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    In Enemy Territory: A Survival Manual for Believers
    In Enemy Territory: A Survival Manual for Believers
    In Enemy Territory: A Survival Manual for Believers
    Ebook124 pages2 hours

    In Enemy Territory: A Survival Manual for Believers

    By Jam Otboc

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    About this ebook

    OCONUS is a military term for deployment Outside the Continental United States. Most often this means in a region that one would call enemy territory. In such a place attack can be expected from any source at any time and soldiers are trained to anticipate such an event and prepare for it. As Christians, we find ourselves deployed by the Holy Spirit in a territory that we are very familiar with but to which we no longer belong. What was our natural environment now seems to be hostile towards us. Friends and even close relatives now seem to avoid us and we are under constant attack both behind our backs and to our faces. Before we were saved the world may have seemed to be a pleasant place, but something changes when we receive the Lord. What has changed? Certainly the world around us hasnt changed. It must have something to do with our salvation. Jesus made it clear to those who chose to follow Him that they should expect such a change. He made it clear that we can only love the world or Him, not both. We might not have thought about loving the world, but there was a certain allegiance to all the things we are familiar with. When we are shipped overseas for a military operation, we really miss the kind of life we enjoyed here. We are attached to our home and we are glad that the deployment to hostile territory is just temporary. But we believers have another home promised to us by the same Lord we trusted in for our salvation. So our deployment here in enemy territory is also temporary and we know in advance how it all ends!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWestBow Press
    Release dateDec 6, 2010
    ISBN9781449707040
    In Enemy Territory: A Survival Manual for Believers
    Author

    Jam Otboc

    As the son of a gold miner growing up in the Northwest, I was saved in a mining accident at age nineteen. The next ten years were spent attending college to obtain an MS in physics. Following this, my occupation in industry involved computer programming, system engineering and writing.

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      Book preview

      In Enemy Territory - Jam Otboc

      Copyright © 2010 Jam Otboc

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

      WestBow Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

      WestBow Press

      A Division of Thomas Nelson

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.westbowpress.com

      1-(866) 928-1240

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Cover Photo Portrait: ©David Leeson/The Dallas Morning News

      Cover Photo Background: © 2009 Levon Sevunts

      ISBN: 978-1-4497-0703-3 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4497-0705-7 (dj)

      ISBN: 978-1-4497-0704-0 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2010938421

      Printed in the United States of America

      WestBow Press rev. date: 11/23/2010

      Dedication:

      This book is dedicated to the One who made it possible: the Lord Jesus. I also dedicate it to my dear wife Betty who envisioned the concept and chose the title. I am happy to give my appreciation to all the brave and dedicated men and women in uniform who serve their country in enemy territory.

      Contents

      1  Introduction

      2  Joe (Part 1)

      2.1  April 17 2007 – 2 miles outside Ababa

      2.2  April 18 2007 – 2 miles outside Ababa

      2.3  April 19 2007 – 2 miles outside Ababa

      3  The Commander

      3.1  Jesus – The Warrior King

      3.2  Jesus – Perfected Through Sufferings

      3.3  Jesus - The Armorer

      3.4  Jesus - The Provider

      3.5  Headquarters

      3.6  Melchizedek

      4  The Connection

      4.1  Here and Now

      4.2  Jesus – The Narrow Gate

      4.3  Jesus – The Constricted Way

      4.4  Jesus – The Object of Faith

      4.5  Jesus – Builder of the Church

      5  The Conflict

      5.1  The Original Rebellion

      5.2  Kingdoms of This World

      5.3  God’s Conquest Plan

      5.4  The Invasion

      5.5  Laodicea

      5.6  Eyes Opened

      5.7  The Lawless Beast

      5.8  The Gathering

      6  Joe (Part 2)

      6.1  April 20 2007 – Prisoner In Ababa

      6.2  April 21 2007 – Prisoner In Ababa

      7  Conclusion

      1  Introduction

      OCONUS is a military term for deployment Outside the Continental United States. Most often this means in a region that one would call ‘enemy territory’. In such a place attack can be expected from any source at any time and it is a big job trying to anticipate such an event and prepare for it.

      As Christians, we find ourselves deployed by the Holy Spirit in a territory that we are very familiar with but to which we no longer belong. What was our ‘natural’ environment now seems to be hostile towards us. Friends and even close relatives that once thought we were ok, now seem to avoid us and we are under constant attack both behind our backs and to our faces. Before we were saved the world may have seemed to be a pleasant place, but something changes when we receive the Lord.

