With about 620,000 fatalities, the American Civil War caused more American deaths than any other war. Thousands fell on battlefields under Union or Confederate rifle fire. The death toll eventually rose to about 2% of the American population, which would correspond to some six million out of America’s population today.

Only a fraction of those deaths resulted directly from battle wounds inflicted by the enemy, though. In fact, about two-thirds of Civil War deaths were attributed not to wounds but to infection and disease. You might not think of infection as a major war-time killer, but in the 1860s doctors and scientists were just beginning to understand the role microorganisms play in disease. It was only that very same decade that Louis Pasteur was conducting his ground-breaking microbiology experiments, and the germ theory of disease had not yet been developed.

So looking back from the vantage of modern science, we can see that the Union and Confederate forces were both fighting an invisible enemy: germs.  Unbeknownst to the human combatants, billions of microorganisms proliferated inside their bodies and spread unchecked to other humans. The pathogens caused life-threatening diseases like pneumonia, typhoid fever, dysentery, and malaria. Some of these diseases could have been reduced by practicing basic hygiene, but at that time people simply realize the nature of their invisible enemy or how to fight it.

As Christians, we too are fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, the devil, is actively seeking to destroy us (1 Peter 5:8), but we never see him in physical form. Paul described our spiritual foe as “the rulers,… the powers,… the world forces of this darkness,… the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12, NASB). Thankfully, the apostle also gave some guidance on how we should engage in spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6:10–17). God provides a set of armor perfectly designed to protect us in mortal spiritual combat. We are invulnerable to the attacks of the evil one when we have taken up truth, righteousness (v. 14), the gospel (v. 15), faith (v. 16), salvation, and God’s word (v. 17).

Today, most of us can hardly imagine being exposed to a deadly infection without taking deliberate steps to protect ourselves. How much more ought we take care to don our God-given armor to protect us from the devil’s deadly attacks against our souls? Let’s be always mindful of the spiritual war that rages around us, and let’s take full advantage of God’s armor so we “will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm” (Ephesians 6:13).

Peter Yukich