Is It True That Only "breaking the Hedge" Exposes the Believer to Successful Satanic Attacks?
Direct Answer
Not exactly. The Bible shows two ways Satan touches a believer: (1) when the believer “breaks the hedge” by sin and unbelief, giving him a place; and (2) when God Himself permits a test. But only the first gives Satan a real advantage. When God allows a trial, it is limited and turns to the believer’s good—not to Satan’s victory.
Scriptural Explanation
- Job did not sin, yet Satan could afflict him only because God allowed it—and with strict limits (Job 1:10–12; 2:6). That was testing, not defeat. Job’s faith stood.
- “Whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him” (Ecclesiastes 10:8). That’s the warning: step out of the Word’s protection and you invite the bite.
- “Neither give place to the devil” (Ephesians 4:27). Place is given by disobedience—anger, lies, lust, unforgiveness (see Ephesians 4:25–32; 2 Corinthians 2:10–11).
- “Be sober… resist… steadfast in the faith” (1 Peter 5:8–9). The hedge is faith and obedience. Submit to God, then resist (James 4:7).
- God’s tests are bounded and faithful: “He will… make a way to escape” (1 Corinthians 10:13). They refine, not ruin (1 Peter 1:6–7). And the sheep cannot be plucked from His hand (John 10:28–29; Romans 8:35–39).
- Dwelling “in the secret place of the most High” is the place of kept protection (Psalm 91).
Simple Clarifying Logic
- If the only way Satan could touch a believer were personal failure, what about Job and Peter? Job was upright, yet tested (Job 1:1; 1:12). Peter was sifted, yet kept by Christ’s intercession (Luke 22:31–32). Those were permissions for proving, not permissions for Satan to conquer.
- When we break the hedge—leave the Word, harbor sin—we open a door. Then the serpent has a bite, and Satan gains an advantage.
- When God permits a trial while we remain under the Blood, Satan is on a leash. He may afflict circumstances, but he cannot overthrow faith. God turns it to our strengthening.
Reinforcing Statement
Stay under the Blood, stay with the Word, and give no place to the devil. If God allows a test, it will purify you. If you break the hedge, repent quickly and close the door.
Final Conclusion
No. Satan can touch a believer either by our breaking the hedge (which gives him an advantage) or by God’s limited permission for testing (which cannot defeat faith). Only breaking the hedge grants Satan a real foothold; God-permitted trials are bounded and work for the believer’s good.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
Three kinds of believers
63-1124E §30
When that uncircumcised Philistine cursed him in the name of his gods, he said, "Am I a dog?" A little, bitty runt of a kid come out like that. "Why," said, "I'll pick you up on the end of my spear, and I'll hang you up there in the tree and let the birds pick your flesh!" Oh, my! Oh, what a horrible fellow he was! David said, "You meet me with a sword and a spear, with an armor; you meet me in the name of a Philistine, but I meet you without a sword or spear and armor, but I meet you in the name of the Lord God of...
The conflict between God and Satan
62-0531 §27
So, how Satan makes it look so real, it's appealing to them. But if they would've just stayed fortified with the Word, let the Word be their fortress, then see, they'd have been fortified. They'd have been behind the Word. The Word would've been in front of them always: "Thus saith the Lord, thus saith the Lord, thus saith the Lord," right or left, "thus saith the Lord." Like those angels down there that day when Isaiah ... met in the temple, he thought he was getting along pretty good. A fairly good preacher, the...
The conflict between God and Satan
62-0531 §64
When Abraham, the father of the faithful, pulled out the knife, pulled the hair back on his child's head to cut his throat, he said, "I'm persuaded that God's able to raise him up from the dead from the thicket that I felled him on." He was willing to follow the Word of God to the end. You get it? No matter what it is---stay right there if everything seems to be... You can't go one inch farther, go that inch. Then if you hit the wall, stand there until God makes a way through it.
What is that in thine hand?
55-0611 §58
David had seen this and he knowed that God was, and God would deliver. He'd seen God in His nature. So, he said, "Give me this little slingshot. I've tried it. That's the only thing I know anything about, is this slingshot." And that's all a believer knows anything about, "That God said so, and this is the old slingshot. I'll trust it anytime, against anything that the devil can put out ... (Amen) is the Word of God." The Word of God alone will defeat Satan any place, any time, on any condition, if a man or woman w...
Putting on the whole armor of God
62-0607 §45
...n the land in them days. Giants. He still has them, intellectual giants. Oh, my, see. In them days when Noah spoke about, "There's coming a flood," see, they didn't believe that, yet they were religious. But they ... it didn't stand up to their specification of science: how that it's going to rain down there, when there's no rain up there. Prove it by science, there's no rain up there. Like that Russian fellow the other day in that orbit said he flew all around over there seventeen times around the world. He didn't...