God made a covenant of peace with the people through the Blood of Jesus Christ and caused the evil beasts to cease from the Promised Land. The Promised Land under the New Covenant is not a physical land or a physical kingdom. It is a spiritual life intertwined with the life of Christ and with the lives of the other members of His Body, the Church. It is a spiritual place where we find the Tabernacle of God in our midst. On the Cross of Calvary, the works of Satan were destroyed completely so that he could no longer put the people of God in bondage to sin and sicknesses. The evil beasts symbolical of the satanic powers i.e. the Antichrist and the False Prophet were stripped of their powers on the Cross itself so that the people of God could live a life of victory in the Promised Land safely, even in the wilderness. There is indeed a wilderness in the Promised Land. Often in our spiritual life, we are driven to a wilderness where we suffer loneliness or fear or insecurity. However, in this wilderness, the Devil cannot overcome us because Christ our behalf not only overcame the evil one in the wilderness after his 40 days fast on our behalf but also finally triumphed over him and stripped him of all his power through the blood of the Cross. Whenever we face the wilderness experience in our life, we should not get disheartened but remember that the Devil had lost all his power over us when Christ died for our sin and rose from the dead.

Since many of us are ignorant of this truth, we tend to give a place to the Devil and thus allow him to tempt and oppress us in the wilderness. If you know the truth, the truth will deliver you.

We can dwell safely in the wilderness and also can sleep in the woods. Normally, nobody would like to stay in a jungle surrounded by wild beasts. Since the Devil has been stripped of his power in the Promised Land, we can sleep in the spiritual jungle of the Land. All of us do sleep in our spiritual life at one time or the other. But the Devil has absolutely no power over us. He cannot annihilate us spiritually during our spiritual slumber in the comforts of our life.

At times, we rest from our labors in the Vineyards of God. A weary minister may go on a short vacation along with his family. A minister may not be spending much time in his prayer at times due to his bodily fatigue or due to some other reasons. But the grace of God surrounds him. The powerless Devil cannot attack him during this period unless he gives a place to the former.

The preachers often quote the instance of Peters slumber in the garden of Gethsemane as the reason for his denying Jesus. According to them, if Peter had prayed for an hour, he would not have fallen into the temptation. Peter denied Christ not because he could not pray but because the prophecy of Jesus at the summer time had to be fulfilled. Jesus had prophesied that Peter would deny Him thrice that night before the rooster crew much before they entered the garden of Gethsemane.

By imploring Peter to pray for at least one hour so that he should not enter into temptation, Jesus revealed to Peter the secret of prayer that in order to overcome temptation, he needed the spiritual strength from God so that he might not enter into such temptation in his life. Jesus did not mean the temptation of Peter to deny Him at that particular time but the temptation Peter would face in his entire life towards the lust of the flesh and the lust of the world, especially after the ascension of his Master into the heaven. Prayer prepares us in our spiritual life so that we may not enter into temptation at all. These days, we do not pray before entering into temptation but pray only after entering into temptation.

No doubt, one should spend more time in prayer for his spiritual growth and for his effective ministry. But at the same time, let us bear in mind that even we cannot pray for some reason, the Devil has no power to attack or oppress us because the Blood of Jesus around us had stripped the Devil of all his power. In other words, the covenant of peace through the Blood of Jesus had destroyed his power.

The Antichrist and the False Prophet have no power or authority over us in the Promised Land. Dearly beloved in Christ Jesus, we should enter this Promised Land by faith. The thousands of the Jews who were delivered from the bondages of Egypt could not enter the Promised Land under the Old Covenant, except the two people i.e. Joshua and Caleb, because of their unbelief. Even Moses who had seen the Promised Land from afar could not enter it.

- Job Anbalagan