The Kingdom Age Chess Game: A Battle Beyond Human Limits
- dkclements
- 48 minutes ago
- 11 min read
I RECENTLY had a conversation with a very successful man over a glass of bourbon. In the stock market, he could calculate risks and rewards hidden from most minds. Hundreds of thousands of dollars lost, then millions gained in seconds. His mind functioned like an algorithm, knowing when to buy, to sell, to hold. No matter the market, his trajectory leaped onward and upward. I learned he was a bit of a chess prodigy from a young age. Luck did not enter his thinking. Just cold hard calculation. I listened to his stories of playing chess and beating people three times his age. I believed him.
The conversation eventually steered to me. He knew of my tussle and survival with the deep state over the past five years. He inquired of how I escaped six investigations, where others had their scalps nailed to a wall. He knew of my work as a prosecutor taking on drug traffickers that had intricate ways to conceal their actions. He complimented my ability to distill complex election concepts into plain English for the layman.
He said, “You must be one hell of a chess player.”
I responded, “If I’m being honest, the times I played, I probably lost every time. I don’t play chess.” He seemed genuinely surprised by the admission. That a leader in the patriot movement, was not some master tactician, seemed puzzling to him.
I looked at him, his eyes clouded with doubt. “Don’t mistake me,” I said. “I think on problems. Always. How to fix them. I respect men who play the game well. But to play just to play? The stakes are too low for the hours. Even if I were good, there’d be someone better. To hate losing, that’s what makes greatness.”
I drank from my glass, and continued, “Losing a game, I can take. Losing to a trafficker, a murderer, or thieves who steal elections—that’s different. There you will see a man consumed. In a world of false news, where lies twist truth in seconds, after years building a name worth something, there’s no winning that chess match with just your mind. Too many pieces move. I’ve seen proud men think they could. Watched them broken by real power.”
He sat there, his mind sharp, curious why I still stood when men with finer names, and large bank accounts, had been crushed. He didn’t believe in luck.
I met his eyes, and asked, “Could God—knowing all, holding all power, always there—play chess and have it mean anything?”
I didn’t wait long before asking a follow-up. “Could the best chess player, the greatest ever, beat an ancient, deathless thing like Satan?”
He thought, then said no to both. A clear mind.
“I’m not God,” I said. “Nor the best at chess. You’d outplay me on the board, but against some old evil in a cosmic match, would you do any better than me?” Following my reasoning, he nodded no.
“So how do you beat Satan at chess? Don’t the scriptures say we fight not flesh, but powers and principalities in high places?”
I leaned back and offered one final comment. “I don’t play chess. I pray God plays me.”
That’s the question I carry now. And that’s the topic of today.
The Kingdom Age Chess Game: A Battle Beyond Human Limits
The Good Book declares God to be the Alpha and the Omega. His knowledge infinite, His moves ordained before time.
We are told, “The wicked plot against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them; but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming,” and “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision.”
Satan’s designs—cunning, ancient—crumble, “The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples.” Against such a God, no adversary prevails.
But without God, humanity stands naked before immortal fallen angels. Satan, a timeless foe, would outmatch mortal minds, his strategies honed over eons. Men’s logic falters, their senses blind. Yet a believer, submitted to the Holy Spirit—one Person of the Trinity—becomes a vessel for infinite power. The Spirit reveals what eyes cannot see, “For we live by faith, not by sight.”
A Christian, fully yielded, could face the devil on this board, moving pieces not by reason but by divine whisper, counterintuitive, negating natural senses. The Spirit’s guidance confounds the enemy, a knight’s leap defying logic, a pawn’s advance toppling kings. This is the battle, not of flesh, but of faith, where the Spirit checkmates ancient evil.
But first, a word of caution: The game I speak of is not for all.
To sit at the cosmic board is to ask for ruin. It’s like walking into a mobster’s den, stepping up to the boss, and slapping his face before his men. You might have the purest heart. You might be all that’s good, he all that’s evil. But in that place, do you think you walk out alive? No.
To those of us committed to restoring America to Kingdom greatness, will require a turf match beyond mortal wits. A nation-state chess match demands everything. Christ informs us of what it will take. “Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” For those with small dreams, and a list of excuses, stay away from the board.
To challenge demonic strongholds without the King’s command is to die, like exorcists overpowered, fleeing naked and wounded. Only those under Christ’s authority are suited for such tasks. He confidently declares, “I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.”
