Conflicting Kingdoms: Territorial Spirits

Territorial Spirits

Ephesians 1:15–22 ESV

15 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church,

Colossians 2 and Daniel 7.

A war is going on for our nation today. A war is being fought for our metropolitan areas, our great cities across this land. There’s a war raging for our churches, for our families, and for each of us personally. It’s a war in the spirit realm, and this is the challenge you face: The devil has sent messengers, strong principalities and powers, to stand against you and to keep you from being and doing all that God has called you to be and do. So what will you do about it?

The central, foundational activity for spiritual warfare is prayer. In one sense, prayer is a weapon of warfare, and in another sense, it is the medium through which all of the other weapons are utilized. A chief New Testament passage on spiritual warfare is Ephesians 6, where we are told that:

We are told to put on the full armor of God, “praying always with all prayer and supplication in If prayer is the central activity for spiritual warfare, the central attitude for those of us in the battle is faith and obedience.

At one point when Jesus was on earth, His disciples tried to cast a demon out of an epileptic boy and could not. After Jesus stepped in, cast out the demon, and healed the boy, the disciples asked Him why they couldn’t do it. Jesus said, “Because of your unbelief . . .” (Matt. 17:20).

The disciples lacked the faith to succeed in that episode of spiritual warfare. Jesus tried to encourage them by telling them that as their faith increases they will have the power to move mountains and “nothing will be impossible for you” (Matt. 17:20). What does faith do? For one thing, through faith we establish our relationship to God.

We are saved by grace through faith (Eph. 2:8). Then once we are in fellowship with God, we move on from there to deepen our relationship with the Father through faith.

That is why Ephesians 6 lists a part of the full armor of God as “the shield of faith” (Eph. 6:16). Faith cannot be understood apart from obedience to God. How do we know if we really have the kind of faith that draws us into a relationship with God? Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar and the truth is not in him (1 John 2:3-4). Faith without works is dead. The proper combination of faith and obedience can be summed up in one word: holiness.

Holiness means “being so full of God that there is no room for anything else.” That means that we no longer love the world or the things of the world, such as the “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (see 1 John 2:16). Instead of doing the things of the world, a holy person does the will of God. All this is in First John 2, where it is summed up in the context of spiritual warfare:

You are strong and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one” (1 John 2:14).

If we pray with an attitude of faith and obedience, the specific weapons that God has given us for spiritual warfare will be effective in defeating the enemy. What are some of these specific weapons?

Returning to Ephesians 6, we see that our engagement with the enemy is described in some detail, with the apostle Paul characteristically mixing metaphors. He uses two simultaneous analogies to describe our engagement with the enemy: the wrestler and the warrior. The Wrestler Paul says that: We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12).

Paul is speaking about very serious spiritual business. When he says that we wrestle, he is not referring just to himself, Silas, and Timothy. He is referring to all true members of the Body of Christ. He does not suggest that we wrestle directly with the devil because, for one thing, the devil, as I have mentioned previously, cannot be in more than one place at one time. The principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, and spiritual hosts of wickedness are descriptions of the demonic hordes that satan has delegated to steal, to kill, and to destroy, and those are the beings we are expected to engage. In most cases, we will be called to wrestle against ground-level spirits, such as those frequently mentioned in the Gospels.

Some may also be called to deal with the middle-level spirits, which operate through witches, occult practitioners, New Age channelers, spiritist mediums, and others. Paul dealt with one of these in Philippi—a spirit of divination, which had controlled a slave girl who was a fortune teller. This was such a high-level spirit that the deliverance had political repercussions, and Paul and Silas found themselves in jail as a result (Acts 16:16-24).

Others, I would think relatively few, may be called to deal with the higher level territorial spirits such as the prince of Persia or the prince of Greece. Obviously, the higher we go, the more caution we need. The Warrior Once Paul establishes that our engagement with wicked spirits is like a wrestler, he switches analogies and describes our means of combat as that of a Roman warrior.

Military equipment, then as now, includes defensive as well as offensive instruments. The full armor of God is our defense against our spiritual enemies. Interestingly enough, the Roman armor was designed to protect the front of the warrior, not the back. Apparently the assumption was that when the enemies were near, the soldiers were moving toward them, not running away. But as any soldier knows, the final objective is not to protect yourself against the enemies, but to defeat them. General Patton said the key to winning a war is not giving your life for your country, but seeing that the enemy gives his life for his country.

