My Army basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina constituted the longest eight weeks of my entire life — not just because of the relentless physical activity, but because I was averaging roughly three and a half hours of sleep per night. Nothing like sleep deprivation to make time feel like it has stopped entirely.

The only respite from the physical grind — and I use the word ‘respite’ loosely — was our occasional classroom time, a couple of sessions per week. We would line up in formation outside a nondescript building, then march in to sit on metal chairs at desks that appeared to have been sized for middle schoolers, and watch educational film clips. I put ‘educational’ in quotes because many of these films were several decades old, some of them in black and white. Apparently our multi-trillion dollar military budget did not extend to updating the media library.

The reason these classroom breaks were cruel rather than restful was straightforward: the moment we sat down in that darkened room, our sleep-deprived bodies instinctively tried to make up for what they had been denied. Our drill sergeants patrolled the aisles with evident delight, rapping anyone across the head who dared to nod off.

The films themselves were about how to conduct ourselves in the theater of war. They were called our Rules of Engagement — covering things like how to behave if captured, how to resist giving information to the enemy, and what our responsibilities were as American soldiers.

What struck me most about these rules was their underlying emphasis: even in a situation where our explicit mission was to kill other human beings, we were expected to do it the right way. With honor. With restraint. With a recognition that even the enemy retained certain rights under certain conditions.

A Brief History of Honorable Combat

We were taught about the Geneva Conventions — the international treaties, first adopted in 1864 and most recently updated in 1949, that established the baseline rules of humane conduct in warfare. The core provisions are remarkably straightforward: wounded and sick soldiers must receive medical care regardless of which side they are on. Prisoners of war must be treated humanely — housed, fed, and protected from torture or public humiliation. Civilians are not legitimate targets. Medical personnel are off limits. And perhaps most significantly for my purposes at the time: once an enemy combatant surrenders, they become your responsibility. The person you were trying to put a bullet into five minutes ago, the moment they lay down their weapon, becomes someone you are legally and morally obligated to protect. Fail to do so, and you can face criminal prosecution.

But what surprised me in that classroom was learning that the idea of rules in warfare did not begin with the Geneva Conventions. It goes back much further — all the way to the ancient world. The Greeks, as early as the seventh century BC, operated under unwritten conventions of limited warfare between city-states: the inviolability of ambassadors, the right of both sides to collect and bury their dead, the immunity of religious sanctuaries, and the expectation that a formal declaration precede any conflict. The Greeks even considered certain tactics — ambushes, night attacks, the use of poison — to be dishonorable. Not illegal, exactly. Just beneath a civilized warrior.

The instinct that combat must have rules — that even enemies retain certain rights, that war must be conducted with some measure of honor — appears across virtually every warrior culture in human history. It is woven into how human beings think about conflict.

WORTH NOTING Our spiritual enemies have no such instincts. They are not bound by honor, civility, or any sense of reciprocal obligation to us. The only reason they follow rules of engagement at all is because Jehovah built those rules into the structure of reality — and all spiritual beings, including the enemy, are subject to them whether they like it or not.

Spiritual Rules of Engagement

In spiritual warfare, there are also rules of engagement — laws that govern how the conflict between spiritual entities and humanity is conducted. Unlike human combatants, our spiritual enemies are not following these rules out of any sense of honor or civility. They have neither. No, the reason they must obey them is because Jehovah established them, and all spiritual entities — including the enemy, and including Jehovah Himself — are subject to them.

That last part tends to make people uncomfortable, so let me address it directly.

The Character of Jehovah — and Why It Matters

Before we go further, I want to flag an important resource that is available to you right now in your course materials: John Lenhart’s book Modeling God. If you have not read it yet, I want to strongly encourage you to get to it — and soon. The entire argument we are about to walk through, the nature of God, His character, how we can know what He is like, and how that shapes everything about how His creation operates, is something John unpacks with a depth and precision I have rarely seen anywhere else. Reading Modeling God will give you a foundation under everything in this section that will make it not just intellectually interesting, but transformative. It is not optional reading. Consider it required.

Before we can understand the rules of spiritual engagement, we need to understand the nature of the One who established them. What is God’s character? What is His nature?

We can actually deduce this with reasonable precision by examining the universe He created — because what a creator makes always bears the imprint of the creator’s character. And when we examine the universe, we are forced to confront a fundamental question: is it infinite or finite?

There is no third option. If the universe were infinitely old, the second law of thermodynamics — which states that closed systems lose energy over time, moving from order toward disorder — would have rendered it cold, dark, and dead an eternity ago. But the universe is not cold and dark. Stars burn with nuclear force. Galaxies spin. Planets orbit. Energy is everywhere. The universe cannot be infinitely old.

