The Believer's Guide to Spiritual Warfare

By Tom White and Bruce Wilkinson

People who are in trouble must discern the source of the problem. A correct assessment of the problem's origins is the first step toward responding well and resolving the situation. Is the issue explainable by natural causes? If not, it is likely that the believer is under spiritual attack.

The Believer's Guide to Spiritual Warfare is a practical guide to overcoming the forces of the world, the flesh, and the devil that come against believers' personal lives, families, vocations, and ministries. The Holy Spirit is ready and willing to free Christians from spiritual attack, and this essential handbook will help readers access that power. They will learn to discern the source of an attack, free themselves and others from spiritual bondage, and pray effectively to protect their homes, businesses, churches, and ministries from the forces of evil. The Believer's Guide to Spiritual Warfare goes beyond theory to equip believers with simple, effective tools and techniques for winning victory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Apr 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781441269096

Tom White

Tom White has been an Apache Hadoop committer since February 2007, and is a member of the Apache Software Foundation. He works for Cloudera, a company set up to offer Hadoop support and training. Previously he was as an independent Hadoop consultant, working with companies to set up, use, and extend Hadoop. He has written numerous articles for O'Reilly, java.net and IBM's developerWorks, and has spoken at several conferences, including at ApacheCon 2008 on Hadoop. Tom has a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge and a Master's in Philosophy of Science from the University of Leeds, UK.

Book preview

Jabez

Preface

I am a graduate of the ill-famed high school class of 1965. If ever there was a period of American history that could be explained in terms of spiritual warfare, the mid-1960s qualifies. More was happening during those years than meets the analytical eyes of sociologists and political scientists. Social violence, an unwinnable foreign war, a radical shift in values, and an influx of philosophies and gurus from the East entered our culture through music, media and mind-bending drugs.

New openness to the teachings of spiritualism, astrology, Zen Buddhism and Hinduism prepared the way for the current popularity of New Age religions and practices. A line from one popular song conjured up images of the shift in the collective consciousness: This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius. It was apparent to me then, and it is clearer to me now, that there indeed were invisible spiritual forces at work.

During the early 1960s, growing up in the suburbs of Rochester, New York, my life was relatively normal until five untimely deaths crashed into my world, three personal, two cultural. By age 14, my best friend was my cousin Larry, a brilliant, promising student at the University of Rochester. We hiked together, went to movies, did archery and talked honestly about deep things. But I recall my parents talking about Larry being depressed, confused. Well, genetic roulette, schizophrenia, had landed on my friend. Of course no one talked openly about psychiatric illness back then. It was misunderstood and embarrassing. Then, one morning, I was awakened by agonized sounds outside my bedroom door. Larry had taken his life. My world would never be the same. Where did he go? How does God deal with people who kill themselves? Was he in purgatory? Was he at peace?

Soon after this trauma, I was sitting in the last row, third seat from the left, in my Introduction to Biology class at the Harley School, when news of John Kennedy’s assassination came over the loud speaker. As with everyone, a chill and a wave of fear shot through my body. But for me, just more questions.

In the summer of 1964, I was just beginning to experience a deeper level of openness and bonding with my father. John Gordon White was a banker, with a stellar reputation throughout New York and New England. His was a gentle, giving soul. One of his highest joys was serving on the board of the Sunshine Camp, improving the lives and futures of retarded children. He was treasurer of our church, and personal confidant to our pastor. I was just beginning to discover the treasure I had in my earthly father. In October, he went into the hospital for a simple hernia repair, and returned home. I came home from school that afternoon to hear him moaning in pain—a blood clot. At the hospital that night, the doctors mistakenly overmedicated him for the clot, he stroked, clung to life for a few hours, then passed. A vivid memory will never leave me: my sister and me standing at my dad’s bedside, his brain impaired but his face radiant as he looked at his two youngest children. Why did this happen? Where did he go? I found no satisfactory answers to these troubling questions.

A year later, on top of all this pain and perplexity, I came home for freshman year Christmas break, our second holiday without Dad in the house. Hard enough, right? We got a call early Christmas morning. Our pastor had hanged himself in the church basement. On top of his own battle with depression, the agony of the loss of his confidant, my father, was too much. He had also been processing hard issues with the church board. In spite and despair, he chose Christmas morning to make his exit.

