Spiritual Strongholds Part 3

One of the difficulties around understanding spiritual warfare is that the Bible says so very little about it! If the scriptures have everything we need for salvation and life we can only assume that the Spirit does not require us to know that much about spiritual warfare. What we do need to understand is the victory Christ has won for us and to live in that. However, there are tantalising little insights that scripture gives us that point to certain realities of which we have only a limited understanding. One of those insights is in regard to how spiritual strongholds can affect whole geographical areas.

One of the things scripture hints at is that the demonic powers are structured in some sort of hierarchy. This would make absolute sense because we know that angels seem to have a hierarchy. In Jude v9 we read a reference to Michael as an ‘Archangel’ or ‘chief angel’ and as demons are simply fallen angels it would seem logical that a similar hierarchy would also transfer in their fallen state. When Paul talks about our spiritual battle with ‘principalities and powers’ there is a suggestion that this refers to levels of demonic structure.

There are also intriguing references in Daniel about angels fighting against spirits who appear to have influence of a geographical area (Daniel 10, 12). This has led to a train of thought that there are ‘territorial spirits’ who are able to influence and even control a geographical area. There is a lot that rings true about this idea, we only have to look at certain areas or cities to see that there can be certain values or beliefs that have a spiritual stranglehold on that area. However, despite the fact that many books have been written on this, we have to be really careful about how far we follow this train of thought, as the Bible is not definitive on ‘territorial spirits’ at all. It also has no record of Christians dealing directly with a ‘higher level’ demon who would have influence over an area.

Are there ways of understanding how the demonic influences geographical areas? My next post or two will offer a suggestion.