This means the universe had a beginning. And if it had a beginning, it had a cause. Secular scientists do not like this conclusion, because a beginning implies a beginner — and a beginner implies an intelligent creator. So they have worked hard to propose alternatives.

One of them is the oscillating universe theory. The idea goes like this: a singularity of all matter and energy exploded in a Big Bang, expanded outward, then eventually slowed, collapsed back under its own gravity into a new singularity, which triggered another Big Bang — and this cycle has been repeating forever. Big Bang, expansion, contraction, Big Crunch, Big Bang again. Infinite oscillations, infinite time, no need for a creator.

There are two fatal problems with this. First, there simply is not enough matter in the observable universe to generate sufficient gravitational pull to cause a full collapse. The numbers do not work. Second — and this is the one secular theorists tend to quietly ignore — even if the oscillations were possible, that pesky second law of thermodynamics would mean that each cycle loses a bit of energy. Run it backward through infinite time and eventually there is not enough energy left to sustain another bang. The oscillating universe still requires a beginning. Nobody teaches this theory much anymore, and for good reason.

So then there is the multiverse — currently the favorite of the secular cosmology crowd. The late Stephen Hawking was a prominent proponent. Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, who functions as something of a carnival barker for secular evolutionary theory, has enthusiastically promoted it as well. The idea is that our universe is just one of an enormous — perhaps infinite — number of universes existing side by side, like slices of bread in a loaf. Occasionally, for reasons that are never clearly explained, two of these universe-slices bump into each other, and the collision releases enough energy to trigger a Big Bang that creates a new universe. How? Well… no one really knows. The details tend to get a bit vague at that point.

Yeah. Cool story, bro.

The problem with the multiverse is simple: there is no evidence for it. None. Not a single observable data point. It sounds spectacular, makes for great movies and comic books, and has the word ‘science’ attached to it — but believing in the multiverse is, from an evidentiary standpoint, no different from believing the earth rests on the back of a giant cosmic tortoise, or that the sun is born each morning from a golden egg. It is mythology dressed in the language of physics.

When we follow the actual evidence — thermodynamics, causality, the observable structure of reality — we arrive at the only intellectually honest conclusion: the universe is finite. It had a definitive beginning. And whatever caused it to begin had no prior cause of its own.

What the First Cause Must Be

The principle of causality tells us that every effect has a cause, and that the cause is greater than and independent of its effect. So the first cause of the universe must be greater than and independent of the universe. It must be outside of physical space and time — supernatural, transcendent, and eternal. And since the first law of thermodynamics tells us that matter cannot be created or destroyed by natural means, something that created matter out of nothing must operate outside of natural law.

What kind of thing is immaterial, transcendent, outside of time and space, and yet substantive enough to cause the entire physical universe to come into existence? The answer, when you follow the logic carefully, is information.

Consider your computer. The hardware — the screen, the processor, the circuitry — is real and tangible. But without software, it is an expensive paperweight. The software, the information that tells the hardware what to do and how to do it, is what makes the system function. And here is the remarkable thing: if you weigh a hard drive before and after loading it with every piece of software it can hold, it weighs exactly the same. Information is weightless. It has no mass. It transcends the physical world.

Follow the chain further. Information is an effect of knowledge. Knowledge is an effect of intelligence. Intelligence is an effect of understanding. Understanding is an effect of thinking. Thinking requires the application of principles — qualitative and quantitative values used to interpret and evaluate the world. The first cause of all of this must be the source of those principles.

And here we can be precise. The fundamental qualitative principle is rightness. Something is either right or it is not. Wrong is not an independent standard — it is a measurement of how far something departs from right. You cannot know what is wrong without first having a standard of right to compare it against. The first cause, the source of all principles, must therefore be always and completely right.

The fundamental quantitative principle is justice — inherent balance. If a value is taken, it must be replaced. If a value is given, it must be paid back in equal proportion. Like rightness, justice is causeless: you cannot know what injustice is without justice existing first as the standard of comparison. The first cause must therefore be always and completely just.

God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? — Numbers 23:19 (NKJV)

Now, which Creator qualifies? Secular materialism eliminates itself — it denies the supernatural. Polytheistic religions fail because the first cause must be singular and transcendent, and pagan creation myths typically involve gods operating from inside the universe, not outside it. Islam presents a god, Allah, who is described in the Quran as capricious — one who can love or withdraw love arbitrarily, who is not bound by consistency of character. That does not fit a being that is always and completely right and just.

