I don’t, in all honesty, have much knowledge of this peculiar movement. I’m pretty sure it involves a great deal of prayer, in particular prayer against demonic powers that are believed to have some sort of proprietary sway over a given region or institution. Think of spiritual warfare as seeking to perform an exorcism on a whole town. I’m guessing this movement got a kick in the pants from Frank Peretti’s early novels wherein angels and demons fought battles in an invisible realm, and our prayers gave the angels power boosts.
Now there are any number of silly things about the spiritual warfare movement. I’m afraid, however, that some reject it not because it doesn’t fit with the Bible, but because it doesn’t fit with our modernist mindsets. The trouble, from our perspective, isn’t that this movement affirms things about demons that the Scripture does not say, but that this movement affirms things about demons. Like angels, we think demons are certainly real. We just think they’ve been sitting on the sidelines for the last two thousand years. Angels and demons, like everything else supernatural, we seem to think became passé with the closing of the canon. This despite the truth that one part of the canon tells us that we war with principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12).
It is yet another part of our enlightenment conceit that we think the important event of any given Sunday is when the pastor, having waded through the preliminaries, finally gets to the point where he will feed our brains. He will present a body of information that he put together during the week. If that body of information is both sound and interesting, we go home happy. What we miss is that we have entered into another dimension, one inhabited by angels and demons.
Sermons certainly have their place. I’m a big fan of sermons. But what I like best about the Lord’s Day is the fellowship. When we gather together on the Lord’s Day, we are by God’s grace lifted up into the heavenly places. We worship in spirit and in truth at the true and eternal Mount Zion. We gather with all the saints in our local body, our local community and with all the people around the globe, and finally, with the souls of just men made perfect. It is true that as we gather the church militant is lifted up to join together with the church triumphant. That is why I get to worship with the great heroes of the faith. But there God’s people worship together with the angels. We join the heavenly host in praise of our God.
The angels speak with us. We go to them each and every Lord’s Day, where we join their choir. There we are gathered together in three part harmony, those who have gone before us, joined with those who are from everlasting, joined with us as we praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. May the Lord of hosts be pleased, each time we gather, to remove the scales from our eyes, that we might behold the glory of His hosts, reflecting His own glory.
As a young man, I was attending a church in Alaska while working on summer vacation from college that supported my missionary parents in Japan. This church was one that had been started by missionaries to Alaska, with whom my parents had become good friends while they were all attending Bible school together in preparation for their respective fields. The man who had taken over as the pastor was a follower of Merrill Unger, who wrote “What Demons Can Do to Saints” in 1977. He invited me to join him in what he called his “warfare ministry.” This pastor was not a kook, but he was a serious man of God–maybe slightly misguided. I have never really had the chance to discuss the theological ramificaations of the things that I witnessed that night in 1977 with anyone but 2 friends at the Reformed Baptist church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to which I returned that Fall. I have since shifted from being a Baptist to Presbyterianism, so I would really appreciate being able to gain some instruction on the subject. Who woulod you recommend?
Wow friend, that’s quite a journey. I’d love some instruction as well. I don’t know whom to recommend I’m sorry to say. If I find anything I’ll let you know, and ask the same of you.