Question: Today much is made of "prayer walking," "prayer drives," etc. in communities. Yet the Bible says "enter your closet to pray." Please comment.

Question: Today much is made of "prayer walking," "prayer drives," etc. in communities. Yet the Bible says "enter your closet to pray." Please comment.

Response: The Bible has much to say about prayer, and you will find TBC's comments on those scriptures in the Reprints, which has an index. "Prayer drives...in communities," like the National Day of Prayer, call unsaved to join believers on Christ in prayer, which is like Paul asking fellow Roman citizens to join with the church in prayer-the worst kind of ecumenism.

As for private prayer, Christ said, "Thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men....They have their reward [the praise of men]. But...enter into thy closet...shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly" (Matthew:6:5-6 [5] And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. [6] But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
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Christ does not say that this is the only way to pray but one way to curb our pride. Never does the Bible suggest that certain techniques such as those you mention (and others) are to be adopted because they have any special power with God.

"Prayer walking" is part of the "Spiritual Warfare Movement," which began at the 1989 Lausanne II evangelism conference in Manila attended by 4,000 evangelical leaders from around the world. C. Peter Wagner says, "While in Manila, the Lord [told] me....'to take leadership in the area of territorial spirits....'" This involves "Spiritual Mapping," (to "identify" the demon controlling an area of a city or country in order to "bind" it in the name of Jesus) and a host of other "techniques" that God "revealed" to leaders of this unbiblical movement.

C. Peter Wagner (at that time teaching world missions with John Wimber at Fuller Seminary) became the coordinator of the International Spiritual Warfare Network. To defeat the powers of darkness through strategic "spiritual warfare," special prayer teams were sent to the northern-most, southern-most, eastern-most, and western-most points of every continent. In 1989, YWAM's John Dawson wrote Taking Our Cities for God: How to Break Spiritual Strongholds, giving a "fivefold approach to bringing down our cities' [demonic] strongholds...." In the foreword, Jack Hayford called it "a book of Holy Spirit insight...."

Similar books kept coming off the press. Typical was one edited by Wagner titled Breaking Strongholds in Your City: How to Use Spiritual Mapping to Make Your Prayers More Strategic, Effective, and Targeted. Yet in the 20 years since this movement began, not one city has been "taken for God." Instead, some of the leaders have lost the spiritual battle in their own lives to sexual sins. Yet the books continue to sell and seminars and conferences continue to arouse excitement and anticipation...for how much longer?