The God of the Bible is the only Creator presented in any human philosophy or religion who is singular, transcendent, supernatural, outside of time and space, and always and completely right and just. He is the only one who fits what the first cause of the universe must be.

Why God Is Bound by His Own Laws

Here is where this becomes directly relevant to spiritual warfare. Because Jehovah is always and completely right and just, it would be inconsistent with His nature — and therefore impossible — for Him to create rules for His creation that He Himself does not follow. An unjust God creating a standard of justice He is exempt from would be a contradiction in terms.

I know this runs against a popular idea in Christian circles: the notion that ‘God can do anything.’ But that idea, taken literally, is actually a problem. If God can do anything, that means He could sin, lie, break His word, or act unjustly. The Bible itself is emphatic on this point:

…it is impossible for God to lie, that we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. — Hebrews 6:18 (NKJV)

“For I am the LORD, I do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.” — Malachi 3:6 (NKJV)

God cannot lie. God cannot change. These are not limitations that diminish Him — they are the very foundation of His character. They are what makes Him trustworthy. And they are what makes the rules of engagement in spiritual warfare reliable and learnable.

Jehovah does not govern His creation arbitrarily. He does everything through laws and covenants — binding agreements made in the spiritual realm that manifest in the physical. And He subjects Himself to those laws. That is not weakness. That is integrity.

This has enormous practical implications for us as warriors. It means that spiritual warfare is not chaos. It is not a situation where one side has rules and the other operates however it likes. Every party in this conflict — Jehovah, the fallen Elohim, the demons, and us — is operating within a defined framework of laws. The enemy cannot do anything and everything to you. They are constrained. They must operate within boundaries. And once you understand those boundaries, you stop being a passive victim reacting to whatever hits you, and you become a strategic combatant who knows the terrain.

Here is one of the most important boundaries to understand: the enemy cannot simply attack you wherever and whenever he chooses. He requires a legal basis. A foothold. An opening you have provided — through sin, through agreement with his lies, through covenant made with your words, or through generational patterns we will address later in this course. Spiritual attacks are not random. They are legal actions taken against you based on rights you have — knowingly or unknowingly — granted. Which means they can be revoked. That is what this course is about.

Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. — James 4:7 (NKJV)

Notice the order in that verse. Submit to God first. Then resist the enemy. Submission to Jehovah closes the legal openings. Resistance, from that position of submission, is what causes the enemy to flee. This is not a suggestion for the spiritually advanced. It is a description of how the laws of engagement actually work.

The Law of Words

Now we come to what I believe is the most practically important rule of engagement in spiritual warfare, and the one that will have the most direct effect on your daily life.

Everything in the spiritual realm is done through words.

Consider how Jehovah created the physical universe. He did not assemble it manually or think it into existence silently. He spoke it:

Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. — Genesis 1:3 (NKJV)

This is not merely poetic language. When physicists get down to the subatomic level of matter, they find that everything in our universe is composed of vibrations — oscillating fields of energy. Vibrations are, in the broadest sense, sound. And sound is organized vibration. What do you call organized, ordered, purposeful sound? Words. Jehovah spoke words in the spiritual realm, and they manifested in the physical realm. The entire universe was spoken into existence.

This is a foundational law of spiritual reality, and it applies to all spirit beings — not just Jehovah. All spiritual entities, including the fallen Elohim, including us, are subject to it. You speak things in one realm and they manifest in the other realm. This is not optional. It is not a technique. It is a law.

John’s Gospel captures this beautifully:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. — John 1:1, 14 (NKJV)

Jesus — the Son of God — is identified as the Word. The eternal divine expression. Spoken into physical reality.

Predictive Programming: The Enemy Uses This Law Too

Once you understand this principle, a curious pattern in human history suddenly makes sense.

Researchers and historians have long noticed that the ruling elites of the world — and the fallen spiritual entities who give them their marching orders — have a peculiar habit of announcing their destructive intentions before they carry them out. This phenomenon has been given various names: predictive programming, revelation of the method. The observations themselves are widely documented. What has not been widely understood is why they do it.

In the 1800s, a Freemason and Luciferian occultist named Albert Pike published a book in which he laid out a plan for three global conflicts that would ultimately produce a world government. The first would end the power of the Russian czars and the Eastern European empires. The second would break the dominance of Western Europe and establish an international governing body. The third would pit the Judeo-Christian world against Islam, and out of its resolution would come world government. World War I accomplished the first set of goals. World War II accomplished the second — including, notably, the establishment of the United Nations. The third phase appears to be underway.

Entertainment has been another vehicle for this pattern. Consider two novels written in the early twentieth century that read less like fiction and more like detailed advance reporting on the twenty-first.

