Have You Bound Your Hometown Spirits?

Tom:

Thanks, Gary.You are listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to him.Our topic for this program is spiritual warfare and as many of you know who have been following our program we’ve taken our questions from Dave Hunt’s book In Defense of the Faith and if you have a copy of the book, you can follow along.In some cases we go way beyond what you’ve written in the book, but in some cases we don’t cover some details that are in the book that you would find very helpful.And Gary will tell you later in the program how you can get a copy of the book.Dave, the first question: There is a new teaching in the church called “spiritual warfare” that is rapidly growing in popularity.It is even taught that by “binding” in the name of the Lord the “territorial spirit” controlling a city, Christians can take over that city for God.The reference in Daniel 10 to the prince of Persia withstanding the angel Gabriel seems to support this teaching.What is your response?Dave, before you answer the question, you wrote this some time ago but really in the interim, spiritual warfare, that’s the biggest thing going in the church.Certainly C. Peter Wagner and others have developed this into a not just doctrines, but whole techniques, methodologies, and approaches in dealing with spirit entities and they don’t just call it spiritual warfare, which a lot of us are familiar with, but they call it strategic level spiritual warfare.

Dave:

Tom we call this program Search the Scriptures Daily.We believe the Bible is our authority. I mean not our authority for auto mechanics or flying an airplane, but our authority in all those things that pertain unto life and godliness and the spiritual realities that we are to face and experience.I would have to say first of all you don’t find this in the Bible so this teaching does not come from scripture.Now this person, who ever this was says they get the idea from Daniel 10 where it says the—

Tom:

Shall I read it?I have it right before me.

Dave:

Why don’t you go ahead?

Tom:

This is Daniel 10 and we’ll begin with verse 12 and 13 and also I think verse 20 is applicable.“Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.”Verse 20: “Then said he, Knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee? And now will I return to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia (or Greece) shall come.”

Dave:

Well Tom I certainly don’t understand the wars going on in the heavens.I guess it would make Star Wars look pretty poor.There is apparently a battle in the heavenlies; I mean this would tell us that.We read of the culmination of it in Revelation 12 when there is war in heaven it says.Michael and his angels fought with the dragon and his angels and the dragon and his angels, (that’s Satan) will be cast out and it tells us who he is.The dragon, that old serpent the devil who deceives the whole world.So we’ve talked about it in past programs.Apparently Satan still has some vestige of authority and prestige or whatever it is that he originally had with God and he is still able to appear in the presence of God as the accuser of the brethren.The Bible makes that clear.And yet there is a real battle going on for the hearts and minds and souls and eternal destiny of mankind.We’ve talked about it in the past.It’s not a matter of raw force.If that were the case then God could just slap Satan across the mouth and throw him in the bottomless pit and be done with him.There is a battle for the mind, for the heart of mankind.Again this would be one of my concerns about the teaching of Calvinism, where it’s just power.God has the power to cause everybody to do anything that he wants.God has the power to stop all evil on this earth if he wanted to.Well that doesn’t speak too well of God then.Why does he want so much evil?Why did he want Adam and Eve to sin?We’re not going to get into that, but the battle is for the heart, the affection, the love of mankind.It’s for man’s understanding and I often say, we’ve probably said it on this program, I often say to young people as well as older ones, “If Satan has a better deal than God, follow him!”God isn’t trying to deceive anyone, trick anyone, but he lays it all out.So there is a battle for truth.Between the truth of God and the lie of Satan.Which will you believe?And of course, salvation depends entirely upon whether we believe the Gospel and whether we believe in Jesus Christ and that we are sinners and that God came to this earth as a man, the eternal Son of God through the virgin birth, died for our sins, paid the penalty that his own infinite justice required.If we believe this, we are on God’s side.We are saved; we have opened our hearts to his truth.We receive Christ as our Savior, as our Lord and we become one of his sheep, one of his followers.He directs our steps and he will never let us go and he promises us eternal life in his presence forever.So what that involves, what the struggle is up there I don’t know, but it is certain that it has nothing to do with binding territorial spirits by human beings on this earth.First of all, Daniel did not bind a territorial spirit, this prince of Persia.Daniel did not even know that he existed.There was no determination to bind the Prince of Persia so that the Persians would be saved.There is not a hint of that.But what Daniel was concerned about was to understand what God’s purpose and God’s plan for Israel for the future.And that was what he was seeking God about and the understanding that he would be given by the angel Gabriel would become part of scripture.So it seems that the Prince of Persia, this demonic power, whoever he was under Satan was trying to prevent that understanding coming through to Daniel and through Daniel to the people of Israel and to us today.

