Spiritual Warfare and Territorial Spirits (~5.5 MB) - Moriel Ministries

Continued: Feature Articlethat. Once the preaching of the Gospeldeclined in Germany, the ancient territorialspirit resurfaced with a vengeance.The Reformation and Protestantismhad much of its origins in Germany.Luther came from Germany. Then thePietists became spiritually very dry. TheMoravians dissipated. Lutheranism –most of it was taken over by liberal theology– Higher Criticism – that came fromTubingen University in the last century:people who followed the ideas of Bookmanand Wellhausen, the theory of Pentateuchalsources, Higher Criticism, liberaltheology. “The Bible is only history andliterature; it’s not God’s Word.” When liberaltheology and Higher Criticism tookover Protestantism, and evangelical Protestantismdeclined, what happened? Theancient territorial spirits resurfaced andthe Germans did what the Germans alwaysdid before they were Christianized.The Example of BritainLook at Britain. Less than 10% ofthe people attend church on any kindof regular basis. Most people who goto any church will go for rights of passage:sprinkling a baby, a funeral, a wedding,or something like that. That’s whatyou have when the Gospel declines.In the ancient world there were occultistsknown as “Druids” or practitioners ofWicca, the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic folkreligions. Today we call them “New AgeTravelers”; it doesn’t matter. When do theywant to have their festivals? The SummerSolstice, the Vernal Equinox. Where dothey want to have their festivals? Stonehenge,Glastonbury. The police tried to tellthem, ”Listen, we’ve got to stop all thesetraffic jams and destroying these people’sfarms. Can’t you go out to the highlands ofScotland or somewhere where you’re notgoing to hurt anybody?” They said, “No,we have to have it here; it’s our religion.”Once Christianity goes, the ancientterritorial spirits resurface. Once the HolySpirit is grieved, He does not convict inthe same way. And once the governmentstops following God’s principles, it’s goingto begin following other principles.Remember, Parliamentary Democracyworked because it was based more thanany other system of government upon biblicalprinciples. That’s why it worked. Forall the mistakes the Puritans made, theybrought a biblical influence into our modelof democracy. That’s why democracyhas worked so well in the western world,particularly the English-speaking democraciesand countries like Holland. Onceyou take the biblical influence out, theinstitutions based on it begin to go down. Moriel Quarterly • June 2007The school system in England, thestate school system, was born out of theinfluences of Methodism. The TradeUnion movement was born out of theinfluences of Methodism. Building Societieswere born out of the influencesof Methodism, to get housing for the urbanclasses, for the working classes. Thehealth system – born out of the influencesof Methodism and Wesley’s revivals.Once you take Jesus out of something,then the principles go. And once the principlesgo, the health system cracks up, theschool system cracks up, the criminal justicesystem cracks up, and ultimately thegovernment cracks up. Now I’m not denyingthere are plausible, intellectual explanationsfor why a society is going the wayit’s going, but I’m simply saying that underneaththis trend there lie spiritual reasons.I live in a country where the SaudiArabian government and the Kuwaiti government,with the blessings of Her Majesty’sgovernment, fund the construction ofmosques all over the United Kingdom. Butthey will not allow one church to be builtin Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. And the Britishgovernment won’t do anything about it.Today’s SituationWe live in a time when the HolySpirit is being grieved by sin, especiallysin in the church. It’s sin in thechurch that grieves God’s Spirit themost. God is always more grieved byour sin than He is the sin of the unsaved.Secondly, our government hasgone away from the biblical principlesupon which they were based.And thirdly, there’s been a definitetrend away from the preaching of thetrue Gospel in favor of Liberal Protestantism,Higher Criticism, Ecumenism,etc. As a result, the ancientterritorial spirits are resurfacing.In Britain, a lot of the ancient spirits– territorial spirits were involved intribalism. The same influences cause thefootball hooliganism we see today, whenpeople from Liverpool go down to Londonto have riots and throw bottles at eachother (these people don’t even care aboutthe game, they only care about gettingdrunk and having a punch-out). On backof this tribalism, there are sociologicalreasons, but there is a spiritual influencebehind it. Once the Gospel goes down,these ancient territorial spirits will in someway resurface and manifest themselves.Football has replaced church on Sundaysand people give almost a religiouskind of significance to the colors and emblemsof their football teams. And they’llgo to war over it. That’s the same kind oftribal mentality that existed in pre-ChristianEngland. And as the church declines, and asthe Gospel declines, this stuff comes back.The Examples of Yugoslaviaand IrelandYugoslavia is another tragic example.Yugoslavia is where the Roman Empiresplit between the Greek-speaking East andthe Latin-speaking West. It was always thecutting edge between the Roman Catholicworld and the Eastern Orthodox world.The hatred you see between Croats andSerbs has very ancient roots going backbefore the Crusades. But also it was thecutting edge between North and South,between the Muslim world and the Christianizedworld, with the Saracen invasions.Same thing: Serbs and Croats hateeach other, but they both hate the Muslims.There’s something spiritual going on.I was just in Northern Ireland. Thegraffiti on the walls of Northern Irelandin the Protestant and Catholic neighborhoodsin recent years has fewer of thefamiliar figures like King William ofOrange and things like that. You’re seeingmore the ancient Celtic war gods,the war goddess Ulidia: the story of anold hag who demanded the blood of theyoung men to be poured out so the oldhag could prolong her beauty. This wasa Celtic goddess, a war goddess, a semimythicalcharacter. I think it was basedupon someone who existed actually, buthe became almost deified as a war god, asthe war god of Northern Ireland. And thisis what you see on the walls in Belfast.Once again, those ancient gods aredemanding the blood of the sons of Ireland,and they’re getting it. On backof these things are territorial spirits.Why Are They ‘Territorial?’Where do we get this idea of spiritsbeing “territorial”? The first is inDaniel, the principality. The spiritualruler was identified with a principality– a region – the prince of Persia.Another example is the gods of Egypt.The Torah tells us directly that othergods are demons (“shedim” in Hebrew,“daimonoi” in Greek), but the gods ofEgypt are associated with that area, thatgeographical location, in that principality.I lived on Mount Carmel in Galileewhere my children were born. Mount Carmelin the days of Justin Martyr – in theearly church – was a center of Babylonianpriestcraft. We all know what happenedwith the story of Elijah. To this day, in theCarmel forest on the outskirts of the cityof Haifa, you can still see the Canaanite