This comic cosmic makes the spirit realm appear very "spooky" (the "spooky spiritual") in appearance. Christianity has been very guilty of emulating the world with cheap substitutes of what the world offers instead of just plain giving the people what they really need, Jesus. Instead of giving people what the really need, we instead turn Christianity into a "catch-phraze Christianity" where doctrine and theology has been summarized into these phrazes that rhyme. If you analyze many of these Christianized catch-phrazes, many of them are based on a conditional response and when one further studies what will happen if one does not conditionally respond to the theology in the "catch-phrazes", something bad is bound to happen. Therefore, these catch-phrazes appear to be just mere "spiritual supersitions". Where a regular superstitious person will not "step on a crack, break mother's back" and "crack a mirror, seven years of bad luck", the "spiritual superstitious" (usually in Word of Faith circles) is always certain to follow their spiritual superstitions of grossly misinterpreted verses such as "name it and claim it", "I refuse to receive", and "I confess, theefore I possess". Where the physically superstitions would refuse to walk on a crack in the sidewalk thinking that one day, their mother's back will be broken, the spiritually superstitious will go out in greed to "name it and claim it" in fear of being seen by their fellow faith friends as "lacking faith", "hidden sin issues", etc. The Christianity of the "spiritual superstitious" has been made into a "tribal religion" of where in the pagan tribal religions, improperly doing or failure to properly do certain things causes the lightning to flash from heaven to strike the disobedient. In the 'tribal religion' of "spiritual superstition", failure to perform catch-phraze Christianity will bring down curses, doom, etc that is your fault. To disagree with catch-phraze Christianity and 'spiritual superstition' causes "victory voodoo" done "in the name of God" to come down as people speak and pray damnation, curses, hellfire, and destruction over the people who disagree claiming God's punishment for "touching His annointed".

Many people are getting disturbed by the many "(fill in the blanks) in the Spirit", the "warfare over some unseen force", the "always in need of warfare and repentance" that many have "discerned". In fact, Mario Murillo wrote an entire chapter about this issue in his best seller Fresh Fire entitled "'Honey, I Shrunk The Devil', The Fatal Attraction to A Spiritual Warfare Fad" over ten years ago where he warned about the "counterfeit spirit of spiritual warfare" and how if we are not careful, spiritual warfare will turn into a triviatized version of the game Risk. Many are now asking the same questions as they see crime rise in their city after the "spiritual mappers and warriors" were paid big money by churches to "expel the demons" from the city, drive stakes at the borders of the city, one person even went as far as to place "no demons allowed" signs at the entrance of the city limits, etc. Many are asking why the constant 24x7 calls of "if we just repent", our lives and cities will be better has not materialized. There is a time for repentance but as the spiritual mappers and warriors get further obsessive to find a war to fight by looking for evil, they always find something to "repent" over. Where the educational system had the three foundational "R's" comsisting of "readin", "ritin", and "rithmetic", the spiritual warfare people who are obsessed with the entire concept have their unwritten laws of the "three R's":