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, published in 1932, describes a society in which human reproduction has been removed from the family and handed to the state, which manufactures people in laboratories and conditions them from birth to occupy predetermined social roles. Sexual promiscuity is not just permitted but actively encouraged as a mechanism of social control — deep emotional bonds between people are discouraged because they create loyalties that compete with loyalty to the state. Citizens are kept docile and compliant through a pleasure drug called soma, which produces a mild, consequence-free euphoria on demand. Religion has been replaced by a shallow secular spirituality centered on consumption and entertainment. And those who think too independently are quietly removed from society before they can cause disruption. If you are paying attention to the world around you, none of that should sound entirely unfamiliar.

George Orwell’s 1984, published in 1949, describes a totalitarian surveillance state in which the government monitors its citizens through screens in every home — screens that watch back. Language itself is being systematically reduced and simplified, because a population with a limited vocabulary has a limited capacity for complex thought and therefore for resistance. History is constantly rewritten to match whatever the current government narrative requires, so that citizens have no stable past to anchor their identity or their grievances. And a permanent state of war — with enemies that shift and are memory-holed when convenient — keeps the population in a state of managed fear and compliance. The term Orwell coined for government-enforced distortion of reality was doublethink: the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accept both as true. We have a different name for it now. We call it the news cycle.

The 2002 Tom Cruise film Minority Report depicted touchscreen technology — swiping and gesturing on glass screens — as futuristic novelty. It was commonplace within a decade. The Simpsons has an almost uncanny record of depicting specific events years before they occur. The Matrix, released in 1999, features a driver’s license for the main character with an expiration date of September 11, 2001.

 The Terminator franchise, begun over forty years ago, dramatizes the dangers of artificial intelligence escaping human control — a concern that has never felt more pressing than it does today.

Why? Conspiracy theorists have proposed various explanations. Arrogance — the elites rubbing our faces in their power. Or a twisted sense of fair warning. But neither of these explanations is satisfying, because the entities behind this pattern have no interest in arrogance for its own sake and certainly no interest in giving us a fair chance.

They announce their plans because they have to. The law of words requires that something be spoken in the spiritual realm before it can manifest in the physical.

In order for their plans to materialize, they must be declared. Spoken. Published. Put into the world in some form. This is not a choice — it is the operation of a spiritual law they are subject to, just as we are.

Daniel’s Vision: The Blueprint Stated in the Spiritual Realm

We see this principle displayed with remarkable clarity in the book of Daniel. In Daniel chapter seven, the prophet receives a vision of four successive world empires represented as beasts — a lion, a bear, a leopard, and a final indescribable creature unlike anything else. These beasts succeed each other, each conquering the last, culminating in a terrifying world ruler Daniel calls the little horn.

“Those great beasts, which are four, are four kings which arise out of the earth. But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever.” — Daniel 7:17-18 (NKJV)

The four beasts correspond to the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek, and Roman empires — a blueprint of world history laid out in the spiritual realm before it occurred in the physical. These are the fallen Elohim stating their plan. The indescribable final beast represents the ultimate world government they have been working toward — led by the entity we call the Antichrist.

But immediately after the enemy states their plan, something equally important happens. Jehovah gives His counter-plan:

“I was watching in the night visions, and behold, One like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom the one which shall not be destroyed.” — Daniel 7:13-14 (NKJV)

The Son of Man — a human being riding the clouds, a title that in the Hebrew context meant someone bearing the authority of Jehovah — receives the nations and destroys the plans of the fallen ones. This is Jesus. And His victory is the counter-declaration to the enemy’s plan.

Both of these things have been declared in the spiritual realm. Both of them will manifest in the physical. The rest of Scripture, from Daniel forward through Revelation, is the unfolding of those declarations. Dr. Michael Heiser calls this the ‘already but not yet’ — things that are fully established in the spiritual realm, whose physical manifestation is still unfolding in time.

This principle matters enormously for how we engage in spiritual warfare, because it applies to us as well.

Your Words Are Your Weapon

We are spirit beings. Yes, we are part physical — but as we established in Section One, Jehovah breathed the ruach, the spirit, into man. We are part physical and part spiritual. And because we are spirit beings, we are subject to the same law of words that governs all spiritual entities.

You are already operating under this law, whether you know it or not. When you pray, you are doing exactly what this law describes: you are speaking words in the spiritual realm with the intention that they manifest in the physical realm. Healing. Restoration. Provision. Peace. Wisdom. Every prayer is an act of spiritual legislation — a declaration made in one realm intended to produce effects in the other.