So, layered over the top of my own angst was a disillusioning experience with organized Christianity, what the Bible describes as the form of religion devoid of the reality of the presence of Jesus Christ. Our pastor’s suicide was a last straw. I slogged through three years of college in the discipline of sociology, analyzing most everything that goes wrong with life: dysfunctional families, racial injustice, crime.

In terms of the growing angst and stress of American culture, the spring of 1968 brought another devastating blow to my emotional journey. In April, Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down on a balcony in Memphis. In June, Robert Kennedy, a promising presidential candidate, was assassinated in Los Angeles. As I attempted to finish my junior year at Hobart College, my layers of disillusionment were quickly deepening. Increasingly, I was grappling with the gnawing reality that there was no one to talk to, no one with answers. I was thrust into an existential wilderness.

With a growing list of questions, and inadequate answers, I bailed out of college in May 1968, and moved to Greenwich Village, a likely beginning for a bona fide spiritual seeker. I sought out spiritualists, attended an occasional séance and began playing around with Ouija boards. Over time my search became more intentional. I spent time with a Tibetan Buddhist monk in Vermont, intrigued with his words but turned off by his outright denial of a personal God. I discovered Baba Ram Dass in Boston (formerly Richard Alpert, Timothy Leary’s Harvard associate), attending his lectures and reading his books on enlightenment. Dropping into New Age bookstores, I discovered writings dictated by a so-called ascended master that offered an extensive blueprint for the coming of the New Age. The author spoke of the plan to place proponents of the New Consciousness at high levels of government, economic and educational institutions in preparation for worldwide political and religious unity. At that time, the oneness of all world religions and the growth of a global community seemed lofty goals. I was enticed by the idea of the unity of all religious expressions. It was common to hear this expressed: There are many roads that lead up the one mountain to the summit of reality. Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed are all brothers, enlightened avatars (saviors) bringing the same message, just in different packages.

I became intrigued with esoteric astrology, a pseudo science that presumes a direct electromagnetic influence of astral bodies over our personalities and destinies. Having a knack for this, I learned how to draw up and read astrological charts. I set up formal appointments to give fellow seekers readings.

But through these many exposures the questions about the meaning of life and death and the way to find true peace with God nagged at my soul. I also experienced threatening times when a personal power of deception was unmistakably real. With a measure of ignorance mixed with youthful folly, I pushed open doors to the supernatural, coming near death several times. Yet in every encounter, I had the sense of protection surrounding and sustaining me, drawing me forward. John Wesley crafted the phrase prevenient grace, an unmerited favor of God that guides a seeking soul prior to salvation. That point finally came at the end of a long, desperate journey from Kennebunkport, Maine, to Bellingham, Washington. I was working as a chef at the Captain’s Landing, a half-mile from George and Barbara Bush’s summer residence, and hitting bottom. On the road west with friends, we heard the forecast for severe thunderstorms in central New York, and passed up Woodstock, the classic cultural denouement for my generation.

When I reached the West Coast in August 1969, the Lord sovereignly apprehended me. I’m a product of the Jesus Movement, a powerful work of the Holy Spirit that brought many of my messed-up peers into the kingdom of God. In October 1969, I met Harlie Goodwin, a former pastor turned prison minister. For two months I served as his chauffeur, cruising Washington and Oregon in a 1959 white Pontiac. In and out of prisons and speaking engagements, this real-deal man of God listened to me, loved me and gently led me to the Savior. Staring out my bedroom window at Harlie’s apple orchard, I made an agreement with my new Master: Lord, the devil nearly destroyed my life. If You ever choose to use me to help others be free of his deception, I’m Your man. At times in this ministry, when I have pondered the question, Why would anyone choose to do this? I remember that moment and the personal commitment I made to serve the King at any cost.

