How the Enemy Works: The character of the Rabshakeh’s taunting challenge

I have a good friend who is now a retired Professor of Government from Liberty University. He recently sent me some notes on a sermon he heard. He adroitly applies it to the big issues going on in our culture. But it is also worthwhile noting the very personal application of the sermon as well. The attacks of Rabshakeh are the same sorts of ones we routinely face these days. And the remedies cited in the notes below are ours to use as God’s faithful ones.

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Battle for Jerusalem, Is. 36, 2K 18, 2Ch. 32; sermon at Rehoboth on How the Enemy Works: The character of the Rabshakeh’s taunting challenge

1) Challenges your confidence, 2K 18:21ff; antidote: 2Ch 32:7

2) Challenges your confession, 2K 18:23-24; antidote: 1J 5:4

3) Attacks spiritual leadership, authority; see Ps. 2, James 3:6

4) Mocks your abilities (sarcasm); antidote: Phil. 4:13

5) Lies to you, 2K 18:25; antidote: Rom. 8:1

Following the sermon, I was struck how this squared with the political strategies of the Fabians, the Frankfurt School, Gramsci, Alinsky, and many others who repudiate our Bible-shaped civilization in favor of total revolution. Helmut Schelsky gives a good summary of the strategy: It aims, first, at the conquest of universities and teachers colleges (the cultural sector) in order to staff these institutions and run them; second, at disrupting the functions of the state or crippling it through the destruction of its self-confidence; and, third, at the intensification of demands placed on the economy, social security, and welfare without regard to the functional and productive capacities of the institutional system in order to dominate those who run them. ***