Wrong Stuggle

While Christians are really stirred up about which of the two sleazy, corrupt and geriatric candidates gets to be president of the United States, they missed a far more important reality. The government-spirits (principalities and powers in the spiritual realms) that tightened their control over the nation over the last four years will maintain their stronghold on the nation for the next four. The powerful spirits of war, violence and power will continue to determine the fate of the nation, regardless of who is president, and a spirit of lies has dug in with them.

Spiritual Authority (7) Dealing with Government Spirits

When the people of a city or nation submit to their political leaders, they give them authority over their lives.  If the powers of evil get to control the people at the top of the political hierarchy, they gain authority over all the people submitted to them.  Concentration of political power leverages the authority of the powers of evil.

The spiritual powers that control political leaders are called government-spirits in the Bible (this is better a translation of the Greek words than the popular expression principalities and powers).  Some, like Prince of Persia, take the name of their nation (Dan 10:20).  They have immense authority on earth, despite their defeat on the cross, because people submit to the leaders controlled by them.  Political leaders have legal authority over their people, so attacking them gives the government-spirits control over cities and nations.

Focusing on individual people is a very inefficient way for the powers of evil to use their shrinking power.  If an evil spirit gains control over one person, it can make that person’s life miserable, but that is all.  By getting control over a political leader, the same spirit can make an entire nation miserable.  The powers of evil amplify their power by attacking people with political authority.

The power of evil is mostly an illusion, but concentrating on a few powerful people has allowed the forces of evil to magnify their pathetic power.  Controlling human political power has amplified their authority out of proportion to their strength.

In the modern world, political power has been centralised and consolidated as never before.  The leader of a modern democratic nation has greater power and authority than an emperor in Old Testament times, because they can control every aspect of life in their city or nation.

The political systems of great nations are extremely dangerous, because one person has control over hundreds of millions of people.  The devil can gain huge power on earth, by deploying a few strong spirits to get control of the president of China, Russia or the United States.  By getting control of these leaders, the government-spirits get authority over everyone submitted to them.  Concentration of human political power gives vast power to the government-spirits that control it.

In an excerpt from chapter 14 of my book Kingdom Authority called Dealing with Government Spirits, I list seven tools for dealing with these powerful spirits.

Spiritual Authority (6) Obstacles to Spiritual Victory

Although Jesus defeated the spiritual powers of evil, they have persisted in power for more than two thousand years. Christians need to understand the reasons why, and realise that it is not always going to be that way.

Scraps of Power
Since the cross, the powers of evil have lived on scraps of authority by retaining control over people who do not believe they are defeated. Two big obstacles allow them to retain authority on earth. These must be removed before the Kingdom can come in its fullness. These two obstacles are described more fully in my article called Obstacles to Spiritual Victory. This article is an excerpt from chapter 14 of my book called Kingdom Authority.

Spiritual Authority (5) Solution

The solution is to form a community that can remain as separate from the power of the political leaders as possible. If a body of believers submit to each and pray for each other, most of the authority in their lives has been given to those believers and to Jesus, so they will be relatively safe. This is why it is so important to form Kingdom Communities.

People living in Kingdom Communities do not need the resources or authority of the state, so political leaders have very little authority over them. They only submit when they are forced to, but they do it unwillingly for the sake of peace. This keeps them relatively free.

The key is to love and serve people. The people you will serve will learn to trust you and will gradually submit to your wisdom. If a group of people are doing this together and submitting to each other, they will relatively free. The greater the love, and the more effective the service (without control), the greater will be the submission, and the greater the authority.

The full series is here.

Spiritual Authority (4) Winning the Victory

We cannot defeat a spirit that we are indirectly submitted to through submitting to leaders. Because were submitted indirectly, the spirit has authority over us, so we cannot tell it what to do. This is why the same government-spirits have remained in control of nations for a long time, despite the prayers of godly Christians. The leaders of the nation have more authority than the godly people praying.

This problem can be beaten in two ways:

• These government-spirits will lose their authority when people stop trusting them and withdraw their submission to them. The book of Revelation describes this happening at a time when the Jews come to faith in Jesus again. Events will occur that destroy the faith that people have in the power of human governments. They will withdraw their submission from the governments that control them. The authority of political power will evaporate. When this authority is withdrawn, the power of government-spirits will collapse, and along with that much of their power of evil spirits over human institutions.

• One thing that can destroy their power is the leaders withdrawing their submission to the government-spirit that controls them. If they repent of the sin that holds them under the Spirit's power, that spirit will lose control over them. Usually, these spirits use pride and love of power and control to keep a hold on political leaders. If the leaders repent of these sins, and in a united way, renounce any activities motivated by those sins, the government-spirit that controlled them loses their power.