After graduating from Asbury Theological Seminary, in 1975, I traveled and taught with Overseas Crusades (now OC International), a mission committed to equipping the church and discipling nations. From 1977 to 1983, I was involved in local church ministry in Corvallis, Oregon, where I began my practice of deliverance prayer and emotional healing. Then in 1983, the Lord gave me the vision and faith to launch Frontline Ministries. Our specialty is to equip professional and lay workers to function with accurate and balanced discernment in the practice of spiritual authority. Our vision is to promote the practice of prayer that releases divine power to set captives free from oppressive darkness, and to heal emotional and psychological wounds. Much of this book has emerged from spiritual warfare seminars given for churches and Christian organizations, and from hands-on ministry in the trenches. I hope to provide you with the insight and instruction necessary for living triumphantly in the days ahead.

Since the original writing of this book, I have lived an additional 20 years of helping to build increased unity, prayer and collaborative mission in Christ’s Body in cities and nations. In 1989, I found myself pondering this question: Lord, I understand how You deliver individuals, churches and mission organizations from the wiles of the evil one. Do You deliver cities from the predominating influence of principalities and powers? Thus, in this revision, I bring to the table a wider discernment related to the complete unity Jesus asked His Father to provide for those who follow Him, and what He really meant by this portion of His priestly intercession: My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one (John 17:15).

In the first three chapters of The Believers Guide to Spiritual Warfare, I provide an understanding of spiritual warfare that is biblical and foundational. If you find yourself engaged in an immediate circumstance of warfare, you may want to drop in as needed to chapters 5 to 7, in which I deal with the practicalities of spiritual conflict and offer some solutions. The diagnostic assessment grid outlined in chapter 7 may be the most helpful, user-friendly tool in this book. In chapter 10, I address some of the most common warfare scenarios, which may be directly relevant to your situation. In chapter 11, I offer an illuminating look at spiritual warfare that occurs in the context of a city or region, while in chapter 12 I respond to specific questions that I have been asked during the course of my 40 years of ministry.

I thank God for His special gifts to me. My wife, Terri, has been an unceasing source of encouragement, insight and intercession for me and for the ministry. We walk this path together. We are grateful for the inestimable value of longstanding friends and supporters who have stood with us for more than 30 years. And we are profoundly indebted to the Frontline Prayer Team, an email list of prayer warriors. Without the undergirding of friends and intercessors, this ministry could not have been sustained.

1

Getting Prespective

At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps.

MATTHEW 25:1 - 4

In October 1989, I was preparing for a seminar in Minneapolis. The night before leaving, I didn’t sleep very well. But just before the alarm went off at 3:45, I had a dream, a timely gift from the Spirit. I was boarding a school bus with other Christians—some familiar, some strangers. We were quiet and deliberate as we hurriedly entered the bus. Small groups spontaneously came together in clusters and began to pray. The door closed and the bus sped off into the streets of a large city, dodging cars and pedestrians at breakneck speed, yet with no threat of danger. We climbed a hill and came to a garbage dump. A hole opened in the midst of heaps of trash. The bus backed into the opening. As we backed in, I looked up to see an enormous stone cathedral, and suddenly we were surrounded by the presence of God. No one had to guess what we were there to do. We began to pray for the power of God’s Spirit to orchestrate an awakening in the Church, to strengthen its leaders and begin a worldwide harvest.

I do not claim this dream to be a vision or a revelation. It was a personal communiqué from God to me that was profoundly real and relevant, an affirmation of the priority of the hour: This is a time to watch and pray.

I feel called to pray with others for the awakening of the Church and to take a strong stand against enemy resistance. The Church has an opportunity to participate with the Lord in His mighty plans. He is raising an army anointed with spiritual authority to minister grace in the midst of the chaos of human sin. He builds a cathedral of prayer and praise right in the midst of man’s folly.

At the Lausanne II Congress on World Evangelization in Manila, in July 1989, the statement was made that for the first time in the history of the Church we are consciously and corporately aware of a worldwide movement of prayer that is petitioning God for His power to penetrate the final strongholds of unbelief and rebellion with the gospel. In May 2005, I found myself with more than 100,000 believers in a soccer stadium in Jakarta, Indonesia, with an additional 20,000 outside. We were kicking off the beginning of the Global Day of Prayer (GDOP) in the epicenter of the largest Muslim nation on earth. When we sang How Great Thou Art, each one in his native tongue, it seemed as though a beacon of light ascended from the center of that stadium, reaching around the planet. Here’s the key verse of the GDOP movement: For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea (Hab. 2:14). I believe that we are privileged to witness the literal fulfillment of this grand prophecy. Truly, this is a season to watch and pray.