Consider the here and now. Trump survived a bullet in Pennsylvania, a plot in Florida, returned to the White House, and pardoned 1,500 January 6 prisoners. These moves—against all odds—show the Spirit sustaining a nation. Not quick reflexes. And not even Trump’s considerable genius. God breathed and a bullet altered course.
The Scriptures provide insights on how to play the cosmic game. Christ in the wilderness with no food, facing temptation after temptation, shows us Perfection in action. Perfect submission to the Father. Every move by Satan, thwarted, with the Prince of Lies thinking victory was imminent, only to be blindsided by the Cross.
Adam and Eve, tasked to “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it,” fell, eating forbidden fruit, “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” Their failure gave dark powers dominion. They leaned into the allure of rationality, intellect, which elevates the soul, and diminishes the Spirit. More on that in a bit.
And between the bookends of Adam and Christ, Job provides another lesson. Job faced Satan on the cosmic chessboard with lesser success, losing family, health, wealth, yet he held fast in the end. Satan could not harvest Job’s life, because he already forfeited it to God. However, I’ve heard from wiser minds that Job’s inordinate number of ritual sacrifices offer a glimpse on why he lost everything else for a time. I’m inclined to agree.
Think on this for a moment. Job slaughtered a beast for each of his ten children and did so on a cycle. This would be a messy affair, blood spilled staining the earth, skins peeled back, flesh carved clean, with fire consuming it all. I have no doubts of Job’s righteousness, but I do think he was hedging his bets to secure favor through the mastering of God’s legal system.
Satan, the ultimate legalist. Saw a door open. The slightest crack was all he needed. For it is not the law or a system that saves. Rather, the law serves as a cold judge. Even one sin, and your fate is sealed under God’s standard of Holiness. I believe Job’s regular display of burnt offerings were well intentioned but were laced with a hint of fear.
Doubts of whether he would lose God’s material blessing and protection of his family crept into his mind. After all, do we not all wrestle with similar fears? I believe those fears, however small, were seeds planted that could be harvested by Satan. I may be in the minority in this interpretation, but any other reading presents God as culpable by omission, or indifferent to the harm done to Job.
I believe God does no evil, and to the degree evil is permitted for a season, it’s always to teach a lesson that enhances our eternal standing with our Father. Bruised and bloodied, Job survived his cosmic chess match with Satan, but could he have played a better match?
The year 2020 was a hard year, a year of fog and lies. Some carry tainted blood from vaccines, others see now the nation was spared, given breath to fight again. We can learn from our spiritual ancestors’ playing of the game.
I believe King Jesus sits, eyes steady, calling His Body to rule by the Spirit, not human wit. The end times—Four Horsemen, Antichrist, judgment—are set. Our task? To restrain evil and contend with the spirit of the antichrist. It’s not to say intellect is unimportant. But understand what is valued by evil. If you do not threaten their territories, and you have a leash around your leg destined for hell, they will let you acquire the wealth of kings and the praise of man. Whether that leash is two feet, or two miles means very little if the destination is the same.
Soul vs. Spirit
The soul—mind, will, emotions—betrays men. In 2020, brilliant minds, leaning on intellect during Covid tyranny and stolen elections, fell to demonic schemes, their plans telegraphed. The Spirit-filled, guided by the words, “For we live by faith, not by sight,” moved unpredictably, divine wisdom trumping human sense. Appearances of success are inverted on this spiritual plane. Patriots can endure slander and lawfare, as treasure is stored in Heaven. The soulish, those whose competence normally allows them to excel in all domains found a brick wall. Without submission to the Holy Spirit, normally great men became demoralized cynics, like the Lord of the Ring’s Denethor staring into the Palantir, seeing only doom, blind to the Spirit’s hope.
How many times have you been told by someone, who presumed himself smarter than you, that there is nothing you can do against such evil? Even worse, were the pastors that would offer small prayers that did little but reveal their doubts. In our human efforts, the cynic is right. The evil is too great. But with God all things are possible.
People new to the idea of Spirit apart from Soul, think on something closer. You know a woman’s intuition, a man’s conscience. I say that’s the Holy Spirit, named different. It’s the feeling under your rib when something sounds too good to be true, and a small voice tells you to walk away. Or the lift in your chest when truth comes from the lowborn in the trailer park, but you followed the banker’s advice, dreaming of his country club fairways. Look back—when you ignored that nudge in your gut, did it turn out right?
