• The non-believers of spiritual warfare: This group of people do not believe in the scriptures throughout the New Testament that discuss the subject. Many of these people who hold to this belief are cessasationalist in viewpoint or they believe that either fate, luck, circumstance, or poor personal choices determine all outcomes of life. The tires need to be replaced, it's about time; The child rebels against authority, smokes pot, and hates God, he will grow out of this phaze, etc.
• Balanced, Middle-of-the-road: This group of people believe in the scriptures throughout the New Testament that discuss the subject. However, many of these people who hold to this viewpoint discern between a poor personal choice or a spiritual attack and after discerning what is the root cause of a problem in their life, take the appropriate action of rectifying the poor choices or perform Godly Spiritual warfare. The dog discovers the gate on the fenced in back yard is not properly fastened and opens the gate, runs in the street, and gets hit by a car, my fault for failing to be responsible enough to check to see if the gate is locked. A witch pronounces a curse on you and bad things start happening, time to do Godly spiritual warfare.
• The obsessed with spiritual warfare: This group of people believe that life is supposed to be positive and a paved road at all times. When life does not turn out that way, then there is some demon to blame for their problems whether it is based on a poor personal choice or a real spiritual attack. Everyone who disagrees with their thinking is full of demons and need demons casted out of them. They walk around life in a constant state of paranoia always looking for evil to expose (when if one waits, evil usually exposes itself) searching for a battle to fight looking for demons and Satans behind every tree and under every rock and bed. The ten year old car with 250,000 miles breaks down, demons; The heater in the church breaks down, demons; People leave the church, demons (and also depending on the person involved can be viewed as the "purging of the last days remnant"); The preacher gets sick, demons (but you get sick, confess your hidden sin); The grass stains do not come out of your favorite pair of pants, demons.

There have been numerous books written on the subject that had stirred controversy in their approach, from War On The Saints by Jesse-Penn Lewis, The Believer's Authority by Ken Hagan, Pigs In The Parlor by Frank and Ida Mae Hammond, The Three Battlegrounds by Francis Frangipane, to The Bondage Breaker by Neil Anderson. These books have offered up some interesting revelations of Scripture while also offering up some courses of action that are purely speculative instead of being backed up by Scripture. Where some of the material has been balanced, some has been so far from Scripture that people have ran away with these concepts written and formed their own spiritual warfare philosophies. We saw many within the early Charismatic, Shepherding, and Word of Faith movements teach that demons can possess Christians and demons can only leave a person if the person regurgitates. We have seen books that have showed us how to "map" our cities to eliminate evil, change the names of schools, streets, and parks that are named after Confederate war generals, put the abortion clinic out of business, and ensure the election of a particular candidate, etc. We now have a global mapping center in Colorado Springs, Colorado (the United States Spiritual Warfare Network which happens to be located on "Garden of The Gods Road" in Colorado Springs, CO. in the "Josiah" building owned by Cindy Jacobs and down the street from Dutch Sheets' church) that "maps" the world and tells people which demon(s) controls what city and which specific demon controls what neighborhood.

We have spiritual mappers who will come to your town to "map" and remove the demons from the city. We have people who will rent an airplane and fly over the city to "cast out the prince of the power of the air". We have people who come in and convince us that we can "sing" ourselves to spiritual warfare, "prophecy" ourselves to spiritual warfare, "dance" ourselves to spiritual warfare and the latest fad, "tribal drumming" (yes I was asked to join a group which I declined since I have played percussion in the past) where drummers act like the Native Americans and beat "rhythms in the Spirit" on congas, bongas, etc to "drive out demons". There is a new concept called "harp and bowl" where Christians perform constant weekend worship in warfare sessions where they claim that their worship in warfare is driving out demons. I have seen some of these sessions online on the Internet and I saw and heard some bizarre things such as the "Spiritual rain dance" where these people danced in worship for the "rain" to come down. I've seen people online play worship music and "ra-ta-ta" for minutes claiming their spiritual warfare was "clearing the air and cleaning the heavenlies" in India for God to destroy the Taj Mahal and therefore, destroy Hinduism. Warfare done from one corner of the world for another corner of the world to clear the air "taking territory in the Spirit" but yet, they refuse to send people there to minister to the dying, poor, and spiritually deceived. It's amazing that these "harp and bowl" worshippers do this to "be ye seperate from the world" but act like the world with the "Christianization" of the pagan Native American rituals as worship and warfare has became the totem pole they dance around for the "wind", the "rain", etc.