      What has changed? Certainly the world around us hasn’t changed. It must have something to do with our ‘salvation’. Jesus made it clear to those who chose to follow Him that they should expect such a change and there would be a price to be paid to be one of His disciples. He made it clear that we can only love the world or Him, not both. We might not have thought about ‘loving’ the world, but there was a certain allegiance to all the things we were familiar with.

      When we are shipped overseas for a military operation, we really miss the kind of life we enjoyed stateside. We are attached to our home and we are glad that the deployment to hostile territory is just temporary.

      The truth is, we as believers now have another home, one that is presently invisible to our physical eyes but which is promised to us by the same Lord we trusted in for our salvation. So our deployment here in enemy territory is also temporary. We have a better and friendlier home waiting for us when the battle is over and we know in advance how it all ends!

      Note: All scriptural references are from the NIV.

      2  Joe (Part 1)

      2.1  April 17 2007 – 2 miles outside Ababa

      missing image file

      ©DAVID PORTER DreamsTime.com

      Joe was a Marine sergeant assigned to special duties as a forward observer in an area known to be under the control of the Taliban. He had been flown in by a black-hawk and dropped along with his equipment to observe the traffic going through Sebeka pass past the village of Ababa in eastern Afghanistan.

      Joe had his rifle, pistol, field glasses and his radio and very little else and he was already thirsty and hungry after two hours of sitting on a lonely hillside above the tree line. The weather was clear but it was cold and windy. The view of the road from Pakistan down through the valley below was clear.

      Everything depended upon his ability to communicate with the patrol aircraft somewhere out there. He could neither hear nor see it. For the past hour or so he had been trying to get some response from command center over his radio. The battery was good, but there just was no signal to pick up in response to his transmissions. He was under orders to update his position and situation every hour.

      Nothing was happening down there in Ababa as far as he could observe. There had also been nothing on the road below aside from a herd of goats and a few lonely travelers. The ‘road’ was nothing more than a wide trail winding through the rocky terrain. It could not be maneuvered by a humvee, but it was suspected of being one of the main Taliban supply routes coming from Pakistan. If that were the case he should be seeing something on the road below soon.

      Joe thought back on all his training. He had been through boot camp and special technical and survival schools. He had been briefed on the high risk of his assignment. He was aware that even now he could be in the sights of a Taliban sniper armed with Russian equipment coming from Pakistan.

      He had been trained to minimize his movements for this reason. He fought his rising fear of being cut off from his command. His function out here in the lonely mountainside meant nothing if he could not report back to headquarters. He thought of sending up a flare, but that would reveal his position.

      His first thought was that the transmission from the aircraft might have been jammed, but the radio normally had a way to get through that. There just was no signal of any kind out there. He was still in the process of getting adapted to the higher altitude. His equipment told him he was at 10,000 feet. The air was thin and a cold wind was blowing off the mountains to the east. There was still snow on those peaks he could see in the distance. The dry air tended to desiccate anything that stayed out in it for a period of time.

      He thought about home back in West Virginia. It would be spring time there. The trees would be turning green again. His watch was about 8 hours ahead of the time back home. From his post, he couldn’t see a single tree; just patches of green. But there were a thousand places a Taliban operative could be hiding in the rocky terrain. Far below to his left there was a small flock of goats grazing on something growing on a grey hillside. He hadn’t spotted a shepherd or anyone watching the flock as yet.

      Suddenly Joe spotted activity at the upper part of the road. Carefully he brought his binoculars up to have a closer look. Sure enough there was a column of armed men coming down from the pass. Some of them were burdened with some very heavy canisters…explosives no doubt.

      Now Joe became desperate to reach headquarters with the news. This was just the kind of event he had been briefed about. But there was only silence, as he continued to watch the deadly foe march along the trail far below.

      The day was drawing on and the sun began to beat down unbearably. All of his training was paying off, but without water all of the psychological gymnastics of survival training would eventually play out and he would begin to feel the effects of dehydration. Joe knew that headquarters must be concerned about him and would be sending out a black-hawk soon to check on him, or so he hoped.

      missing image file

      ©Georgia National Guardsman Vol 2 Issue 3 March 31 2010

      He knew the radio sometimes did not have the ability to connect because of these mountains. It was a line-of-sight only and the communications path could be easily blocked by a mountain. He had asked for a satellite device but they were just too short of these back at the staging area. He could not help but feel abandoned. The operation was supposed to be just a half day and it was already 8 hours. Had somebody back there forgotten him?

      So Joe watched in silence as a column of fifty five men wove their way down to the village of Ababa. He did all he could to avoid detection, but his thirst was making it very difficult to stay still. When the column of men had disappeared into the village, he began to note exactly where they were staying and what kind of activities they were involved in.

      When there was no further activity to note, Joe turned

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