Of the four enemies, the state has been—historically, empirically, and statistically—the most consistently lethal. Nothing in history has been more deadly to human beings than the state. Only those cleaving to some antiquated, romantic, yet fictitious notion that state actors primarily serve the public interest could ever think otherwise. During my years living among over 3,000 inmates in Valparaiso Penitentiary, 2,700 in Rancagua Penitentiary, and 120 in the Casablanca jailhouse, the evidence overwhelmingly confirmed what I had studied theoretically in graduate school: the state is man’s chief enemy in all ages.

The Bible portrays the state as a divinely ordained satanic institution (Romans 13:1-2; Luke 4:6-7; Ezekiel 28:1-19). This is not a contradiction; it is a paradox rooted in God’s sovereignty over evil (Isaiah 45:7). When Satan tempted Christ in the wilderness, he declared that the kingdoms of the world were his, operating by his authority and for his purposes, and that he could transfer ownership rights in them to whomever he wished: “And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it” (Luke 4:6). Who could honestly believe that the highly intelligent devil would make the silly mistake of lying to the known-to-be omniscient Lord of glory? Jesus did not dispute Satan’s claim. He simply refused the offer.

Being ordained by God does not make something good. God ordains evil things as well as good things (Isaiah 45:7), and even cruel things work for our good (Romans 8:28). The words “good” and “evil” in Romans 13:3-4 and 1 Peter 2:14 must be understood through the interpretive lens of Isaiah 5:20: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness.” The apostles Peter and Paul were not naïve fools. They knew that the Roman state punished Christians (the genuinely good) and rewarded Nero’s sycophants (the genuinely evil). Those passages describe Satan’s sub-henchmen within the state applying their own meanings to good and evil—which is precisely what happens in every modern democratic society where proactive public policies based on gender ideology, radical feminism, Marxism, and anti-Christian Worldviews are codified into “law.”

The state’s judicial arm has been the primary instrument of Christian persecution throughout history. Jesus Christ Himself was falsely accused, tried before Pontius Pilate and Herod, tortured, and executed by the state at the instigation of the religious establishment (John 18:29-19:18; Luke 23:1-24). The Apostle Paul spent the last quarter of the book of Acts—from chapter 21 through chapter 28—navigating a labyrinth of religious and secular courts, none of which ruled in his favor or gave him justice. Peter and John were imprisoned and beaten (Acts 5:17-30). The church at Smyrna was told plainly: “the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried” (Revelation 2:10). Note that Satan uses the state’s judicial power to imprison Christians. The mechanism is consistent across the centuries.

Joseph spent years in Potiphar’s prison on a fabricated charge. Daniel was thrown into a den of lions for refusing to stop praying. His contemporary, Jeremiah, was cast into a cistern for preaching the truth. Mordecai was marked for execution by a state official’s personal vendetta. Countless Christians have suffered at the hand of the state ever since. The pattern is unmistakable: the state, wielding its judicial and punitive authority, has been the most common and most devastating source of unjust suffering for the people of God.

The Christian’s Right and Duty of Self-Defense

It is at this juncture that I must address a doctrine which many modern Christians—conditioned by decades of sentimental pacifism masquerading as piety—find deeply uncomfortable. Christ commanded His followers to acquire arms for personal defense against aggressors.

Consider Luke 22:35-38 with the care it deserves. Jesus said to His disciples:

When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing? And they said, nothing. Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, and he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end. And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, it is enough.

The significance of this passage cannot be overstated. Jesus explicitly transitions His disciples from the temporary provision of the limited commission (Luke 9:1-6; 10:1-12), during which they relied entirely on the hospitality of others, to the permanent conditions of post-resurrection ministry, in which they would need to provide for their own sustenance and safety. The instruction is unambiguous: if you do not have a sword—the most lethal handheld weapon of the era, the first-century equivalent of a firearm—sell your garment and buy one. Not “consider buying one.” Not “pray about whether to buy one.” Sell your garment—an essential possession—and acquire the means of self-defense. To take 1 John 2:3-4 seriously, the disregard of Christ’s clear command should weigh heavily on the conscience of any capable Christian man who refuses without good reason to acquire the means of self-defense, because disobedience is sinful.

Peter and at least one other disciple took the command literally and seriously, and Jesus knew they were carrying weapons but did not rebuke them (Luke 22:49). John the Baptist, when soldiers came asking what they should do to bear fruit worthy of repentance, did not tell them to lay down their arms. He told them: “Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages” (Luke 3:14). Neither was Moses chided by God for killing an Egyptian when defending a fellow Hebrew (Acts 7:24-28).

The oft-cited “turn the other cheek” passage (Matthew 5:38-42) is set in the context of civil law courts and local Jewish customs of publicly insulting an adversary—not warfare or situations involving criminals entering one’s home to rob, kill, or rape. “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also” (v. 39) refers to a public insult for some tort, not an aggressive blow designed to inflict physical injury or death. We do love our enemies and pray for their salvation, but we also may defend ourselves against aggression with force when scoundrels come to harm us.

