In the world of warfare, one essential key that great and tactical warriors ignite is the acquisition of adequate and accurate knowledge of their enemies till they can guess the next moves of the enemy. Having accurate intelligence about the enemy is a highly priced achievement. It is premium.
Some enemies are hardly conquerable because they are impregnable. They are invincible no matter what you do. The reason is that their opponents either do not know enough about them or they do not know the all-important thing they should know.
Such enemies are so formidable that they play their game close to their chest and their close lieutenants only have access to specific information at a time. They are wired and encrypted beyond the ordinary. It is a tactical and calculated strategy.
In the tactics of warfare, number one rule is to know the enemy you are fighting. Gathering intelligence about the enemy must be a preoccupation. This is one thing that the Chinese have done well against America and the Israeli have done well against their Arab neighbours. Whatever means you devise, do one thing: Know the enemy you want to fight, and know that enemy well enough, no matter what it takes.
Depending on the kind of battle, you may choose the path you want to toe or the strategy you want to use. You may want to befriend the enemy, you may need to find a way to get close to the enemy, read about the enemy, study the enemy, follow the enemy closely, partner with the enemy, and even marry the enemy. The whole idea is just to know the enemy enough.
The scripture is replete with this. When Paul wrote to Timothy to study to show himself approved a servant of God, what was he telling Timothy? Unless Timothy knew God well enough, he could not walk with God. And walking with God requires that Timothy pleases God and you cannot please a God that you do not know. Ironically, knowing God enough grants you access to knowing the enemy. When you know God enough, the enemy and his tactics are laid bare to you.
In the Garden of Eden, God told Adam and Eve what to eat and what not to eat. By doing this, God was pointing out the potential destruction that they were dwelling with. The enemy is often closer than we know. In the same place where life abides death lurks in wait. The wise know this and are better instructed; the foolish are ignorant of this and are adversely ensnared and imperilled.
In our battle for survival and our search for success the greatest enemy is within us. It is in our members. We, being the garden of God, bring forth fruit unto God. When God gave this warning to Adam/Eve: "But of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," what was God actually saying?
Of the tree in question you can do good if you play according to the law of God, but of the same tree, you can eat in a perverted way. As God's garden, when you eat rightly from this tree, you eat as husband and wife, but when you eat wrongly, you commit fornication or adultery, and sin against your own body, the temple of God. Imagine how we can be enemies to ourselves because we break the laws that dwell in our members.
Do you realize the magnitude of the sin against your body? To win against the enemy that is in you means to strive diligently to preserve your life spiritually and physically. You have to mortify and discipline yourself. You have to be ascetic by staying true to one partner. By this, you preserve your life.
If you are able to stay faithful to one partner, you win medically by staying off sexually transmitted diseases. By staying true, you stay spiritually healthy and undefiled. Then, you lock poverty out of your door. Whichever angle you look at it from, it is a battle you have to fight against yourself. Winning this battle against your flesh preserves you temporally and otherwise.
The Maker works in mysterious ways that are past finding. His ways are not discernable by the carnal and sensual mind. To overcome the enemy in the days of Moses, God played a quaint card to deliver the Jews, the children of Israel from the bondage of the Egyptians, by having Moses raised by the very enemy that sought his life. That same enemy raised the enemy that he sought to destroy. God in Moses stayed with His enemy, the Egyptian Pharaoh.
Forty years after Moses fled Egypt, at the age of eight years old, God met with Moses and led him back to Egypt, the same enemy that raised him. Moses knew Egyptian royalty. He knew the secrets of the enemy because he was raised in the enclave of the enemy. What a card!
In the days of Samson, the enemy was Delilah, the wife of Samson. God used the wife of Samson to fight His own battle. God used Samson as an occasion against the Philistines. Are you aware that it is written that through the marriage of Samson to Delilah, God secured a rare opportunity to destroy the Philistines, His enemies?
Judges 14:4 KJV
But his father and his mother knew not that it was of the Lord, that he sought an occasion against the Philistines: for at that time the Philistines had dominion over Israel?
God in Samson had to marry His own enemy. He became so close to the enemy. The Philistines that Samson killed in his death were more than he killed while he was alive.
You may have heard the story of a female police officer who had to get married to an armed robber or criminal and even had a child or children by him all because she had to bring him down. What a way to bring down the enemy! Everyone has their price.
Often I wonder what could be the source of the inspiration behind the words, "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." What was Sun Zhu, the writer of the Art of War thinking by this coinage? There is weirdness to the art and game of survival in life. It is the same rare philosophy that states that you give food to your enemy while he hungers, clothe him when he is naked, pray for him when he unjustly uses and persecutes you, and bless him when he curses you.
On a further personal level, it does make the enemy feel comfortable and not think or know that he or she is an enemy. The enemy feels so comfortable in your friendship but oblivious to him or her, he or she is being preserved for a certain destruction. David did the same with Joab when he gave the instruction to Solomon to not let Joab's head go to the grave in old age. Some things you read from the Holy Grail. You shudder.
By keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, you live by a rare injunction of wisdom. You live a higher life that is only accessible to those who live above the whims of the ephemeral. It is difficult to tell your friends and enemies apart. They are alike to you, yet, there is a significant difference. Life does get harder when we try to make it easy by circumventing life's principles and injunctions.
