There's a Crack in Your Armor Perry Stone

Each of Alexander’s main emphases has a spiritual parallel for the church and the individual believer. A LEXANDER’S ARMY WAS SMALL BUT MOTIVATED . The Media-Persian Empire was ruling in 127 provinces at the peak of its domination (Esther 1:1). When Alexander and his soldiers set out to war against the Persians, Alexander took with him forty-thousand men and took on an army of one million. His men were so motivated that they swam across a cold river to attack the Persian army. This Grecian general may have lost five hundred troops, but the Persians lost thousands. In Scripture Gideon, an Old Testament judge, began with thirty five thousand troops and was forced to reduce the numbers to three hundred when preparing to attack a large Midianite army. God, however, took the three hundred and through a supernatural act defeated a large army with a small group of highly motivated men (Judges 7–8). True motivation is not altered by negative circumstances, but it sees the challenge as an opportunity. The spiritual parallel Christ took twelve common men with common jobs and little or no formal education, turning them into a new nation called the church and a living organism called the body of Christ (Luke 9:1; 1 Pet. 2:9). In addition to these twelve men Christ appointed seventy to join in teams of two (thirty-five teams) and minister throughout Israel (Luke 10:1). On the Day of Pentecost three thousand new believers were introduced to the new covenant of Christ (Acts 2:41), and days later another five