Tom:

Dave, these verses as you said, they are difficult to understand.God does not give us in his Word lots of insight as to what goes on in the spirit realm, but enough to recognize that there are areas in which these things are taking place, but we’re not to go beyond the scripture.We are not to try and develop as we are seeing here, methodologies and concepts and strategies and all of that for how to utilize them.Now that’s what we’re seeing.You mentioned territorial spirits, but the whole aspect of spiritual warfare in the minds of many men, I mentioned C. Peter Wagner, but there’s a whole list of others who take part in this program.Everybody from the John Jacobs Power Team which I think is having its problems right now.Neil Anderson, Cindy Jacobs, Generals for Intercession, there are a number of people out there who are developing programs.George Otis, Junior, The Sentinel Group and some of these things are called strategic level intercession, territorial spirits, spiritual mapping, tearing down strongholds, identification repentance, prayer walking, prayer journeys, prayer exhibitions, it just goes on and on and on and what they are is techniques, methodologies for somehow accomplishing spiritual objectives.

Dave:

Yes, Frank Perretti is a good friend, but I think some of his novels, the ones that became popular—

Tom:

This Present Darkness in particular.

Dave:

Yes, helped to further this idea and in fact, he seems to be part of this, part of this group.But reading those novels, you would get the idea that it’s up to us to enter into this warfare and that if we pray the angels will be strengthened, their gas tanks will be filled up with energy you know, and they will be able to battle and if we don’t then the demons are going to hack them to pieces or injure them, damage them and so forth.You never get that impression in the Bible.Now when Ephesians 6 says “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, spiritual wickedness in high places,” it’s not saying that we are entering into a battle between demons and angels—something that we know nothing about.But we are in a battle against demonic spirits who would deceive us and who would lead us astray and who would seek to defeat us in our walk with the Lord.And the Bible is quite clear about how we engage in that.We resist the devil and he will flee from us.We resist him by standing on the truth of the Word of God.We have the example in Jesus Christ himself.He faced temptations from Satan in the wilderness.How did he combat Satan?Did he get out some laser sword?Did he zap him with some kind of supernatural power?Did he quote some formula to bind Satan?No, he quoted the Word of God.He said “It is written, it is written.” So we resist Satan by knowing God’s Word, walking in obedience to it and not deviating from it.Satan is the author of false doctrine and I am sorry, but these people who are teaching spiritual warfare are in fact furthering Satan’s work by turning Christians from the truth, from the real power in their Christian lives and that is obedience to the Word of God and they are turning them over to some kind of techniques.You remember the letter we received some years ago from a pastor in Los Angeles, I think at the Hollywood First Presbyterian Church, I don’t know whether they are still doing it, but in those days I think he said about 1300 pastors from the Los Angeles area got together, I think he said it was once a month I think, and they bound these territorial spirits in the name of Jesus and commanded them, the spirits of drugs and spirit of violence and so forth.You remember this pastor wrote to us and he said I’ve become a bit disillusioned with this because it seems every time we bind these spirits when we are in our meeting, by the time we walk out the door, they are on the loose again and it just gets worse and worse.You remember a Larry Lee?I think he had about 10,000 Christians, oh how many years ago would this be?Ten years or more?In Miami in a huge stadium there, and they were binding the spirits of drugs, the spirit of violence, the spirit of this, the spirit of that, in fact, he even bound the spirit of greed that was preventing money coming to Christians and now Christian wallets were going to be flooded with funds to do God’s work.And what happened?Well violence, and drugs and all of the evils that they bound got worse in Miami.They went to San Francisco.They bound the spirit of homosexuality and homosexuality just prospered and got worse and worse.It doesn’t come about by some magical formula of binding spirits. The victory that we would gain in the name of our Lord is through the truth.We present the truth and those who believe it are delivered from Satan.Those who do not will not be delivered, and it is up to them to decide what they want to believe and whom they wish to serve.

Tom:

Dave, these techniques such as spiritual mapping—some of our listeners have never heard of these things before, but they can take our word for it, we receive letters, we watch what is going on, trends that are going on in the church today and this is really big stuff.For example, George Otis, Jr., who has the Sentinel Group.They have a video out that’s very popular and it supposedly, just as you mentioned with this pastor that wrote to you, this is documentation of areas which these territories or particular cities are spiritually mapped.And what they do is they look to a territory or a city and try to find out by going to the library and doing research where occult, pagan activities take place.And supposedly—

Dave:

Or have taken place in the past.