Apart from standard worship songs sung, many worship leaders were making up lines and singing the same lines over and over again almost like a mantra and almost sounding "tantric" in nature until they "received" the next line that rhymed. You had numerous musicians play numerous chords and beats until the worship leader either yelled the song or played the guitar or keyboards in a way that told the musicians which keys to play in. It was almost like listening to "Karoke In The Spirit" as the same songs were sung over and over for fifteen to thirty minutes. One got the impression that they had to perform music for three hours and were looking for ways to kill time. One of these "sessions" I saw online off and on one weekend was so obsessed with doing spiritual warfare for New Mexico from Wisconsin that they forgot to perform "covering warfare" over the Real Audio server that crashed. I mentioned this in one of their forums only to get the "you AntiChrist", "the demons do now want God to be heard and we felt the oppression", and "this is so popular that we exceeded our licenses for Real Audio". NO, you are mistaken. I have built Real Servers before and if the server maxes out on the licenses for listeners, you receive a window from Real Server stating that the server had maxed out their server/listener licenses and they encourage you to e-mail the server administrator to tell him to where the server administrator would purchase more licenses for his server. I have numerous times attempted to listen to CBC Radio One (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's classical music station) online in Real Audio and gotten that statement. The server either crashed because of hardware / software failure, bandwidth failure, or you did not have enough high end hardware to supply the streaming media to the demand of viewers.

We saw evangelism warfare in the 1980's when a man by the name of Larry Lea (who wrote an excellent book that became formulatic called "Could You Not Tarry One Hour") perform 'global warfare' at 5:30 AM each morning calling out souls from the north, south, east, and west per a passage in Isaiah and his followers and Spiritual warriors were known for wearing camoflauge and had dog tags stating they were in "The Lord's Army". A friend in a forums told me about about an intercessor used to in the church walk around and stare at people because there were "porcupines in the spirit" in the midst of their congregation and they needed discernment and dealt with. Another "ex intercessor" in a church e-mailed me about their "purging of the church of demons" before the pastor got to the pulpit. If you discern an evil spirit on something (other than an human being) cast the spirit out and if it will not go, burn it much like people did with the possessions of those who died from Bubonic Plague in the Dark Ages!!! Musicians told that because they missed a Sunday the warfare increased because the musician was "out of his place" as they have a so-called negative prophecy that they try so hard to fit into a circumstance to call it "true" when in all reality, it was more of a "Scapegoat in the Spirit" bnecause some person failed to meet the pastor's expectations.

In many charismatic churches today, there is an overemphaisis to do something "in the Spirit". To accomplish something "in the Spirit" equals progress. One church encourages people in their congregation to be a "Spiritual homemaker" to open up their homes for fellowship and discipleship while another church "ronda-konda-shondas" against a "homemaker spirit" because this "Spirit" caused people to stay at home with their families instead of being in church meetings five times a week. Many churches after the 9-11-01 tragedy used this tragedy to promote "fighting against spiritual terrorism". One big time "revival church" in Missouri went as far as to state that God told them that people who disagreed with them were "Spiritual Terrorists". I have met people who constantly "groan" in the spirit claiming that they always discerned wickedness and was always at war. Many of these people literally screamed at demons claiming "victory" but always having sore throat problems due to the yelling. Many people online talk about "birthing" in the spirit where women get into birth position and moan and travail claiming they are giving "birth in the Spirit" to a new work of God. The scriptures talk about travailing but to actually get into a birthing position to "birth" in the Spirit? A well known prophet has recently set up a webpage asking people to send him money to "invest" in "spiritual war bonds" to fight the "spiritual terrorism" in America. People who sent money in or attended his conferences and contributed finacially recieved paper certificates denoting their "Spiritual War Bonds" and their participation in an indirect way to the spiritual war in the heavenlies. How tragic.

