Fiery Darts of Satan

There have been a lot, and I mean a lot of attacks on my family, friends, and church body in the past few weeks. Many of these have come in the form of very serious illnesses that have suddenly "Happened", as some have put it. Other attacks have come in the form of a spirit of diminishment that's seemed to have settled over many in our Church body. So first, I ask for prayers from you, dear reader, to help us get out from under these oppressions. Second, I'm reminded that we must praise God in times like these because it's obvious the enemy is not happy with us. That's a good thing because it proves that we must be doing God's will. It's sometimes easy to lose site of His will in times of trials though.

I set out today to dig a little deeper and research why the attacks from Satan are called fiery darts. The picture on the right is a good image of a fiery dart. Plain and simple, a fiery dart is an arrow with fire on the tip of it. I'm sure you've seen the movies in which this type of arrow was employed. I remember watching all of those really bad early 80's movies like Conan the Barbarian, Hawk the Slayer, and Kull the Conqueror in which flaming arrows added a certain mystical quality to the film at large. I also saw a film once, in which a Viking funeral was performed by floating a persons body out to sea on a raft, and then firing a flaming arrow to set it afire. To come to think of it, I've seen a lot of weird movies with flaming arrows in them.

Anyway, Fire Arrows are made by wrapping the sharp point tightly with cloth. Next, the cloth is dipped in a flammable material such as pitch (tar), then it is lit, aimed, and fired at the target. Adding fire to the arrow did two things: First, whatever the arrows point buried into was set on fire -and- Second, when the arrow struck it's target, the flaming cloth would explode and start other smaller fires around the target. Military experts agree that this was probably the first explosive missile used in warfare and though it was crude, it was extremely effective because it was a real double-whammy, as I like to call it. If it hit you, the arrow would penetrate your soft tissue. That's bad enough, but then imagine being set on fire too! And, anyone around you would be burned or set on fire from the fallout of the spall flying from the burning tip.

When Satan attacks us, he is hurling fiery darts of this sort at us. It's bad enough to be hit by his arrows and set on fire but the fallout from his attacks always, and I mean always, hits those around us. If you think about it this way, he never attacks only one person, his attacks are always far reaching and are intended to steal, kill, and destroy from a common group of folks. It's up to us to put on the armor of God every day, be prayed up, and guard our hearts. This is the only way that you can stand strong and avoid being picked off when the time comes. Believe me, the time will come when you will be hit by an arrow or struck by the fiery spall from another person being hit. So, armor up and be ready.