This is unlikely to happen in the short-term, because the government spirit and its helpers keep the political leaders under their control. Even if one repents, they others are likely to follow.

Removal of submission destroys authority. The authority of government-spirit can be broken, either by the people withdrawing trust and submission, or the leaders withdrawing submission. The latter is more likely than the former.

Getting into the government is not a solution. People need to compromise with political power to get political power. This compromise would put them under the power of the spiritual powers of evil that control the nation or city, so they would be no better off.

Spiritual Authority (3) Empowered by People

The spirits that control an institution such as a government have been given authority over it by its leaders. When the leaders submit to the leading of evil spirits, they give those spirits authority in their lives. However, because the members of the institutions are submitted to their leaders, the spirits get authority over them too. The spirits have authority over the leaders, who have authority over the people, so the spirits have authority over the people. Put the other way, the people submit to the leaders, who submit to the evil powers, so they are implicitly submitting to the evil powers to, often without realising it.

The only way they can escape from this control is by withdrawing their submission from their leaders. This removes the leader’s authority over them, and eliminates the power of the spirits controlling the leaders, over their lives. The problem is that it is hard to leave a nation-state. The only way to escape the authority of the government is to migrate and go to another nation-state, but that just puts you under the authority of other controlling spirits. If you remain in the nation-state where you were born, then the leaders and the spirits that control them have some authority over you. The best thing is to stand apart as much as possible from the power of the state.

When Christians start praying against the government-spirit that controls their nation the situation gets tricky. They have the authority that Jesus has given them, but his authority is still not recognised in much of the earth. The problem is that if the Christian binds the government-spirit and commands it to leave, the leaders of the nations are speaking words or taking actions that invite the spirit back. One person is saying the spirit must leave, but the leaders are staying it can say. The leaders of the nation have more authority in the nation than the Christian praying, so in these struggles, the leaders win, without realising it, and the government-spirit remains.

Getting lots of Christians to pray against a government-spirit does not make much difference, because all the Christian’s are indirectly under its authority, so they will be unable to defeat him. In these situations, numbers do not count. It is authority that wins the day. One person with authority outweighs hundreds with none. The political leaders have far more authority in their nation or city than any group of leaders, especially if they are submitted to them.

Spiritual Authority (2) Michael and Prince of Persia

The evil spirits that get control of nations are called government-spirits (principalities). The Prince of Persia was a spirit who gained control over Persia in Daniel’s time. This spirit had authority in the Persian empire. He controlled the Persian emperor.

When Daniel prayed, the Prince of Persia was able to hold back the angel that was coming to Daniel with an answer for twenty-one days. This was not because the Prince of Persia was physically stronger, it was because he had authority in Persia where Daniel was living. Daniel was submitted to the ruler of Persia, so he was indirectly submitted to the Prince of Persia (Dan 12-14).

God sent an angel called Michael to assist the angel with the message. They did not win, because two are stronger than one. Rather, Michael is a ruler-angel with authority over the Jewish people. The message the angel had was for the Jewish people. It did not affect the current emperor of Persia, because it applied to the future. It was a religious message rather than a political one. In this context, Michael’s authority was greater than the authority of the Prince of Persia, so the message went through to Daniel.

This was not a power struggle, but an issue of authority. The message was for the Jews, so Michael had more authority over it. The message of this passage is not persistence in prayer, although is important, but understanding authority.

Spiritual Authority (1)

Before engaging in spiritual warfare, we must understand the truth about the reality in which we live. The first of our weapons of spiritual warfare is the belt of truth.

Take your stand with the truth like a belt around your waist (Eph 6:14).

If we don’t understand the truth about spiritual reality, we will lose the battle. If we stand in the truth that God has revealed, we will go onto victory.

The second spiritual weapon is justice.

and putting on the breastplate of justice (Eph 6:14).

To achieve spiritual victory, we must have an understanding of God’s justice as outlined in the law of Moses. If we do not understand the nature of true justice, we will be defeated again and again.

The truth is that we need to understand that we are involved in an intense spiritual war. There are no easy victories. If there were, then evil would have been driven out of the world a few hundred years after Jesus completed his ministry. The battle is tough. The spiritual powers of evil know that they are defeated, but are fighting hard to desperately hold onto power. They know that their days are getting short, but they will not give up, because the alternative is total defeat.

The spiritual powers of evil are using their two best weapons, Israel and political power, to hold to power. As long a the Jews reject the gospel of Jesus, and humans trust in political power, they will be able to hold onto a place of power.

