Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11065. The three enemies of the Christian life have been named in that order for centuries, the world, the flesh and the devil, and the grouping is not a piece of ecclesiastical tidiness. It comes straight out of the New Testament and it is enormously useful for diagnosis. The reason it matters is that…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08123. The present work of Satan is one of those subjects where Christians tend to know either too little or far too much, and I have met both. Some treat him as a figure confined to Eden and Revelation with nothing much happening in between, while others see his fingerprints on every flat tyre….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08122. The practice of binding Satan has become so familiar in some circles that many believers assume it must be a plain biblical instruction, and are surprised to discover that no apostle ever does it and no letter ever tells us to. I want to look carefully at the passages that are used to…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 08121. Spiritual warfare is not an optional interest for unusually dramatic Christians. It is the reality every believer already lives inside, whether or not they have a vocabulary for it, and the only question is whether we will fight with the equipment God supplied or with something we invented. A great deal of what…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08140. Paul tells the Corinthians that we are to judge angels, and from that single clause a whole industry has grown up teaching that believers hold authority over angels here and now, with instructions on how to exercise it. I want to take the verse seriously and the industry rather less so, because Paul’s…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08119. Understanding what demons are is not an exercise in morbid curiosity. It is the difference between a believer who takes the enemy seriously without becoming obsessed and one who either dismisses the whole subject or sees a demon behind every difficulty. Scripture is measured on this, which is itself instructive. It tells us…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08117. Knowing who Satan is matters more than most Christians realise, because almost every error in this area comes from a false picture rather than from a false verse. Get his size wrong and you will either live in fear of him or ignore him altogether, and both mistakes suit him perfectly well. So…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08107. Protecting children from spiritual attack is one of those parental concerns that can either drive you to prayer or drive you slightly mad, and I have watched it do both. The instinct behind the question is right and God given. A parent who did not want to shield their child from spiritual attack…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08106. Being afraid of Satan is more common among Christians than most of us admit in public. It shows up at two in the morning, or after a film we should not have watched, or when a house feels wrong, and it can settle into something that quietly governs a person’s spiritual life. So…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08104. Whether one believer should try to cast out demons from another believer is a question I have been asked in tears more than once, usually by a Christian who has been told that their depression, their temper or their besetting sin has a name and needs expelling. The pastoral damage done by that…