“For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.” — Mark 11:23-24 (NKJV)

Jesus is not speaking metaphorically here. He is describing the mechanics of how the law of words actually functions. You speak. You believe. It manifests. This is why your words are your most important offensive and defensive weapon in spiritual warfare. Not just in formal prayer — in everything you say.

The Danger of Negative Covenants

Here is where the law of words cuts in a direction most Christians have never considered — and where many of us are unknowingly handing the enemy a legal right to attack us.

Words that you speak and agree with become covenants. A covenant is not just a formal religious ceremony. It is any binding agreement — any declaration you make and walk in. And when you make a covenant through your words, it resonates in the spiritual realm. If those words are negative — if they declare defeat, lack, unworthiness, or failure — you have just given spiritual entities a legal foothold to manifest exactly what you declared.

Think about the areas of your life where things go consistently wrong. Not random bad luck — the persistent patterns. The recurring failures in the same domains. The spiritual attacks that hit the same spots over and over. In many cases, if you trace those patterns back far enough, you will find a covenant behind them — words you began speaking at some point, in agreement with something the enemy whispered, that you have been repeating ever since.

These are the kinds of phrases I mean:

EXAMPLES OF NEGATIVE COVENANTS “Nothing ever works out for me.”  |  “No one respects me.”  |  “I’m not loved.”  |  “I never have enough money.”  |  “Things always go wrong.”  |  “I’m just not a healthy person.”  |  “I’m terrible with relationships.”  |  “This is just how my family is — we’ve always struggled.”  |  “I’ll never be good enough.”

Every one of those statements, spoken repeatedly in genuine agreement, is a covenant. And the spiritual entities assigned to exploit your weaknesses are legally entitled — under the law of words — to manifest exactly what you have declared. It is not bad luck. It is not circumstance. It is covenant.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. — Proverbs 18:21 (NKJV)

The good news is that the same law that allows negative covenants to be made allows them to be broken and replaced. You do not have to continue living under declarations you made in ignorance. You can declare something different. And when you do it consistently, in genuine belief, you are operating the law of words in your favor rather than against yourself.

…if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. — Romans 10:9-10 (NKJV)

Notice the structure: believe in your heart, confess with your mouth. Internal conviction expressed through external declaration. That is the law of words working for you. Salvation itself operates according to this principle.

Exercise: The Covenant Inventory

This exercise is one of the most practically powerful things you will do in this entire course. Do not skip it. Do not skim it. Come back to it if you need to, but complete it honestly.

In the left column below, write down ten negative things you regularly say — statements you have spoken so many times they have become part of your vocabulary. You may not even notice yourself saying them anymore. If you are struggling to identify them, ask someone close to you. Your spouse. Your closest friend. A family member. They hear these things from you all the time and will be able to name them immediately.

In the right column, write the positive replacement — the truth of what you have through Jesus. Don’t write what you wish were true. Write what is already true by covenant with Jehovah through Christ.

IF YOU SAY THIS… “Things never work out for me.” “I never have enough.” “I’m not loved.” “I’m never feeling well.” “I always fail at this.“

REPLACE IT WITH THIS: “All things work together for good for those who love God.” (Rom. 8:28) “My God supplies all my needs through Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4:19) “I have the love of Christ, and nothing can separate me from it.” (Rom. 8:38-39) “By His stripes I am healed.” (Isa. 53:5 / 1 Pet. 2:24) “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Phil. 4:13)

Now complete your personal inventory below:

#	The Negative Covenant I Speak	My Positive Replacement (Through Jesus)
1	I always say: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________	God’s truth: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________
2	I always say: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________	God’s truth: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________
3	I always say: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________	God’s truth: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________
4	I always say: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________	God’s truth: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________
5	I always say: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________	God’s truth: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________
6	I always say: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________	God’s truth: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________
7	I always say: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________	God’s truth: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________
8	I always say: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________	God’s truth: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________
9	I always say: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________	God’s truth: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________
10	I always say: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________	God’s truth: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________

Once you have filled in both columns, read your positive replacements out loud. Do this every morning for the next week. Every time you catch yourself speaking the negative version, stop, and speak the positive replacement instead. You are not just changing your self-talk — you are making new covenants and revoking the old ones. The enemy loses his legal foothold with every declaration you make in truth.

Your words shape your spiritual world. They are your weapon in both offense and defense. This is the key to walking in victory.

In the next Combat Manual, John will go deep on words and communication — the practical neuroscience and spiritual mechanics of how the words we speak wire our brains and shape our behavior. Then I’ll be back in the next War Journal to look more closely at what our enemies actually are — and what they are not — so we can begin engaging them strategically rather than just defensively.

The rules are in our favor. Learn them. Use them.