Reading: Video Transcript: Knowing Your Enemy, Part 4

📖 Today’s Focus: Two Names of the Enemy

We’ve been examining the names of the enemy as a window into his strategies. Each name in Scripture reveals something about how Satan works.

Today, we’re going to explore two names in this session. As we do, I want you to notice how these aspects of the enemy’s work often show up not just around us—but sometimes within our own lives as well.

Let’s begin.

🕵️‍♂️ Name One: The Accuser of the Brothers and Sisters

One name applied to the enemy is:

The accuser of the brothers and sisters.

This appears in Revelation 12:10:

“Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
‘Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.’”

This title—“accuser”—is deeply connected to the enemy’s identity.

We first see this role clearly in Job chapter 1, which we’ve referred to in an earlier session. In that passage, Job is described as a righteous man on the earth.

One day, Satan appears before God in the heavenly assembly, and God asks him:

“Where have you been?”

Satan answers:

“Wandering to and fro throughout the earth.”

Then God says:

“Have you seen my servant Job?”

And Satan responds with a slanderous accusation. Remember—he’s the devil, and the word means “slanderer.” He says, in essence:

“Well of course Job follows you—you’ve protected him. Take away his protection and he’ll curse you to your face.”

So that’s where we first see him in Scripture in the role of accuser—accusing Job before God.

But here’s the thing: while the enemy sometimes accuses us before God, more often, he accuses us to ourselves.

📷 A Personal Story: My Mother and the Accuser

Now, let me share a picture that’s very meaningful to me. The woman on the right side of this picture is my mother. She’s been with the Lord for many years now, but I found this photo recently, and it’s important.

Let me tell you a few things about her, and how she experienced the accuser in her life.

The woman next to her in the picture was named Noha. Noha was a Palestinian Arab whose family had owned land in Jerusalem. But when Israel took over in the 1940s, her family was displaced. Her husband carried a deep anger and resentment. Eventually, they immigrated to the United States and moved into a house across the street from mine.

At that time, I was about 18 years old, still living at home.

My mother had a gift of evangelism. She befriended people, shared the Gospel, and led many to Christ. She was amazing. Noha was one of those people.

What you’re seeing in the photo is a graduation picture. My mother had mentored Noha, encouraged her to go to school, and she eventually earned a degree and went on to get meaningful work. She later separated from her angry husband, and one of her children is sitting in the chair in the photo.

This story highlights the character of my mother—she had eight children who lived, and at least two miscarriages. I was seventh out of eight.

 Living in California at the time, I flew in for a series of board meetings that lasted several days, and I stayed with my mom. One morning, after the meetings were finished, I slept in a bit. As I got up, I heard my mother talking. At first, I thought, “Who is she talking to?” I wasn’t fully dressed, so I went back into the bedroom where I was staying, got some clothes on, and came out—only to realize that my mother wasn’t talking to anyone in the house. She was praying.

She was going about her morning, dusting the furniture, and all the while talking with God—praying for each of her children, her 30-some grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren. She named each one individually in prayer.

That was the kind of woman she was.

When she passed away, we—her eight children—reflected together and said: Her greatest gift was prayer.