Spiritual warfare is very big in all courses on missions and in the missions community today.

Some of it is good I believe, correcting a Western Christianity that is over-much affected by Enlightenment thinking.

Much of the teaching on spiritual warfare, however, is also animistic. A missionary goes to an animistic country that sees demons behind every bush and envokes demons into themselves on purpose and the missionary borrows some of this animistic worldview, when most of it is illusion or trickery.

I say most of it, because I am not sure about all. It seems that if a pagan culture invited demons in enough times, I have to believe that they sometimes do come.


It does seem that spiritual battles rage behind the scenes of the world. It seems that spirits are being talked about in Daniel and they are behind the scenes of even world affairs.

But, today there are even a few groups (I think Global Mapping got started this way) of trying to map the demons that control different areas. That is crazy.

I have read missionary anthropologists that have got caught up in those and have spoken of such and such a spirit controlling this geographical area.

Of course, in my own neck of the woods, the locals speak of certain demons controlling certain pieces of ground. But there is no way to know. A few groups of Pentecostals in South America have "exercised demons" and in the exorcism process interviewed these demons in order to provide info on what demons control what areaa. But would a demon really tell you the truth? And why would we be trying to talk to demons anyhow?


A related topic is prayer walking: A belief in territorial spirits has led to a rise in prayer walking. We are to walk around a geographical location and force out these local demons. Often, groups will do this at the beginning of mission work to cleanse the area before they enter it with evangelistic efforts.

MY question to these is always, if prayer is powrful, why spend thousands of dollars to go walk around a city, pray from your bed at home and send that many to the missionary in that city!

Summary: I do think that a spiritual battle wages. But are part is not to get concerned about these spiritis but to obey God. We should never speak to demons, commend them directly or interview them. We prayto God to do His work. If there are territorial spirits, which there might be, we certainly ned not map them, or walk around them to vanquish them, but just keep doing what we're doing.

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Pergamum


"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-- David Livingstone