Overcoming Spiritual Warfare: The Veil

As we go deeper into the Tabernacle, we move from the Holy Place—where we encountered the Golden Menorah, the Table of Showbread, and the Altar of Incense—toward the most sacred space of all: the Holy of Holies. This was where the presence of the Lord dwelt between the two cherubim atop the Ark of the Covenant. But before the priest could enter that holy space—where he would hear God’s voice and see His manifest presence—he first had to pass through a thick, heavy curtain called the Veil.

You shall make a veil of blue and purple and scarlet material and fine twisted linen; it shall be made with cherubim, the work of a skillful workman.…You shall hang up the veil under the clasps, and shall bring in the ark of the testimony there within the veil; and the veil shall serve for you as a partition between the holy place and the holy of holies.

— Exodus 26:31, 33

The Holy of Holies was so sacred that only the high priest could enter it—and only once a year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Inside was the Ark of the Covenant, and within the Ark were the Ten Commandments—written not by Moses but by the very finger of God. The Lord gave the laws of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, on Mount Sinai, and Moses wrote them down. But the Ten
Commandments were different. God Himself inscribed them on tablets of stone. These commandments are so holy that they have formed the moral foundation of Western civilization. In fact, every major religion in the world draws from the moral law found in these ten truths written by God Himself.

Above the Ark were two golden statues of a class of celestial beings, or angels, called cherubim. The Hebrew word cherubim means “near ones.” The cherubim are guardians of God’s holy presence. They are first mentioned in the Bible in Genesis 3:24 after the Lord drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden for their rebellion, after they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.

— Genesis 3:24

The visible presence of the Lord rested between the cherubim, and when the high priest entered the Holy of Holies to make atonement for the sins of Israel, the Lord would speak to him from between the golden cherubim.

To get into that sacred place, the priest had to pass through the thick, weighty Veil. Some say it was so heavy that it took several men to hang it. And here’s something mysterious: There was no slit in the middle. So how did the high priest get through it?

According to some mystical Jewish traditions, the priest was supernaturally transported—or translated—through the Veil into the Holy of Holies. I don’t know whether that, in fact, happened, but the Veil was clearly an obstacle since no one knows for certain how the priest got past it. This is why I believe that for us today, the Veil represents more than a physical barrier. It’s a prophetic shadow of spiritual warfare. It points to the thick, heavy presence of the enemy we must press through if we are to enter the Holy of Holies, the place where we experience the deepest communion with God.

Today, many believers don’t want to talk about spiritual warfare. They love the idea of God’s blessings, but they don’t want to deal with the devil. Some even think Satan and demons are only a problem for unbelievers. But that kind of thinking is like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand—and it’s a dangerous deception.

The devil is real. Demons are real. And they absolutely target believers. If we’re going to lay hold of God, we have to learn how to war in the spirit. We have to learn how to overcome. Seven times in Revelation, chapters 2 and 3, Yeshua says, “To him who overcomes.” In Revelation 3:21, He declares, “He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.” We cannot walk in victory without learning how to defeat the enemy.

Building Strength Through Warfare

We even see this principle operating through the life of Yeshua. Before Jesus launched His public ministry, He was baptized in the Jordan River, and the moment was powerful. The heavens opened, the Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form like a dove, and He heard the Father say, “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased” (Luke 3:22). But immediately after that, Yeshua was “led around by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil” (Luke 4:1–2).

Why would the Spirit of Elohim, the Spirit of God, orchestrate that? Why would He lead Yeshua into the
wilderness to battle against Satan? It’s because the Lord was preparing Him. God wanted to strengthen His Son through warfare so He would be able to exercise authority over darkness and be the Healer and Redeemer the Father had ordained Him to be.

After Jesus overcame the devil, Scripture says He returned from the wilderness “in the power of the Spirit”
(Luke 4:14). He began to teach, and people marveled at His authority. But before that power was demonstrated publicly, Jesus first had to fight—and win—privately.

You see, even though He was the Son of God, Yeshua had to grow and learn. The Bible says He “kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52). He wasn’t born into this world with a microchip in His head that downloaded everything He needed to know. God taught Him. And one of the ways the Father equipped Him for ministry was by having Him face the devil in spiritual warfare.

The Lord strengthened Yeshua in the Spirit as He learned how to overcome the enemy, and He’s going to do the same for us. Father God strengthens our spiritual muscles by putting us in a position to war against the powers of darkness that seek to keep us from entering God’s presence.

Beloved, we can go into the Holy Place in the spirit realm and encounter God. We can be led by His Spirit,
represented by the Golden Menorah. We can know His presence is always with us, symbolized by the Table of Showbread. And we can commune with Him in constant prayer, as reflected at the Altar of Incense. But to get into the Holy of Holies—where we experience the closest, most intense fellowship with God—we must first overcome the evil one, just as Yeshua did. There is no other way. That’s what the Bible says: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12).

Order Rabbi Kirt Schneider’s New Book, “The Mystery of the Tabernacle” on Amazon.com!

Recognize the Tactics of the Enemy

Our fight is not against a physical enemy. It’s in the unseen realm. And the battleground where this war is often fought is in our thoughts.

