I thought that God was in search of the humble human heart for His dwelling place, and that the cathedrals, and temples of this world were hollow attempts to make a place for God to live. But I must be wrong. I was sure I read something about that in Isaiah 66, and in Stephen's last message to the Sanhedrin, and in Peter's message about "living stones." But apparently I was wrong.
I thought that it was foolish to get over concerned about angelic, or demonic beings. But apparently naming them, and fighting them is the right thing to do, I thought Colossians reference to "going on in detail about visions,puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind," or as the KJV puts it, "intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind," was talking about an imbalance in connection to the unseen realm. But apparently I was wrong.
It appears that demons want to take the land from us. They are battling to hold the hills around our cities, and the entry points to our towns. It seems that if they do that they will be victorious.
So, I guess God is into real estate. He is going to use us to take the land beneath our feet before Jesus returns.
Since God likes real estate, He will need the most important places. High mountains, busy street corners, influential buildings, historically significant places, and beautiful edifices. As the end times draw nearer we will need to spend our "talents" on such important purchases.
Now I know that Early Church was a failure because they didn't have any property. The church in China is laughable because they have been hiding away in dingy little corners, and backrooms for decades. Saint Patrick, and Saint Francis were loosers too.
Do you know how I know this is true? Well, because someone told me that I needed to battle against territorial spirits. Until now I thought God was after human hearts. All along he wanted a really cool piece of Beachfront property.
Sheesh, how could I have gotten things so backwards?
6 comments:
Phil,
had some trouble commenting today. Just wanted to let you know.
Why do we do this? Demonize everything? Where did this come from...any ideas?
Hey Jamie,
Thanks for the headsup - was the trouble with the word verification?
I know some of the names and writings which have popularized this stuff today - C. Peter Wagner perhaps is at the top of the list, having been quite influential at the fuller School off World Missions.
Wikipedia gives a fairly decent outline of the teaching and its proponents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_Spirits
You know, when it comes to matters like these, I try to ask myself "What is it that God wants us to be focusing on?"
Maybe there are territorial spirits, maybe there aren't...it will most likely be debated for quite a bit more time.
But perhaps its really a way that we distract ourselves from focusing on what God DOES clearly say in the Bible. He doesn't address issues such as "spiritual warfare" as much as he addresses, say.... MONEY. Oooohh, that's a touchy one! Yet God makes a point to bring up the subject quite a bit more than spirits and whatnot.
So basically, I think the issue with these types of things is making sure our priorities and energies are going into what GOD cares about...the rest is just not as important (not to say it's not important at all, just not as much, know what I mean?)
~M
You need to avoid all the modernist stuff that's been talked about "territorial spirits", and get back to the good old premodern stuff. It's been around a long time, which is why the early desert fathers were on the front line of the battle. Why? Because they were away from the ecumene.
More later, if you're interested.
Definitely interested you old mystic. ;-)
I've written some more about it in my blog at Notes from underground: Rulers and authorities, territorial spirits, spiritual warfare.
I think there's a lot more that could be said, but that's a start.
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