The tragic case of Roberto González Acevedo illustrates the fatal consequences of failing to exercise this God-given right. González, aged fifty-five, was the general manager of Sintec, a nationwide Chilean public lighting and electrical construction company. He was a gun club member who kept his personal defense pistol in his glove box. In 2023, he was hemmed in by criminals on the downtown Santiago tollway interchange. He did not use his weapon. He perished as a result. One cannot help but wonder whether the pitiable man had heard what happened to me in 2020—convicted and sentenced for defending myself against a mob—and whether that knowledge provoked his fateful decision to remain passive. If so, my unjust conviction may have contributed to his death, a possibility that fills me with righteous indignation against the state apparatus that created such perverse incentives. In terms of pain and suffering, it is probably worse to be dead than to rot in prison for years for defending oneself, even when doing so violates an unjust public policy.

Accordingly, the men of Nehemiah’s day—who built the wall of Jerusalem with a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other (Nehemiah 4:17-18)—provide the model for Christian living in a hostile world. Like the Jews in Esther’s time who defended themselves against those who sought to destroy them (Esther 8:11, 17; 9:1), like the Apostles whom Christ sent out to preach while being armed for self-defense (Luke 22:35-38), we are to hold the tools of God’s work in one hand and the instruments of adequate self-defense in the other. Modern pacifism is a sad, disobedient doctrine that chafes against “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). Yet, sadly, disobedience to Christ’s command is commonplace among Chilean Evangelicals and, presumably, in other countries as well.

Enemy Number Four: False Religion

The fourth member of the Christian’s mortal enemies is false religion—the “beast from the land” in Revelation’s allegory (Revelation 13:11-18), which looks like a lamb (imitating Christ) but speaks as a dragon (serving Satan). False religion leads people to worship or trust in the state (the first beast), and it serves as the ideological engine that legitimizes the persecution of true believers. The dragon, the beast from the sea, and the beast from the land constitute the unholy trinity that has opposed the church since its inception.

False religion manifests in many forms: the prosperity theology that promises health and wealth to the faithful (and thereby destroys the faith of those who suffer); the syncretism that blends Christian vocabulary with pagan practices; the folk Roman Catholicism of Latin America that venerates saints, bows before statues, and substitutes ritual for regeneration; the Pentecostal excess that confuses emotional experience with the work of the Holy Spirit, that claims the Apostle Paul erred in what he wrote at points, and that substitutes signs and wonders for the careful exposition of Scripture.

I witnessed the devastating effects of false religion firsthand within the prison. Module 103 of the Valparaiso Penitentiary was designated the “Evangelical” cell block, housing approximately seventy professing Pentecostals. One might have expected this to be a bastion of Christian witness in an otherwise godless environment. The reality was precisely the opposite. Of those seventy men, only about ten were not actively involved in running pedophile and other blackmail scams that funded their drug purchases. Some apparently distributed drugs, too. These men attended worship services, sang hymns, carried Bibles, and used Christian vocabulary—all while operating illicit enterprises that exploited the most vulnerable victims imaginable. Nearly all of them were Arminian Pentecostals, poorly taught, theologically confused, and morally indistinguishable from the general population inmates they claimed to be separate from.

This is what false religion produces. It provides the outward trappings of godliness without the inward reality of regeneration. It competes with sound doctrine for the souls of desperate men—men who are spiritually hungry and will accept almost any message that offers them hope, however false that hope may be. The prosperity gospel, in particular, is spiritually lethal in the prison environment, because it teaches men that faithfulness guarantees material blessing. When that blessing does not materialize—as it manifestly does not for most incarcerated persons—the inevitable conclusion is either that God has abandoned them or that their faith is insufficient. Either conclusion drives them away from the true God rather than toward Him. The response from prison Pentecostalism is never to shun those men but rather to create a carnal class of Christians and promote easy believism to ensure the ranks of Christians remain full. Internally, they still call the carnal men hermanos (brothers or brethren) while the term varón (man [of God]) is reserved for men who practice the faith. They also err in saying that the church is full of wheat and tares, meaning that having some gentiles, hermanos, and varones in the assembly is neither unexpected nor really a problem. These Pentecostals are self-deceived hypocrites and false teachers.

False religion also operates in concert with the state, as it has throughout history. The Spanish Inquisition, the persecution of Anabaptists and Baptists in Europe and Puritan New England, the centuries-long slaughter of the Waldenses by Catholic-backed states, the suppression of Protestant worship under Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox monarchies—all of these represent the collaboration between the second and fourth enemies against the people of God. In our own era, the alliance takes subtler forms: liberal mainline denominations endorsing progressive legislation that restricts religious liberty, Pentecostal and charismatic movements providing theological cover for authoritarian governments in Latin America and Africa, and the pervasive influence of therapeutic spirituality that reduces Christianity to a self-help program compatible with any political agenda, run by tithe-hungry ministers.