Let me give you an example. In 1 Chronicles 21, the Bible says Satan moved David to take a census of Israel. David didn’t know Satan was influencing him. He probably thought it was his own idea. Many scholars believe that David’s decision to take a census was rooted in pride or a desire to trust in numbers and military power rather than the Lord. As a result of taking the census, David was disciplined by the Lord, and seventy thousand men of Israel died.

Now get this: David was deceived by a single thought, and that’s still how the enemy works. He puts an idea in your mind, and if you don’t recognize it and reject it, you’ll potentially act on it. That’s why we have to be vigilant.

For so many years, even as a Christian, I lived spiritually passive. I just accepted whatever thought entered my head. I didn’t know I had the power to fight it. I would cry out to God for help and ask Him for mercy, but I didn’t realize I had the power to reject the thought and focus on something else.

I want to encourage you to wake up! Ask the Holy Spirit to make you aware of what you’re thinking about and reject the thoughts that are from your flesh or the enemy. As soon as you recognize a thought isn’t from the Lord, come against it and say, “I reject you, Satan, in Jesus’ name. Get out of my head!”

We see Jesus Himself doing this in Matthew 16:21–23:

From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.”

There is something powerful in opening your mouth and talking back to the devil. When Yeshua was being tempted in the wilderness, every time Satan tried to bring Him into bondage, He countered Satan’s strategy by speaking the Word of God (Matt. 4:3–11; Luke 4:3–13). In Jesus’ day, people didn’t carry around Bibles like we do now. Yeshua had the Scriptures memorized. You could say He had the Word hidden in His heart (Ps. 119:11). But when the devil came against Him, Yeshua didn’t keep the Word in His
heart. He didn’t just think about Scripture—He spoke it. Every time Satan came at Him, Jesus responded with “It is written” and quoted the Word of God (Matt. 4; Luke 4). And eventually the devil fled.

This is a principle throughout the Word of God. Romans 10:9 tells us that salvation happens when we believe in our heart and confess with our mouth. And Jesus said in Mark 11:23, “Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him.” We believe, and we speak. That’s how we release the power of God.

If we don’t get engaged in spiritual warfare and learn how to combat the lies of the enemy that enter our
thoughts—if we don’t allow ourselves to be trained by the Spirit of God to do spiritual warfare—we’ll never penetrate the Veil and enter the Holy of Holies. Without penetrating through the powers of darkness into God’s light, we will not be able to experience the fullness of the love, power, and beauty of God the way the Father wants us to.

Even as the Israelites had to drive out the Hittites, Amorites, Jebusites, Canaanites and other enemies before they could enter the Promised Land, so you and I need to take authority over the powers of darkness if we’re going to enter the abundant land of Messiah’s Spirit. If we want to gain entrance into the Holy of Holies, we must learn to take authority over Satan, believe and confess God’s Word, and pray that He strengthens us with divine might in our inner man so we can rise up and drive out the powers of
evil, unbelief, and darkness.

The Tabernacle is a pattern for intimacy with God that teaches us how we can know Him. And if we want to know Him in the fullest sense, we have to pierce the Veil! We can’t stick our heads in the ground and pretend the devil is not real. Satan is real, and we need to understand how he’s attacking us. We need to realize that the thoughts we think may not be coming from our subconscious mind or from other people. They may actually be from the enemy.

So we need to be alert. We need to discern when the devil is planting his lies in our minds and cast down every vain thought that exalts itself above the knowledge of God (2 Cor. 10:5). We need to overcome fleshly addictions, which a lot of times are being empowered by Satan. And we need to learn how to keep from being distracted from seeking the Lord, which, again, is often the enemy at work.

When we learn how to defeat the devil, we’re going to encounter God’s Spirit in a deeper way, even as the high priest passed through the Veil and experienced God’s manifest presence in the Holy of Holies.

The Veil Has Been Torn

Under the old covenant, only the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies—and only once a year on the Day of Atonement, when he would pour the blood of the sacrifice on the altar for the forgiveness of the sins of the children of Israel. But when Yeshua died on the cross and said, “It is finished,” everything changed.

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split.

— Matthew 27:50–51

God supernaturally ripped the Veil that isolated the Holy of Holies. And because that Veil has been torn, it’s no longer just the high priest who can enter God’s presence. Now, through the blood of Yeshua, everyone who has a relationship with Him has access by God’s Spirit into His very presence—not once a year but anytime. Hallelujah!

Beloved, the high priest didn’t casually stroll into the Holy of Holies. He had to get through the thick, heavy Veil—and so do we. Although the curtain may be torn, spiritual warfare remains real. We overcome not by our strength but by the blood of the Lamb, by the Word of our testimony and by refusing to give the devil a foothold (Rev. 12:11; Eph. 4:27). The battle has already been won. God has given us the victory (1 Cor. 15:57). So let’s press through—and enter in.

Rabbi Schneider hosts the impactful television program –Discovering The Jewish Jesus, which is available in more than one hundred million homes in the United States and nearly two hundred nations worldwide. In 2021 he began broadcasting on radio and now airs across America. Rabbi Schneider imparts revelation of Jesus’ Jewish heritage and His fulfillment of Messianic prophecy.  Questions of how the Old and New Testaments tie together, and how Yeshua completes the unfolding plan of The Almighty Yahweh, are answered with exceptional clarity. His new book, The Mystery of the Tabernacle, is available on Amazon.com.