Another "catch phraze" used in the Pentecostal / Charismatic circles in the term "drunk in the Spirit". This term is used to explain manifestations where the Holy Spirit has touched people to the point where they appear not be sober. The experience which is used to give validity to it is that found in the book of Acts chaper 2 verses 6-21 where it states:

Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this? OTHERS MOCKING SAID, THESE MEN ARE FULL OF NEW WINE. But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: FOR THESE ARE NOT DRUNKEN, AS YE SUPPOSE, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come: And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

We see that the Holy Spirit had come down upon the people in the Upper Room and the speaking in tongues was being heard throughout the city. Many mocked the believers and stated that they were drunk with new wine but Peter stood up and told the men of Judea and Jerusalem that these men were not drunk because it was in the morning time but were the fulfilling of the prophecies written years ago by the prophet Joel. See, natural man thought these men were drunk physically, but Peter revealed that they were infilled with the Holy Ghost. Many today instead of just calling the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit try to parallel the workings of the Holy Spirit with a natural happening and deem it as "(fill in the blank) in the spirit". You see, these people did not stagger around, have the smell of beer, nor spoke in gibberish. These people were physically coherent and spoke in tongues understood by the other people present. Therefore, this mentality of being "drunk in the Spirit" has no place especially when the scriptures tell us to be sober and vigiliant. However, the touching by and the infilling of the Holy Spirit has it's place because the Scriptures clearly discuss this. I have heard stories of people in the Toronto blessing brag about being "drunk in the Spirit" so much that they drove their cars home erratically that police officers pulled them over expecting a DUI and these people brag about it. A renewal preacher loves to call himself the "Holy Ghost Bartender" when people get filled with the Holy Spirit and he yells out "Fill (pronounced "phil" in his South African accent) and laughs when they get drunk and laughs at the way these people are manifesting, stumbling, and are incoherent in speech. What a tragedy.

A recent article in Charisma News Service told of a Pentecostal Church in Cleveland, TN that was having a baptism service when suddenly, people started fainting, getting dizzy, and vomiting. One woman fainted after she was baptized. The pastor thought per his own words that "We thought it was an ecstasy that happens when the Spirit takes you all of a sudden. We noticed more people were falling dizzy." It turned out that the chimney vent for the heater was clogged up not allowing carbon monoxide fumes emitted by the heater to vent to the outside world. The carbon monoxide present due to the lack of ventilation sent 46 of 90 church members to area hospitals for treatment. Most of the people were treated and released, while some were kept longer for observation. But all are expected to recover fully from potentially fatal levels of carbon monoxide. Amazing!!! People almost died because someone misinterpreted carbon monoxide poisioning as a "move of the Spirit".

Austin Miles, a former circus ringmaster turned Assemblies of God preacher who ended up leaving the denomination and Christianity to come back to a more balanced Christianity years later told of this experience in his controverisal best seller Don't Call Me Brother:

"....Gathered together at that retreat center was a group called Camps Farthest Out (CFO). They were the most contentious people I'd ever encountered. A lady from that group gave me a book of the group's teachings. The book described in minute detail how baptism was conducted in this group. A gourd of water with a hose attached was hung from a tree limb out in the woods. The other end of the hose was inserted in the rectum of the person being baptized. If the appropriate prayer activity accompanied the resulting enema, demons would be washed out of the body at the same time."

Bizarre. I thought the concept of regurgitating in a trash can as a sign of deliverance from demons was the worst thing I had heard or seen but this story takes the grand prize.

Please Click here for part three of this article.