of the many enemies of the gospel that are surrounding us on every side – the ever-enlarging oligarchy that is threatening our liberties as Americans, Marxist anarchists, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Satanism, atheism, humanism, etc. Fear is causing many to cry out, “What shall we do?” When we feel outgunned, outnumbered, and outwitted, whether it be on the political, social, or religious battlefield, and our hearts are filled with the temptation to give in to fear, “Alas, what shall we do?”

Well, instead of crying to be taken off the field and out of this world, we need to get back onto the field and out to the whole world with the whole gospel, which alone is the power of God unto salvation. Also we need to get back into the Scriptures to see what men and women of God did in similar situations.

The strategy for what to do when the enemies of God have surrounded us is set forth clearly and perpetually in the life and ministry of Elisha, the Prophet. Elisha is a type of the Church functioning in full faith assurance and authority as kingdom of heaven ambassadors. All the greatness of God and all of heaven’s angels and assets are available to the Church, when she replaces fear with faith; a runner’s mentality with a rulers; a reliance on Madison Avenue and Hollywood techniques, with total dependence on God and His gospel; when she has her fear-blinded eyes opened to the world-discipling opportunities being surrounded is bringing to us! God will do anything for the true Church, the Bride of His Son Jesus, in this great hour of history. We need to be expecting all kinds of fantastic, mind-boggling things as God shows His miraculous power for world harvest.

General Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller, in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in Korea in 1950 was surrounded by 10 divisions of Chinese that had been sent to annihilate them. But the Marines smashed seven of the divisions during their retreat to the sea. During that battle, he made the famous quote, “We’ve been looking for the enemy for some time now. We’ve finally found him. We’re surrounded. That simplifies things.”  When asked by a reporter if they were retreating, He said, “Hell no! We are just “attacking in a different direction.” Puller’s Marines smashed seven of the divisions during their pull back to the sea. Facing attack from all sides, including two massive enemy attacks on the rear guard, Puller’s direct leadership ensured all casualties were evacuated, all salvageable equipment was brought out, and ensured there was enough time for the column to reach its destination.

This is the attitude the Church of the Living God needs today! Since we refused to take serious Christ’s commission to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, God has virtually surrounded us with the nations – this simplifies things!

So what if the New Age movement is proliferating. So what if the New World Order Globalist are plotting. So what if Islamic terrorism is on the march! So what if we are surrounded by the forces of evil on all sides. So what if social media thinks they are the gods of this brave new world and will bring about the “great reset.” They fail to realize that they are being setup by the sovereign Lord of this universe for the “great upset”!

Gary DeMar gives encouragement and motivation to us as Christians as he writes, “Christianity has triumphed over idolatry before, and it can do it again. Christianity has brought peace to warring tribes, transformed barbarians into champions of justice and mercy, brigands into servants of the poor, and rapist into defenders of women.”

Almost 150 years, the renown Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon challenged the believers of his day with words that we will do well to hear and heed: “The fullness of Jesus is not changed, then why are our works so feebly done? Pentecost, is that to be a tradition? The reforming days, are these to be memories only? I see no reason why we should not have a greater Pentecost than Peter saw, and a Reformation deeper in its foundations, and truer in its upbuildings than all the reforms which Luther or Calvin achieved. We have the same Christ, remember that. The times are altered, but Jesus is the Eternal, and time touches him not… Our laziness puts off the work of conquest, our self-indulgence procrastinates, our cowardice and want of faith make us dote upon the millennium instead of hearing the Spirit’s voice today. Happy days would begin from this hour if the Church would but awake and put on her strength, for in her Lord all fulness dwells.

“Oh! Spirit of God, bring back thy Church to a belief in the gospel! Bring back her ministers to preach it once again with the Holy Ghost, and not striving after wit and learning. Then shall we see thine arm made bare, O God, in the eyes of all the people, and the myriads shall be brought to rally round the throne of God and the Lamb. The Gospel must succeed; it shall succeed; it cannot be prevented from succeeding; a multitude that no man can number must be saved.”

With total confidence in the power of the gospel of Christ to save from the gutter-most to the uttermost, and above the voice of spiritual undertakers saying the Church is dead; above the persecutor’s actions, above the apostasy of many, above the sneers of the scientific and intellectual community, above the infidel’s mouth and louder than the skeptics in the pew, I hear the voice of King Jesus saying, “Upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it!”

The kingdoms of this world shall become the Kingdom of our Lord and His Christ. Multitudes as the sand of the sea in number shall bow in glad submission to the King of Glory. The Lord God omnipotent reigns now! The Church triumphant is alive and well. The Gospel is still the power of God! The Spirit and the gifts are ours! Rise up O men of God – It’s harvest time!

We must be a people of faith. We must live by faith in the Word of God and not in what our eyes see and hear on the evening news or read in the newspapers, or in the best-selling books of well-intentioned but demoralizing authors who predict doom and gloom while Christians fly away. “It is not only unwise, but it is wicked to be disheartened because of the external feebleness of the Church, compared with the work she has to do, and the enemies she has encountered. God is her strength, her glory and her hope, and to despair of her is to deny God.” (Thomas V. Moore, A Commentary on Zechariah, p. 77)

It is time to begin to confess faith in Christ and His gospel instead of continually making confessions of fear and the lies of Satan. It is time to stop meeting, eating, and retreating. It is time to take the whole gospel to the whole world with the confidence that His kingdom will come more fully as we do.