In many local situations, there is not Christian with sufficient authority to deal with some of the challenges that arise. The politicians usually have greater authority than an individual Christian or group of Christians.

The spiritual powers of evil usually concentrate their forces to attack the leaders of an institution. If they can get the leader or leaders to participate frequently in a particular sin, the leaders are submitting to the spirits that are seeking to control them. If several leaders engage in the same sin, over time, the evil spirits get serious control over the institution. Often it will be a spirit of pride or a spirit that loves power and control.

Once government-spirits get control over the leaders of a nation, they do not let go, so the same spirit will control a nation down through the ages. This why governments often carry on in the same way, even when elections put one human government out and another in. The parties have different policies, but they are controlled by the same government-spirit, so they behave in the same way.

The powers of evil prefer working through nation-states, because they are the institutions with the most authority. Governments exercise enormous authority, so the spiritual powers of evil get a better bang for their buck. They can really leverage their power.

Great Depths

When I wrote Kingdom Authority, I realised that some of the spiritual powers of evil were locked up following the flood (1 Pet 318-19; 2 Pet 4-5). But I did not understand why was God able to do this after the flood, when he could not do it before the flood? The penny has now dropped.

The reason is as follows. God gave authority over the earth to humans. They had authority on earth and over the earth, but they did not have authority over the depths of the earth and the structure of the planet. God retained control of the planet itself.

When Adam rejected God, and submitted to the tempter, he placed himself under the authority of the spiritual powers of evil. They gained authority over the earth. The powers of evil had authority to be there, so provided they remained in contact with the earth, God could not touch them. If they had attacked the spiritual realms where God dwells, they would have been defeated in a minute. As long as they worked upon the earth, they were safe.

At the time of the flood, some of the spiritual powers attacked the depths of the earth and broke them up.

On that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up (Gen 7:11).

When some of the spiritual powers of evil attacked the great depths of the earth, they moved away from the place where they had authority upon the earth. God was able to send a host of angels and take them captive, so that they could not work on earth any more. God had authority to do this, because they had moved to a place where they did not have authority.

Prophets and Authority

Every believer can pray and release to work in areas where they have authority. Prophets have an important role, because God tells them in advance what he plans to do. When the prophet announces what God is going to do, people assume they just foretelling the future, but that really misses the point. Sometimes it tells his people how to prepare, but God is not really interested foretelling the future just to boost his prophet’s egos.

Something more important is going on. When a prophet declares what God is intending to do, it gives God authority to do what he wants to do. Prophets are humans with authority on earth, giving God permission to intervene and accomplish his purposes. Nothing much happens in the spiritual realms without a declaration on earth.

Prophets were often linked with kings and emperors. When these powerful men submitted to a prophet for wisdom and guidance, they amplified the authority of the prophet. This increased the prophet’s authority to release God to act on earth. Daniel had enormous spiritual authority, because the rulers of the Babylonian Empire submitted to him.

An individual prophet hiding in the wilderness does not have much authority, so will have limited ability to give permission to act on earth. God cannot do much in the wilderness. A prophet with a place in the palace has much greater authority. He has scope to release God’s purposes throughout the kingdom.

Prophets are called to stand in the council of the Lord. When they know what God wants to do, their role is to declare it and pray. The prayer is as important as the declaration, because it gives God permission to do what he wants to do. If the prophet does not declare the word and pray, God is not able to do what he wants to do, because humans have not given him permission to act on earth.

The prayers of the prophets are different from the prayers of the intercessors. Intercessors feel the heart of God and know the things that he wants to do, but cannot, because no one has given him permission. The intercessor cannot give him permission, because they do not have much authority, but they share the pain of his restrained authority. They can also pray that the prophets will step up.

Prophets touch the will of God and know the things that he wants to do. They declare and pray so that he has permission to his will on earth. They look to victory, because they have authority to release his restrained authority.
A prophet gains authority when their words are fulfilled. When people trust their words, they are submitting to their wisdom. The more that people trust the authority of the prophet’s words, the greater authority they have to release the Holy Spirit to work on earth.

Samuel is a marvellous example.

The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground. And all Israel… recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the Lord (1 Sam 3:19-20).

Samuel had spiritual authority in Israel. God was able to do great things in Israel throughout his life, because Samuel’s prophecies gave God permission to act on earth.

A prophet needs a place to stand, where their authority is amplified by powerful humans submitting to them for wisdom and guidance.
Prophets and other people with authority should be careful how the speak. Declarations made from their own hearts can releases the forces of evil. Ahab’s prophets released a lying spirit, by speaking deceptive words (1 Kings 22). Evil spirits will grab any opportunity given to them by idle words spoken by people with authority (Matt 12:26).