I submit that was God placing you on His board, ready to move. You chose your own play instead.
THE CHESS BOARD
Realms
Three heavens set the rules. The First, is the sky we see and what’s beneath. This was Adam’s to steward until his fall. The Second, is celestial. God’s Word speaks of there being “lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night.” I believe this second realm is where the real war is hosted. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
Notice, the word “realms” is plural. Paul speaks of being called up to third heaven. As great Bible teachers have said before, logic dictates if there is a third, there are at least two others. The Third, sits God’s throne. Recall St. John’s Revelation where he penned, “At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it.” The throne is the seat of authority. Third Heaven is where all the true power is held. Angels are dispatched through the Second Realm to battle, to restrain the enemy. What we see in the “natural” of First Heaven, both blessings and curses, are the manifestations of the war being fought in higher realms. Recall, it was the prayer of Daniel in First Heaven to Third, that set events into motion with the Archangel Michael coming to his aid. Where was Michael delayed? In the Second Heaven battling the Prince of Persia.
Satan’s Armies
The dark spirits described in the Bible are real. I have become family to intercessory prayer warriors that pray day and night. God has whispered to them where Satan’s armies march. Here is the vision they gave me. Imagine a board, a scarred field of black and white, where riders and princes stood as chess pieces, carved from the raw stuff of the world. The Rider of the Pale Horse, lean and unyielding, held the center like a king, his spirit a shadow of death. Around him, the Rider of the Red Horse charged with war’s fury along the border of Russia and Ukraine. The Rider of the Black Horse weighed with famine’s burden weakens the minds of those addicted to technology. He rides through the gates opened by X, Google, YouTube, and countless others. The Rider of the White Horse bore conquest’s cold steel in the Pentagon. The Queen of Heaven sits poised. The princes moved like knights—Mammon with greed’s heavy gold perched in New York, Baal with false worship’s deceit, Persia with imperialism’s iron grip, Greece with humanism’s quiet pride, Africa with occultism’s dark chant, Pacific with corruption’s creeping rot—each a player in a game older than the hills, their spirits locked in a struggle with Christ and His Body, and their ministering angels.
The Match
In the grand scheme of things, I often feel like nothing more than a pawn, facing Satan’s host—Mammon, mocking me with infinite monetary resources. The Pale Horse’s rider hurting my loved ones; Persia’s prince dominating the legal profession through the spirit of imperialism; Jezebel’s spirit of seduction; Absalom’s spirit of rebellion. They move a bishop, threatening my King. How will the Body of Christ, Spirit-led, counter?
Christ declares from the battlefield, “First, put on the full armor of God, so we can take our stand against the devil’s schemes.” “Second, know that we have already won, “Having disarmed the powers and authorities, I have made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” Doubts are removed as the Scriptures say “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” The Spirit filled Body moves our rook forward. Satan’s host makes a tactical error. All through an ever-present ebb and flow of submission to God and resistance to the Enemy.
On the board, Christ continued to spur on his Knights. He declares, “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit.” The queen moved by Jezebel’s confusion falls. The rebellious spirit of Absalom miscalculates. Another piece comes off the board. This is how we restore America in a Kingdom age.
The board shakes, but in the end, Satan’s pieces falter. The dust clears. The board is ours.
Trump has said the best is yet to come.
But how?
A kingdom age born of faith, not reason, sustained by the Holy Spirit is how.
Now, back to the beginning of this article. My new stockbroker friend asked of my survival against the deep state these past five years. Visions of chess playing with the Fallen aside, what does it look like in the real world (or First Heaven as I call it)?
It looks like weeping with my bride over a lost career and asking her to trust me.
It looks like a bill I have no way of paying, and then a stranger hands me a white envelope filled with cash, saying “God told me to give this to you.” The bill is paid, and we rejoice at our deliverance.
It looks like a father gone for weeks at a time coming home to children that hold no ill-will, no resentment, but rather shine with love. It’s a thousand small stories like this.
It looks like God’s angels telling you when you need to hear it most, “Do not worry, we will win.”
David K. Clements is a seasoned attorney, former law professor, filmmaker and dedicated advocate for election integrity and constitutional rights. If you think he's on to something, consider being a monthly sponsor of his independent journalism at:
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