Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08091 The phrase powers and principalities has become one of those bits of church vocabulary that everyone recognises and few can define. It sounds impressive from a pulpit, it turns up in hymns and prayers, and if you stopped ten believers on a Sunday morning and asked what it meant you would probably get…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08074 The phrase territorial spirits refers to fallen angelic beings thought to exercise influence over particular nations, regions or cities. The idea has become so embedded in some circles that it is assumed rather than argued, and so foreign to others that it is dismissed without a hearing. I sit between the two. I…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 08090 The prince of Persia in Daniel 10 is one of those figures who lifts the curtain for a moment and then lets it drop again. For three verses we are allowed to see something happening behind the visible world, and then the vision moves on and we are left with more questions than…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08073 Territorial warfare is the practice of identifying and confronting demonic powers believed to rule over geographical areas, and then attempting to break their hold through organised prayer. It has been enormously influential in the last forty years, particularly through the church growth movement and its offshoots. I want to describe it fairly before…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08088 When James tells us to resist the devil, he is not handing us a slogan to shout at the ceiling. He is describing a settled posture that has a great deal more to do with what we submit to than with what we say out loud. Yet in a good many churches the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08072 Whether any Christian can cast out demons is a question that usually arrives with a good deal riding on it. Someone is frightened, or someone has been told they should be able to do this and nothing has happened, or someone has watched a ministry team at work and wondered whether they are…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08071 The practice of exorcism carries a great deal of cultural baggage, most of it supplied by films rather than by Scripture, and that makes it difficult to discuss calmly. People arrive at the subject already braced for something lurid. So let me set the films aside and describe what the Bible actually shows,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08070 Deliverance ministry covers a wide range of practice, from careful pastoral work with genuinely troubled people to something closer to a stage act. Because the label is so elastic, I want to describe what it usually involves before saying what I think of it. I write as someone who believes demonic activity is…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08068 Talk of spiritual strongholds has become so common that most believers assume they know what the term means without ever having looked at where it comes from. Conferences are held on breaking them. Prayer initiatives target them over cities. Individuals are told they have personal ones needing specialist attention. The phrase belongs to…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08084 Satan’s role in human sin is one of those subjects where we tend to overshoot in one direction or the other. Some Christians blame the devil for everything from adultery to a lost temper in traffic. Others speak as though he barely exists and every failure is nothing more than psychology and bad…