The Big Picture

Imagine Christ’s agenda for the Church prior to His return. No doubt He will purify His chosen to reflect His glory. He will surely test the fiber of our faith through trial. In the face of Satan’s delusions, He might sovereignly restore supernatural grace and power to His people for a season of unprecedented revival and harvest. We are seeing an amazing stirring among young people to pray and believe God for miracles. Local Houses of Prayer are springing up worldwide

God is clearly preparing Kingdom servants to meet the challenges ahead. In cities around the world, we are witnessing an increase of oneness and health in Christ’s Body across lines of theology, race, gender and generation. We are seeing a measurable increase of fervent, united prayer, with hands-on and compassion-filled deeds following. In the face of natural calamities and turmoil among the nations, our sovereign God is restoring the fullness of grace, gifts, wisdom and authority required to face a foe who knows his time is short. For sure, one aspect of the Lord’s agenda for the Church is for His people to understand spiritual warfare—to learn to discern and deal with the subtleties of our archenemy.

Overtly, we face a flood of immorality, violence and a vast array of behaviors destructive to human dignity. Covertly, we find seemingly endless psycho-spiritual groups that deny the gospel and deify humanity. And the god of this world promotes cultural values that glorify greed and idolize the pursuit of personal pleasure. So what is the child of light to do? Too often the Church is reactive in her response. Instead, the role of the redeemed is to be courageously proactive, implementing strategies that penetrate and weaken the influence of evil.

The role of the redeemed is to be courageously proactive, implementing strategies that penetrate and weaken the influence of evil.

Satan’s chief aim in this world is to divert people from coming to know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. Even now, Satan is motivated by the pride and jealousy that prompted his initial rebellion (see Isa. 14:12-14; Ezek. 28:11-19). It is no mystery that at some point, God will allow His adversary to construct a powerful delusion (2 Thess. 2:11) accompanied with supernatural signs and wonders designed to deceive and bring damnation to all who refuse to embrace the truth.

Here’s our challenge: Those who are awake and alert in Christ, endowed with discernment and wisdom, must recognize that our archenemy is staging a strategic move to deceive and destroy people. The role of the redeemed is to wake up, sound a call to arms and actively wage war against these schemes in the name and power of our Redeemer. Our redemptive purpose is not to prevent the final manifestation of evil, but to co-labor with the Holy Spirit, setting lost souls free from Satan’s snares. I believe that we are seeing the fulfillment of the Lord’s word through Daniel, describing the time of the end, when the wicked will continue to be wicked (Dan. 12:10), but also when those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever (Dan. 12:3).

Discerning the Anti-Semitic, Antichrist Spirit

It is vital to grasp a broad understanding of the roots and nature of spiritual warfare. I encourage you to give careful attention to the remainder of this chapter, as we unpack a core, biblical theology of evil. The Word of God reveals that there were two injections of the toxic poisons of pride and rebellion into the creation: one was prehistoric; the other historic.

When Jesus’ disciples returned rejoicing about their authority over demons, Jesus made a fascinating comment: I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven (Luke 10:18). As the eternally existent Son of God, I believe He was referencing the prehistoric fall of Lucifer, the archangel. Revelation 12:4 further confirms that one-third of the angelic creation participated in the coup and were like wise banished from heaven. In two unique, prophetic passages that refer to both natural and supernatural powers, Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 provide further light on

Reviews for The Believer's Guide to Spiritual Warfare

[Peter Murphy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Worth reading to those suffering psychic (possibly demonic) attacks, those interested in deliverance ministry, or those needing an understanding of how the hidden enemy works and what to do about it. Good Scriptural support, but there were a couple of instances where key points were lacking. For instance, 1John 4 in regards to spiritual discernment, and a caution against burning malificium (which might have a curse against burning) as a means of disposal weren't brought up.