For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
—Ephesians 6:12 (ESV)
Paul wrote those words to believers in Ephesus, a city where seven men who invoked the name of Jesus without knowing Him were overpowered by an evil spirit, and where new converts then burned their books of magic in public (Acts 19:13-19). They needed no convincing that the unseen world was real.
Two thousand years later, with science explaining so much and logic prized above almost everything, the tendency runs the other way. Many people, including Christians, no longer take that reality literally. For them, spiritual warfare has become a figure of speech for ordinary struggles.
I knew little of it myself until my new birth in September 2017. In the months that followed, I faced spiritual attacks more than once, and I learned firsthand that demonic powers fled when I commanded them to leave in the name of Jesus.
Together with the testimonies I had heard from other believers, these experiences taught me something: Demonic powers attack when they sense a threat to the kingdom of darkness, often before that threat has even taken shape. Even the Lord Jesus was tempted immediately after His baptism, before His public ministry began.
For a long time, my opportunities for evangelism had been limited. My corporate job left little time, and even when I found an opening, conversations sometimes stalled. In April 2025, the opportunity finally came. As part of a small team from The Gideons, I had the joy of sharing the gospel with non-Christians in face-to-face discussions, distributing Bibles and showing how Christ was foretold in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New.
One night that month, shortly after Easter, I came home tired from facilitating a Bible discussion. As I fell asleep, I remained fully conscious, and a black dragon serpent appeared, massive, with a fiery, burning head.
The dragon flew around my body, circling as if to attack, but could not touch me. The terror was overwhelming at first. This was no ordinary nightmare; I knew I was facing a real spiritual enemy.
Revelation 12:9 calls the dragon “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan.” He rarely shows himself so openly; deception is his preferred weapon, for he “disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). That night, I believe the Spirit enabled me to see Satan as Revelation portrays him.
This happened around four months before God called me to document what He had revealed throughout my journey. So how does anyone conquer the dragon? And what happened when I faced him?
The account is in Chapter 6 of my book, Spirit and Truth: Third Reformation, available now: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HLLJ39JK
