Rescuing Captives

Isaiah spoke to Israel about God’s restoration after their exile in Babylon. He outlined God’s plan to make his people great and to restore their children. Isaiah prophesied that even kings and queens would serve his people and lick the dust from their feet. Isaiah then spoke about those taken away in captivity. “Can the prey be taken from the mighty, or the captives of a tyrant be rescued” (Isaiah 49:24)? The response is that even those taken in captivity shall be taken and those taken as prey rescued. God promised to fight against those who fight against his children and save their offspring.

Many times in the Old Testament, we saw wars between God’s people and their enemies. Many times God’s people were taken into captivity to serve other nations until their time of restoration. There was a time when David went to war with the Philistines and they rejected him so he returned to his camp. The Amalekites raided David’s camp and took all of his wives and the wives of his men and burned the camp with fire. David enquired of the Lord and God instructed David to pursue the army and take back everything that they had stolen from him.

“And David struck them down from twilight until the evening of the next day, and not a man of them escaped, except four hundred young men, who mounted camels and fled” (1 Samuel 30:17). David also took the spoil from the Amalekites and divided them among his men. These references are examples of physical battles that David fought in the Old Testament. Now in the New Testament, we fight battles but not in the physical. “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4).

We are not fighting a physical battle but a spiritual one so our strategy is waging war in the spirit. We pull down strongholds and every spiritual weapon sent against the children of God. We beat down the enemy by praying the word of God and using the fire of the Holy Spirit to dismantle and devour every plan of the evil one. We stay in the spirit to discern the strategies of satan and then we come against him and his host of darkness. We will take the captives that he has taken into his territory to be used for his kingdom and we take them into the kingdom of light.

A.P.-Y.