• Rebellion: Everyone who disagrees with the spiritual warfare person is considered to be in rebellion. Since disagreeing with the warfare teacher places you in their mind as "rebellious", they take the first part of the scripture located in 1 Samuel 15:23 that states "For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft..." and interpret 1 Samuel 15:23 as saying that person who disagrees is in witchcraft and therefore exhibits witch like traits. In fact, many of these warfare teachers claim to be the experts on rebellion while rebelling from God themselves. If you further question and further disagree to the point of dispute and argument, then the warfare teacher tries to reverse the debate to win the argument by saying something similar to "see the spirit of rebellion manifesting in the one that disagrees?" Then the act of warfare, the tongues of "ra-ta-ta", and the rest of the hoopla associated with it begins for the "deliverance from witchcraft" and exorcism of the demons inside of the one who disagrees with the warfare teacher. Rebellion and demons is the spiritual scapegoat of why a church is going through a tough time. Someone is rebelling by not putting enough money in the offering plate, the family is not in the church every time the doors are opened five times a week, someone voted for the Democrat in the last election, someone lacked faith, someone rebelled by dropping their guard allowing sin and/or sickness to enter their body, etc. In their eyes, someone is always rebelling against something.
• Repentance: As the obsession for "looking for evil" begins to further manifest, there is always some sin whether secret or in public to expose to the church. As the sin becomes exposed, there is this constant call to repentance as the congregation is always compared to the Israelites in the wilderness in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy while teaching the blessings of the New Testament church. When blessings flow out, it is always by the teachings of the New Testament in the Amplified version of the Bible but when it's time to "expose sin", then every Old Testament verse in the King James Version using the Old English Shakesperean verbage of 'thees and thous' dealing with judgement and people (I guess the Old English words 'thees and thous' sounds more 'holy', instills more fear, and more 'authoritative') dying because of some sin is brought out and over interpreted as people are labeled as "spiritual Onan's", "spiritual Achan's", "spiritual Saul's", etc. while all this time being a "spiritual Nadab and Abihu" lighting strange fires unto the Lord calling it pure and holy. In the eyes of those obsessed with exposing sin and repentance, there is always some sin to repent for and after a while, many either feel like they will never be considered pleasing and acceptable in the eyes of the Lord or they leave the dysfunction of a scripture took out of content and context and go to a healthy church. In fact, in many warfare teachers, the second "R" of repentance can not take place before one goes through the "formal" process of confessing something that can be seen as the first "R" of rebellion.
• Revival: According to many who are obsessed with this model of spiritual warfare, it is after the first two "R's" of rebellion and repentance is dealt with, then and only then will we see 'revival' in the church and in the life of the individual. Revival is constantly talked about and told it will come. However, in the mentality of the spiritual warfare obsessed, the church never experiences this third stage of 'revival' because there is still some 'rebellion' and 'repentance' that for some reason was never dealt with from their inner child, a new outbreak of rebellion and repentance that has now manifested, or whatever spiritual scapegoat to keep the vicious cycle of killing rebellion and birthing repentance circling. What happens when God sends revival down and circumvents the entire cyclic patterns the spiritual warfare obsessed dictated? You will usually see the spiritual warriors either do two things. The first thing they may do is to try to denounce the 'revival' as being "not of God" and "fleshly manifestations" because they are not in control and fear losing the control and manipulation they have had on the lives of many people. If the first scenerio is not done, then the spiritual warfare obsessed will try to take the claim and glory of the 'revival' away from God by stating "if we had not dealt with the rebellion and done the repentance, revival would have never happened". In their eyes, the revival that God sent down was not because God wanted to pour his Spirit out on all flesh, it was because the people "prepared" by breaking constant rebellion and constantly repented. Then these same people try to dictate God's revival and reinstitute more killing of rebellion and more birthing of repentance stating it's needed to "go to the next level". There is always a next level and it takes more killing of rebellion and birthing of repentance to get there because the 'next level' is seen as the stage of God preparing his spotless bride for the rapture. Therefore, one is indirectly made to feel like that are hindering God from rapturing his church because there is always some sin that needs to be gone before the church is considered to be spotless.

In fact, in their mind (but they deem as their spiritual), the "Spiritual three R's" always have to occur in this order and no deviance as this is the way to find demons and take care of them. In many congregations and in the lives of the obsessed with spiritual warfare, there is no time for family activities, no outreach to the lost, and no fulfillment of the Great Commission because there is always some place to go and some battle to fight. In fact, family activities are either discouraged or family activities have to work around the schedules of the warfare prayers because they see the warfare prayers as "Evangelism" for the lost and as "fulfilling the Great Commission" as the outside world is dying and the inside world is trying to defeat the spirit of drugs on sixth street from the sanctuary located on main street with no outside contact to the "wicked and perverse generation". The five percent of the theology on Spiritual Warfare in the Bible becomes the ninety-nine percent of their belief system.

People, there is a real war in the heavenlies. I have discussed this in times past via articles Warfare Gone Wacko, and Christian Cartography. The scriptures in Ephesians 6, 2 Corinthians 10, and other scriptures not mentioned detail the real war in the heavenlies and the strageties needed for a true believer in Christ to fight the war. In fact, many of these bizarre spiritual warfare strageties actually take our perceptive off the real war at hand. While we stomp, map, wave imaginary swords in the air "clearing the heavenlies", people are dying and Satan is sitting back laughing at it because the church is so focused on trying to spiritualize every earthly event with a spiritual equivalent and find a demon to fight. Satan could easily send many of these "weekend warriors" fleeing like the seven sons of Sceva fled in Acts but by the church addressing real issues with trivial warfare, he is winning the same way in the church like he won the battle with the seven sons of Sceva. This real war must be fought per the real instructions in the real Scriptures.

Please Click here for part four of this article.