Paul mentions two offensive weapons in this passage, one used by the devil and one used by the Christian warrior. The devil’s weapon is a bow and arrow (Eph. 6:16). This is a weapon used at a distance. It may well be satan’s desire that his forces do not engage well-armed Christians up close. On the other hand, the Christian’s weapon is a sword, a close-up weapon. Satan may continue shooting from a distance, and we are expected to use the shield of faith to defend ourselves. But if we are going to use our sword, we must be prepared to engage the enemy.

Our Plan of Action There is no doubt about it. Engaging the enemy on any level is risky business. Nor is there any doubt that we are called to do it. So now the question becomes, how do we go about it? If we are going to do spiritual warfare, let us do it well. Let us agree on a wise and effective plan of action. One of the most helpful Scripture passages for formulating a battle plan is James 4:7-8: Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Nothing scares a little bird more than being pushed out of the nest. Nothing scares us more than the thought of meeting the enemy in a spiritual wrestling match. Satan is a roaring lion. Who wants to go in that direction? It would be much more comfortable to run back home to Mommy. But the verb is not “run away” or “stay out of the jungle” or “ignore him,” but resist. We may not like the idea, but we must move in the outward direction. Jesus Himself had to go through a similar process. From all of eternity He had been equal to the Father.

But, as Philippians 2 teaches us, He became unequal to the Father by taking on a human nature in the incarnation. Jesus had to come to earth, live a human life, experience temptation just as we do, and resist the devil one-on-one—not as God, but as a human being. I would imagine that doing that was as scary for Him as spiritual warfare is for us. He knows by personal experience what He is sending us out to do.

The 12 apostles had been with Jesus for a year and a half. They had grown to love Him and to love each other. But the day finally came when they were to minister on their own. Jesus told them that the harvest was ready and that they were to go out by themselves to reap it by preaching the Kingdom of God and manifesting the signs of the Kingdom. After a year and a half of moving upward, so to speak, they now were to move outward. This was scary, especially when Jesus said, “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves . . .” (Matt. 10:16).

But they obeyed, and much to their relief, they did have the power to cast out demons and heal the sick (Mark 6:13).

Later Jesus sent 70 of His followers out, giving them “authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy . . .” (Luke 10:19).

Their ministry was so powerful that Jesus “saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning” (Luke 10:18) as they were preaching and doing good works.

The apostles as well as the 70 had submitted to God, and God had drawn near to them. Then they resisted the devil, and he indeed fled from them as the Scripture says he would.

Paul mentions two offensive weapons in this passage, one used by the devil and one used by the Christian warrior. The devil’s weapon is a bow and arrow (Eph. 6:16). This is a weapon used at a distance. It may well be satan’s desire that his forces do not engage well-armed Christians up close. On the other hand, the Christian’s weapon is a sword, a close-up weapon. Satan may continue shooting from a distance, and we are expected to use the shield of faith to defend ourselves. But if we are going to use our sword, we must be prepared to engage the enemy.

Our Plan of Action There is no doubt about it. Engaging the enemy on any level is risky business. Nor is there any doubt that we are called to do it. So now the question becomes, how do we go about it? If we are going to do spiritual warfare, let us do it well. Let us agree on a wise and effective plan of action. One of the most helpful Scripture passages for formulating a battle plan is James 4:7-8: Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Notes: Pt. 5

They were trying to live in the past glory of Israel. They had built a memorial to Moses and the Law and were looking backward instead of forward to the New Covenant whose time had come. You can choose to live in any time zone you want to live as a Christian. You have the choice to live in the past, if you so desire. You have the opportunity to sit and wait for the coming of the Lord, if you so decide. But to live on the cutting edge and to be fully alive with the Spirit of God is to move with what God is doing in the earth right now—today.

The Pharisees did not hear the message proclaimed in their day. Although they were to lead the people, they did not know the season and timing of God. However, the demons knew the spiritual time. When Jesus cast a legion of demons out of a “crazy” man, the demons spoke to him of that time: And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time? (Matthew 8:29)

You see, even demons are aware that God has a time to do certain things. They knew it was not His time for them to be shut up forever in the lake of fire. Demons who operate in the low, carnal area are not very intelligent. They do not think or reason. However, those workers for Satan who are part of his hierarchy—the principalities, powers, and rulers of darkness—know what is going on with the kingdom of God. (See Ephesians 6:12.)

If the devil and his angels and demons know about time, then certainly the body of Christ should set themselves to know.