A Message from the Prior
Beginning next Wednesday, 16 April, I will post Holy Week messages each day from Wednesday through Resurrection Sunday in lieu of a single Battlefield Report. As you prepare to celebrate this upcoming Holy Week – in Lent or as another worship tradition – Claudia and I pray your heart will be filled with rejoicing in this extraordinary season celebrating the breathtaking grace of our Lord!
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The Templar journey is today, just as it has always been a spiritual one. Our forefathers of antiquity were cloistered monks, offering their military service to the Church. They fought as they lived, for the Great Kingdom – and, as the prophet Jeremiah described Him, their Dread Champion. We know Him as our Lord Master, Jesus.
It would be impossible to find any of our forefathers who stood on those dusty and bloody battlefields who would not fully admit that they were mounting their calculated military prowess not against the flesh and blood minions, but “against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12b)
Indeed, Bernard of Clairvaux, in his historic defense of the Templars as a militarized clergy, declared that such battlefield bloodshed was not murder but “malicide” – that is, the killing of evil.
The debate was finally settled after 194 years (1118 – 1312) with the destruction of history’s most brilliant masters of military and social stratagem by deceit and slander at the highest level of world powers. But what is created by God can never perish, as God Himself has promised that “the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.” (Romans 11:29) And so it is that the gift and calling of Templarism has not passed from the face of our Earth. Indeed, over the centuries it has multiplied and grown substantially stronger.
But what is it that has so dramatically expanded? In the realm of humanity, it is the Templar’s legend of remarkable power and intellect that so many people wish to be a part of in their own way. But in the greater and eternal domain of spirituality, the spiritual nature of the Templars has remained undiminished and unchanged. And for these Templar followers, the road to participation is exclusively spiritually directed and entirely empowered by the same Spirit of the Living God Who indwelled each of our forefathers enclosed round about by the white mantle and crimson cross of martyrdom.
Every authentic Templar of the past 907 years has gone to the exact same battlefield and spent their lives. And that most sacred field of honor and sacrifice is the battlefield just outside their front doors where they eagerly give their all every day. And it is here they endure the suffering and pay the price of every selfless soldier of the Cross of Calvery, swinging the Sword of the Spirit until their last breath when on that field they will fall, close their temporal eyes for the last time, and open their spiritual eyes to the first light of a new, eternal world.
This spiritual battlefield on which we modern Templars are called unashamedly to the fight is literally more real than the one that we see with our eyes of flesh. This is so because the spiritual Kingdom of God is the Source-Code from which this Earthly world is projected and overlaid on what we mistakenly deem as “reality” because of our severe human limitations.
“For by Him (Jesus) all things were created, in Heaven and on Earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:16-17)
This statement is utter nonsense to the unredeemed because they have absolutely no desire or even the ability to understand it without empowerment by the indwelling Holy Spirit.
“For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
“For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
Therefore, it is on these battlefields that we struggle daily, expending our precious minutes, hours, and days of our lives struggling against these “rulers, the powers, the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly/spiritual places/battlefields.”
It is here that the unredeemed human minions and slaves of the satanic forces relentlessly sustain their attack against the Kingdom of God, fighting directly and savagely to push us off the field – and even to our deaths if at all possible – using any and every power in their arsenal. For Jesus has said of their leader and his tactics, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44b)
One of the enemy’s greatest and most effective tactics is mounting the argument that he – and even this sacred battlefield – does not even exist at all! These narrative-driven speculations are many, and all of them were developed for the single purpose of exterminating the knowledge and truth of God from our culture.
“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-6)
It is on this very spiritual field of honor where we Templars spend our days that one day we shall also expend our last and our all.
Concluded the Great Prophet Jeremiah, “But the Lord is with me like a Dread Champion; therefore my persecutors will stumble and not prevail. They will be utterly ashamed, because they have failed, with an everlasting disgrace that will not be forgotten.” Jeremiah 20:11
And, in the words of C.S. Lewis,
“My prayer is that when I die, all of hell rejoices that I am out of the fight.”
EPILOGUE
The war will rage with increasing violence. Many more Templars who echo the words of C.S. Lewis will spend their last breaths on that spiritual battlefield. But ultimately, our Lord Master shall step out there for the final time.
The trump of the Archangel will sound, and time will be no more.
“For the Lord Himself will descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)
The long war will finally come to its inevitable victorious end!