Tom:

Right, and supposedly whatever activities took place there, or are taking place they are a stronghold in preventing the gospel from being presented.The idea then is once you can identify through research or history, you map it out and you say well this happened in this part of the city and this is taking place in this part of the city, so we are going to send people to intercede and maybe march around buildings, do whatever that seems to identify what spiritual activities taking place, bind those spirits and then supposedly the gospel can go forward. Does this ever happen in scripture?

Dave:

Well of course, you know before Paul went to Corinth he bound the territorial spirit over Corinth; he bound the territorial spirit over Ephesus.I’m joking; I hope everyone listening understands that.No, he did no such thing.It is not biblical and it is not fruitful and it doesn’t work.And anywhere that—now you mentioned this documentary so-called, about this.In fact it isn’t true.They tell you, I remember part of it is about Hemet, California.

Tom:

We have friends in Hemet.

Dave:

And what they say happened and the great upsurge of spirituality and the gospel and so forth, did not happen in Hemet.It simply isn’t true, nor did it happen anywhere that they make these claims.I remember being in Santiago, Chile and while my wife and I were there, we were speaking in some churches and one of these men was up in a Piper Cub circling around the city of Santiago and radioing down to earth some of the identification of some of these territorial spirits that were binding various areas of the city.But then Tom, one of the worst problems, C. Peter Wagner has claimed that what this is doing, these are new techniques, never before known, so the fact that Paul didn’t do it is not surprising.These are new techniques revealed by God so that millions of people who have been hitherto bound by Satan in darkness can now be set free from his deception so that souls will come to Christ.They’ve been bound by these demonic beings.They’ve been helpless against them, the gospel has been powerless to convert them to bring the truth to them, but now with these techniques Satan will be bound and millions of souls will be brought into the kingdom.Well it wouldn’t seem fair that God had allowed Satan to do that.Why hadn’t these techniques been known before?Why had so many people gone to hell for want of these techniques being revealed?

Tom:

Along with the technology, they said until we’ve had computers, until we’ve had fax machines where we could network with other spiritual warfare intercessors, this couldn’t have happened yet.

Dave:

It’s a tragedy that well; it’s a side-track, a path off into the boonies that Satan has people following to divert them from the truth.For example, Youth with a Mission has been heavily involved with this.John Dawson of Youth with a Mission has written a book for example, Taking Our Cities for God: How to Break Spiritual Strongholds.Pastor Jack Hayford, who has had such seminars at Church on the Way, writes in the foreword, “This is a book of Holy Spirit insight into the toughest problems we face on this planet today.”And in the book, Dawson says, “The demonic strongholds that bind our urban populations have power, but we can overthrow them.This section lays out a five-fold approach to bringing down our cities strongholds.”As a matter of fact, they haven’t brought down one stronghold of one city.C. Peter Wagner claims that while he was in Manila the Lord spoke to him and said, “I want you to take leadership in the area of territorial spirits.”And he goes on and says, “I became the coordinator of the international spiritual warfare network,” which you were referring to Tom.

Tom:

Dave let me interject this.You just said earlier, “Where do you find this in scripture?”Why didn’t Paul do these things?And of course they said well it wasn’t the right time and so on.But here is information that they are receiving that you don’t find in scripture which brings up their doctrine of which we would call extrabiblical revelation.And they make a distinction.They have a doctrine which separates—takes two Greek words: Rhema and logos.And in those they believe, they teach that there is a distinction between the two which there really is very small, they are used interchangeably throughout the scriptures, but here’s the way they present it: Rhema is hearing from God.Logos is the written word.Rhema is God speaking right to your heart so this communication that C. Peter Wagner supposedly got in Manila, this was rhema.Rhema teaching and rhema information.

Dave:

Yes, Tom it must be thirty years ago that the Assemblies of God came out with the White Paper pointing out that there is no difference between rhema and logos.These are used alternatively in the scriptures to indicate the same thing.

Tom:

But look at the problems it presents.If I come to you and I say Dave, this is what I heard from God, this was God’s rhema, this spoke to my heart and now I don’t just tell you this is just a subjective experience that I had, but I’m laying out doctrine, I’m laying out techniques, I’m laying out methodologies in order to get involved in something that God’s Word says nothing about it, but it is contrary to much of what we find.

Dave:

I would have to call them doctrines of devils because much of it they get from, they say the demons themselves are talking to them and telling them their techniques and this becomes the basis for much of this spiritual warfare.

Tom:

Dave, we’re out of time right now, but we’re going to get after this next week, because lots of stuff is going on in the church that ought not to be