Auckland Mayor

Not far from here, a big city mayor, who had just been elected for another three years, announced that he had been having an affair for more than a year.

The political pundits say his private life is irrelevant, because he is good at his job. The problem is that they do not understand the spiritual side of life. When a man commits adultery, he opens himself up to spirits of deception and spirits of manipulation.

When these spirits get hold of a person with political authority, they amplify their power. All the people who have submitted to their political power are opened up to the same spirit.

So the mayor’s private affair has a much greater effect than the pundits realise. We can expect to see these spirits manifesting throughout the city over the next few years.

Remember, when people submit to a political leader, they are also submitting to the spirits that control him, whether principalities and powers, or common and garden variety evil spirits.

Most people would be wary of submitting to a man with a spirit of deception, but those who voted for the mayor have just done that.

This is why democracy is spiritually dangerous. If a dictator takes control of our nation, we do not need to submit to him. However, in a democracy we submit to whomever the process throws up, simply by voting. We do not know who we will end up submitting to.

Spiritual Authority (10) Struggle

John challenged Christians to avoid becoming entangled in the world.

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them (1 John 2:15).

The Greek word for “world” is kosmos. It is not just the physical world. John used this word to describe the world system. It describes a system that is controlled by the devil and his forces of evil and the people and things under their influence.

The Kingdom of God is everyone and everything that freely submits to God’s will, whether in the spiritual or the physical realms.

Spiritual Authority (9) Physical to Spiritual

Interactions between earth and heaven flow both ways. Events in earth often cause changes in the spiritual realms.

Daniels prayers released the archangel Michael to constrain the spiritual being called the Prince of Persia (Dan 10:13). This enabled the other angel to speak to Daniel on Earth. This changed the situation for the exiles in Persia and they eventually returned to the Promised Land.

Angels and evil spirits do not have unlimited authority to move on the earth. God has given authority over the earth to humans (Gen 1:26), so they can only get involved if humans with the relevant authority give them permission (and evil spirits will cheat when they can). This means that beings in the spiritual realms are constrained by people on earth.

I will explain how people on earth influence events in the spiritual realms in Five Big Authority Shifts.

Spiritual Authority (8) Spiritual to Physical

The battle in the spiritual sphere has a strong influence on events on earth. Paul explained this in his letter to the Ephesians.

Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Eph 6:11-12).

Paul reminds us that when we are dealing with people and events on earth, they are being manipulated by spiritual forces that we cannot see.

The spiritual powers of evil are attracted to authority and people with authority. If they can influence a person with authority, they can amplify their power on earth. When Daniel was praying about the situation of the exiles in Persia, God revealed that the power driving the situation was a spiritual being called the Prince of Persia.

But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia (Dan 10:13).

The spiritual power had to be defeated in the spiritual realms, before the situation would change in Persia.

Changes in government, whether by military coup or election, often change nothing. The reason is that nothing has changed in the spiritual realms.

Influences from the spiritual realms explain why economic crises occur, when economist’s thing the situation is improving.

Spiritual influences explain why war breaks out when peace looks permanent, as in 1914.

Spiritual Authority (7) Interactions

Interaction between the spiritual sphere and the physical world are critical to the operation of authority in both spheres. These interactions go both ways. (The picture describes a situation where the influence of the kingdom has increased beyond the dark days of the fall).

The angels live in the spiritual dimensions, but have the ability to move between the spiritual and physical worlds. The spiritual forces of evil are fallen angels with the same ability to move between the spiritual and physical dimensions. They operate in the spiritual realm, but they can cross over into the physical realm to work evil.

Angels and evil spirits can touch our physical world at only once place at one time. This limits what they can do on earth. In contrast, the Holy Spirit is present everywhere on earth at any time. This gives him unlimited power and makes him far greater than any angel and gives him much greater reach than the devil.

Spiritual Authority (6) Rebellion

Authority is the ability to give a command and be certain that it will be carried out. Originally, God has absolute authority in the spiritual realms. The angels all do his bidding instantly.

Praise the LORD, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word (Psalm 103:19-21).

All the angels accepted the authority of God and followed the directions of his Spirit.

At some point, a third of the angels rebelled against God’s authority. We do not know if this was before, or after, humans were created. Satan set up an alternative kingdom, under some semblance of his authority. I presume these angels grew tired of being subservient to God and wanted independent authority for themselves.

God created the earth and placed humans in it. He gave authority over the earth to the people he created, but kept authority in heaven for himself (Gen 1:26).

