The Battle of the Bulge

No, the title is not an announcement of a new weight-loss program—like Weight Watchers or Nutrisystem—as all public-school educated Millenials and younger probably think. Baby Boomers and older all know immediately that this is a reference to a crucial battle in the latter stages of World War II. 

After invading Europe at Normandy on the French coast in June of 1944, the Allied forces had pushed East across Belgium to the German border and were preparing to attack Germany and finally win the war. This end to the war was a forgone conclusion after the invasion was successful.

However, Hitler had a last card to play. Marshalling 200,000 troops, on December 16, 1944, he mounted a counterattack designed to break through the Allied lines and separate them. He would disrupt communications, supply lines, etc, and then ultimately drive them back into the sea. 

The surprised Allied front line was pushed back about 100 miles in the shape of a giant “bulge” on a map, but the Germans could never break through, thus the famous “Battle of the Bulge.” After finally stopping the Nazi advance, the Allies reversed the momentum and swept Eastward to victoriously attack Berlin. With the Russians attacking from the East, victory in Europe (VE Day) was officially declared on May 8, 1945.

Satan’s counterattack, after his defeat at the cross 2000 years ago, is very similar to this German, last-gasp effort to avoid defeat. However, Satan’s attacks have been multifaceted and insidious, difficult for us, the objects of those attacks, to even recognize they are happening. He uses the same tried and true method today he used to fool Eve in the Garden: the fruit from the forbidden tree was “good for food…pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise” (Genesis 3:6). These same lusts of the flesh, the desire to “look good” to the world, and to make our own decisions independent from God and His word, continues to tempt God’s people today. 

I believe the primary target of Satan’s counterattack, causing the “bulge” we see in the front line of God’s troops today, is ultimately the family. Satan knows if he can destroy or seriously hamper the family in its mission of raising up godly, mature, well-adjusted children with a vision for their purpose in life, God’s other institutions will be seriously hindered. 

Today, the church must spend its time and efforts on being a hospital for wounded, damaged believers who did not get, as children in their families, their emotional needs met. They did not have a foundation of truth laid in their lives with love and firmness as they were growing up. Therefore, the church must focus on healing the residual spiritual, emotional and psychological wounds from that childhood before it can teach and equip their members for the battle. A good church recognizes this problem and eagerly does both, but how much better when the foundation is already laid in the lives of their members by their family as they approach adulthood. 

Likewise, without trained, godly citizens as magistrates, the civil government cannot fulfill its biblical function of protecting law keepers, (including the church), and punishing law breakers. All these civil laws the government enforces should be based on the foundational truth of the Bible. So, the family is the foundational institution upon which the success of the other two hinges in the relentless, unstoppable march to seeing the Lord’s Prayer answered: “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mattew 6:10).

Currently, it takes doggedly walking by “faith alone” and not “by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7), to, in any way at all, believe the Lord’s Prayer will ever be answered in this life. Families, even Christian ones, are in disarray everywhere. 

Husbands, the lynch-pins of successfully functioning families, have been attacked and denigrated for their very masculinity and, as a result, they have abandoned their love-leadership responsibilities. Their firm leadership is branded “toxic,” and they have fearfully relinquished it. Certainly not the culture, and not even the church, have taught them biblical truth about a functioning family, so much of their abdication has been due to ignorance. 

Wives, on the other hand, have been taught to “be all that you can be,” and “you can do whatever a man can do,” and that is generally true, and many times they may do it even better! But should they? The message of the Bible, cover to cover, is that women are equal to men in every way—in terms of their value and worth—but not in their function and responsibilities (what they do). Those are completely different from a man’s. 

For example, a woman’s highest calling is to be a wife and mother, and not to “be all that you can be.” Preparing and maintaining a home and helping her husband in his task of reproducing the next generation’s kingdom warriors is her function and responsibility. This alone, and not trying to “do whatever a man can do” provides the joy and fulfillment for which every wife longs. 

As the family goes, so goes the nation, hence Satan’s relentless attempt to destroy it. My book, The Family, God’s Weapon for Victory, available on my website, is a compendium of biblical truth that parents need to know in order to pattern their family after the biblical standard. By not understanding these standards and unconsciously following anti-biblical, current cultural norms, we are enabling Satan to render God’s ultimate fighting weapon useless. These postings are but a quick look at some of these biblical standards in the child-training section of the book. 

Next week we will look at “Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). What does ”train up a child” mean in this well-known verse? We will discuss that next week.