The Strongman

As you read the previous scripture, what picture leaps to your mind? What or who is the strongman spoken of in this passage? For some, this question elicits the image of a huge, foreboding creature with its wings spread over a city.

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Others think of someone like Hitler who threatens the peace of nations and people groups. Is the strongman a ruler of darkness, as mentioned in Ephesians 6: Is it possible that both concepts are accurate to a degree? Ezekiel 28 begins with an address to the prince of Tyre. God is evidently speaking through the prophet Ezekiel of judgement on the prince of Tyre. However, in verse 12, the king of Tyre is addressed as having supernatural attributes.

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In the same passage, there appears to be a physical ruler being addressed as well as the supernatural being who stands behind the human structure. This could be explained as the law of double reference —when a visible person is addressed, but certain statements also refer to an invisible entity who is using the visible creature as a tool.

The Bible says he is disarmed when someone who is stronger overcomes him. Few Christians would disagree that God, who is the King of the Universe, has power that far surpasses any influence of the evil one. There is clearly no contest! One of the mightiest ways God displays His strength, however, is through a Church that prevails through prayer. Peter Wagner gives us insight on scriptural overcoming in his book, Warfare Prayer.

A fascinating instance of how intercessors in one nation conquered their strongman comes from Panama.

Strongman (strength athlete) - Wikipedia

Different Panamanians have described to me the agony of the years under the harsh dictatorship of Manuel Noriega. They shared about the sound of helicopters in the night that flew over the jungles and dropped black garbage bags containing the remains of those who posed real or imaginary threats to his dictatorship. It was a well-known fact that Noriega consorted with occult leaders and practiced voodoo and other forms of magic.

He indeed seemed to be an invincible strongman. However, there was one army in the nation whose leaders understood that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but are mighty for pulling down strongholds and strongmen! These are the stories of vigilantes and renegade cops, played by the likes of Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson, who push past weak-willed bureaucrats, corrupt politicos and political correctness to restore justice in violent times. These are men who never let law undermine order.

How Do We Overcome?

This trend is not confined to the U. In every region of the world, changing times have boosted public demand for more muscular, assertive leadership. Or disloyal politicians, bureaucrats, bankers or judges. Out of this divide, a new archetype of leader has emerged. Perhaps the most prominent of these can be found in Russia. After the fall of the Soviet Union fed fears of economic chaos and political impotence, Vladimir Putin answered the call for a restoration of the Russia that had been the center of an empire for three centuries.

He has promised to wave away Western vultures that would pick Russia clean by making trouble in neighboring states like Ukraine. Putin, a year-old man in a country with a male life expectancy of 64, embodies an image of Russian virility and swagger. Strongmen can also be seen across Asia. In China, memories of Tiananmen traumas and the horror of the Soviet collapse have pushed the Communist Party to keep a tight hold on dissent. In power since , Xi Jinping has used an anticorruption campaign to sideline potential rivals while consolidating power on a historic scale.

And recently, he erased presidential term limits.

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The era of rule by party consensus is finished, at least for now. In the Philippines, a rising tide of violent street crime helped elect Rodrigo Duterte, a former mayor who talked more like a Mob boss than a President, on his promises to wipe out the drug trade with his own brand of justice. In all of this, truth in particular is among the casualties. All politicians bend the truth to a certain extent, but there is no recent example in a Western democracy of a political leader who lies as persistently as Trump. Trump, Putin and the new international order.

This is the sort of rhetoric that resides in totalitarian states, where the media are expected to function as an arm of a dictatorship or, failing that, journalists are simply disappeared.

Parable of the Strong Man

In his lecture in South Africa, Obama dwelled at length on the corruption of political discourse in the modern era, including a basic disrespect for the facts. People just make stuff up. They just make stuff up. We see it in the growth of state-sponsored propaganda.

Strongman (strength athlete)

We see it in internet fabrications. We see it in the blurring of lines between news and entertainment. In the digital era, it had been assumed technology would make it easier to hold political leaders to account. But, in some respects, the reverse is proving to be the case, as Ian Bremmer, author of Us vs. The Failure of Globalism , wrote in a recent contribution to Time. A decade ago, it appeared that a revolution in information and communications technologies would empower the individual at the expense of the state. They saw an opportunity for government to try to become the dominant player in how information is shared and how the state can use data to tighten political control.

Why emulate the US or European political systems, with all the checks and balances that prevent even the most determined leaders from taking on chronic problems, when one determined leader can offer a credible shortcut to greater security and national pride? As long as that rings true, the greatest threat may be the strongmen yet to come. Pets in Victorian paintings — Egham, Surrey.