Two Spiritual Kingdoms

• There are two spiritual Kingdoms.

• Being a citizen of one puts you at war with the other.

• One proof of two opposing kingdoms is found in Colossians 1:13. For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son.

In the original Greek, two different words are used for kingdom.
    The first one, used with the kingdom of darkness, is exousia. It means the power of authority, the power of rule or government. The second one, used with the Kingdom of His Son, is basileia. It refers to royal power, kingship, or dominion. It describes a reign of royalty as opposed to brute force and coercion.

There are many more scriptures in both the Old and New Testaments that testify to this dichotomy.

Isaiah 60:2
For behold, darkness will cover the earth And deep darkness the peoples; But the LORD will rise upon you And His glory will appear upon you.

Acts 26:18
...to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those sanctified by faith in Me.

There is an ongoing war in the heavens between these two dominions. Being a citizen of one puts you at war with the other. They do not mix. They cannot coexist all snuggled up like Yin and Yang.  The Bible consistently and foundationally uses the terms light and darkness to describe them.  The normal condition is for light to overcome and dispel darkness. However, strife, unbelief, fear, and other sins will bring on a thick darkness. In this state, men will not hear God, they will not receive his teachings. Although they may wish to be enlightened, the darkness makes this difficult because the darkness frustrates and literally bedevils a person so that they become confused.* 

What does this have to do with a Runaway Bride, you ask?

This:  Those who live in denial about the reality of the two kingdoms will give God credit for the works of devils. This is a terrible accusation.

The claim that God led KatieLyn to break the engagement is an accusation about God's character.  It says that God is not able to do what He said that he would do. It says that he cannot get His people to hear Him accurately!  It blames God for Satan's attack!  It claims that God is the author of confusion.

I have laid out in this blog previously that Satan HATES godly marriage. He HATES the formation of godly families.  Satan's nature is to destroy them. And Satan, not God, worked the works of strife, fighting, and destruction in KatieLyn's life. (This will be the subject of a future post: Lessons from a Deliverance Ministry.) The attack on the engagement was an attack of Satan. It was not an "enlightenment" from the Lord.

The Lesson
There are two kingdoms that oppose each other. The strife and fighting with her mom blinded KatieLyn's mind to the beauty and excellency of the character of the Lord Jesus. It weakened her until her mind was indisposed to receive His instructions. Just as darkness has no affinity for light, if the one exists, the other must be displaced.
KatieLyn decided to appease the dark kingdom. She wanted the fighting to stop, and the only way (she felt) that she could make it stop was to appease it. That meant she had to break up with Joe.
The dark kingdom of Satan had maneuvered her into a place where she was being pressured to choose between her mom and Joe. She did not see any way to peaceably have a relationship with both. The fighting had overwhelmed her and bewildered her into a place where she could not think clearly. Such is the effect of a codependency—she relied on her mom to do some of the thinking for her, and her mom's thoughts were all toward what her mom wanted, not what God had said He had chosen.

KatieLyn remains convinced that she made the right choice by appeasing her mom. Next time she will let her mom choose the husband for them.





* Being "in the dark" here does not mean that a person is not saved. Believers whose citizenship is in the Kingdom "of light" can still be assaulted by the prince of darkness. A mind or soul can be "in the dark" and confused even though the spirit of a man is still safely held in the hands of the Lord. The paragraph is speaking of darkness covering the soul, not the spiritual darkness of the lost.