Satan wrested authority from Adam and Eve by persuading them to believe a lie. This gave his spiritual forces of wickedness a place in heaven and authority over the earth, but it was stolen authority. The devil also wheedled a place in the spiritual realms by acting as accuser /prosecutor of God’s people before the presence of God (Job 1:6, Rev 12:10).

Sin and the fall destroyed the unity that had existed in the spiritual realms. God still dominates the spiritual realms, and two thirds of the angels remained loyal to him. However, Satan drew together the angels that had rebelled with him and squeezed them into an alternative power structure in one corner of the spiritual world.

Division in the spiritual realms extenuated the division on earth. The struggle between the Kingdom of God and the world became more intense. In places where the spiritual forces of evil gained control, darkness prevailed.

Spiritual Authority (3) Hovering

When we look at the physical world in isolation, we miss much of what is happening in the universe.

God operates in the spiritual dimensions of reality, but he also created and sustains the physical world. After the creation, the Holy Spirit remained close to the earth.

The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters (Gen 1:2).

The Spirit was not in a distant place. The spiritual realms where he operates hover over the earth. The spiritual dimensions of reality are not way out at the edge of the universe, they exist in parallel to the physical world in which we live. These two realms of existence interact with each other in ways that we often cannot see, and fail to understand.

I am not sure how many Christians understand these things. Three hundred years ago, almost everyone understood their world in this way. Many people in Africa still think this way, although they focus to much on the dark side of the spiritual. Now, under the relentless pressure of education and the enlightenment, interest in the spiritual dimension of life is labelled old fashioned and superstitious.

I also wonder how many Christians understand these things, but do not live them. How many live as if the spiritual realms are irrelevant?

Many Christians are looking inward to establish connecting with the Holy Spirit. This is good, but if we ignore what is happening in the spiritual realms that surround us, we will misunderstand much of what happens in the world. Most Christians need a vastly expanded worldview.

The picture in the previous post correctly shows how the spiritual and physical realms overlap each other. However, in the remainder of these posts, I will place the spiritual realms just above the physical realms so that the interactions between them can be illustrated, but we must always remember that these two worlds overlap and exist in parallel to each other.

Second Heaven

A commenter called “God Is” has left the following comment on my post Second Heaven.

Be not confused, their are at least three heavens and they are all mentioned in the Bible.
1st heaven is the earthly domain,
2nd heaven is mentioned in Ephesians 6:12 and in Daniel 10th chapter where his prayers were held up in the second heaven and the arch angel Gabriel was sent to get the prayer of Daniel through due to the Prince of Persia's evil acts.
If there were no second heaven, God would simply mention 1st and 2nd heaven and not even mention a third.

I agree with this commentator that that scriptures refer to at least three heavens. Maybe there are more, but we are not told. Moreover, the scriptures do not explain clearly what the three are, so we probably do not need to know.

The first heaven could be the sky that we see on earth. Or it could be the highest heaven where God dwell.

We do know that the third heaven is Paradise, which is the dwelling place of the Christian dead.

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows—was caught up to paradise (2 Cor 12:2-4).

As I posted, paradise is the place where Jesus and the thief went after they died (Luke 23:43). If there is a third heaven, there must be a second heaven too, but we actually know very little about the way that heaven is structured. We must be careful building up a doctrine of several heavens, because we just do not know enough. If God wanted us to have this understanding, he would have got Paul to tell us more about what he saw, but he did not. We must be careful not to go beyond what God has given us.

The scriptures never mention the “second heaven”, so should be careful about saying that we know what it is. My commenter claims that the second heaven is described in Ephesians 6:12 and in Daniel 10, but that is not correct. These verses do not mention “the second heaven”, so the commenter is making an assumption from context.

My real concern is the widespread belief among many Christians that the devil controls the second heaven and that our prayers have to pass through the second heaven to get to God in the third heaven. They allege that our prayers are not answered, because the devil prevents them from getting through to God. They suggest that God sometime establishes an “open heaven”, which means that the devil cannot prevent prayers from getting through.

This belief treats the second heaven as if it were a physical barrier between earth and God. This is odd, because the heavens are a spiritual reality. Prayers are a spiritual entity which are not constrained by physical barriers. Likewise the authority of that was held by the devil was spiritual authority. Physical barriers cannot separate us from God. It is spiritual barriers that we should really worry about.

We know that Satan had a place in the councils of God during in Job’s time (Job 1:6). He could go into God’s presence and accuse the people of God. The cross destroyed that right and he lost his place in heaven. Jesus saw him falling from the heavens (Luke 10:18). Satan was thrown out of heaven (Rev 12:7-10). He is a cheat and will still try to attack Christians. His angels can oppose the angels of God, but the idea that he can control our access to God through prayer is nonsense.