[Excerpt from Chapter 9, Omega Dynamics by Jamie Walden]
VIOLENCE: synonyms: “forceful, potent, zealous, fierce, emphatic, intense, vehement, fiery, fervent, powerful, and impassioned.”
The Marine Corps has a highly-championed motto: “Violence of Action Wins the Day.” It is well understood that both kinetic (direct and forceful) and non-kinetic (humanitarian, intelligence, cyber, stabilization operations, etc.) Counter Insurgency Operations necessitate an unswerving attunement to “violence” in order to achieve victory. Not only so, but this same disposition towards “violence” is required for the mitigation of profusive casualties. Look again at the definition of “Violent.” Those who possess these qualities in increasing measure will produce honor, courage, devotion to duty, Esprit de Corps, and breathtaking victory on the battlefield. The entire concept of “violence” has become a naughty word within the Christian paradigm. The very idea is fearsome, repulsive, and untenable to the pleasantries of our contemporary “Evanjellyfish Churchianity”. However, a “Man of Violence” takes on a slightly different connotation when we view the word in all of its adjectives and applications. In fact, being a Man of Violence is a Heavenly Ordained requirement for the pursuance of the Kingdom of God! Christ Himself championed the fact that “violence of action wins the day”, and therefore it is no trouble for me to state it again:
And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. Matthew 11:12 NKJV [emphasis added]
It would serve us well to take on such an honorable character attribute in the wisdom, power, and love of the Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. When a Warrior steps into combat it is an assumed prerequisite that he or she be a Man of Violence. To be anything else, even in its slightest variance, is to become a battlefield casualty who can no longer serve effectually in the furtherance of the mission objectives. Worse still, to become a casualty is to take four other faithful warriors out of the fight to tend to you and carry you off the field of battle. Further chaos is triggered because now a total of five guns, five Warriors, are out of the fight. Under these circumstances you inevitably suffer more casualties. This is why militaristic warrior cultures demand that you be a man of violence; there is too much at stake, therefore to be anything else is unacceptable. Any hesitancy, any withholding, any wavering in resolve equates to untenable losses!
We are written into a Cosmic War, an incursion of Rebel Insurgents and our resultant Counter Insurgency. To try to understand the Kingdom of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ under any other pretext would be to our own undoing. God knows this, the prophets knew this, the disciples and early Church knew this, and Christ Jesus most certainly knows this! The People of God are mandated to seek to lay hold of this radical Truth by any means necessary. If we understood what was occurring all around us, what was at stake, and what is contained within His-Story from Genesis to Revelation, we would unrelentingly and unashamedly employ “violence of action” to advance God’s Kingdom this day, and every day thereafter, until Christ Jesus returns, or we breathe our last!
....This is the appropriate posture of the Redeemed of the Lord: men and women of violence (“forceful, potent, zealous, fierce, emphatic, intense, vehement, fiery, fervent, powerful, and impassioned”) in “holy contention thrusting [ourselves]” toward the Kingdom of God! Christ Jesus is not only the Originator of the axiom that “violence of action wins the day” (Matt. 11:12), but He is also the infallible Representation of it!
He knew and understood what it took to not only win the day, but to win every single day from there on through eternity. Jesus Christ, the Lion of Judah, the Warrior King, took the fight to the Enemy in the most powerful display of “violence of action” that Creation has ever seen! He did it in a way no one could have ever foreseen: He did it as a Suffering Servant (Messiah ben Joseph); the quiet, surrendered, entrusted, obedient, sacrificial, willing, and loving Warrior!
Without reservation He launched a violent offense straight into the Enemy’s Command HQ and fiercely ripped the victory from his hands; leaving those Rebels vanquished, defeated, shamed, and never to rise again! He crushed them all, once and for all time, making them dust under His feet. And like a true warrior, He then sat down (at the right hand of God the Father) and delighted over the total annihilation of the Enemy that had been wrought; no surrender, no quarter given; the doctrine of “Total War” without restraint. This is the Savior we serve!
And now, as our Perfect Substitute and our Perfect Example of how to glorify the Father, He commands us to seize the Kingdom of God! Forcibly take hold of it and war with great violence for the glory of God and the salvation of men! This is to the Lord’s honor! This is faith in action! This is taking hold of all that for which Christ took hold of you in furtherance of the Greatest COIN Ops (Counter Insurgency Operations)! He set you free; now set others free. He turned you from an enemy of God into a friend; now go be a part of redeeming others from their contemptible estate. He has given you the power, the violence, to trample on the Lion, Serpent, and ALL the power of the Evil One (Ps 91:13, Luke 10:19); now march out in powerful prayer and sanctified living and destroy the bondage of the Enemy! He has set you free from fear of condemnation; therefore run “boldly and confidently into the Throne Room of Grace”. He alone now holds the keys of Life, therefore have no fear in laying down yours! This is the Good News! Jesus is alive and He is dominion incarnate forever. Period!
Lay hold of these truths, Warriors! “Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did” (1 John 2:6)! That means getting in the muck and the mire of each others’ lives (Ps 40:1-3); that means getting in the fight that rages against the Kingdom of God (Eph 5:11-16, 1 John 1:5-7)! We make much of the Cross when we become Men and Women of Violence in our own lives and on behalf of the degenerating world around us. Our families, church-Bodies, and the deceived-Lost need us to take up this charge! The war waging in our faces mandates us to do so! And the Kingdom of the Most High requires it of us! We are “not of those who shrink back and are destroyed”; we are those who employ Violence of Action and win the day!
