I don't have much time to post this week but I wanted to shoot a question out there and get some feedback. The book of Daniel speaks of the "Prince of Persian" resisting the angel that was to bring a message to Daniel...and this apparently continued until Michael the Archangel stepped in.
Recently in my Cross-Cultural Missions class we have been discussing territorial Spirits governing regions or areas on the Earth. We do know that there is a supernatural evil governmental structure often refered to by Paul as "principalities and powers."
My question is, "How much weight to we give to these things as we consider our war...that is, our war with sin?"
I don't want to talk things too far, yet I don't want to be ignorant or arrogant either by downplaying their significance. Here is my final thought, " there seems to be much more emphasis placed on the sin within us sometimes called the "flesh" by Paul and how we need to violently battle with it"; compared to the teaching on Spiritual warfare or even dem0ns.
Scalise
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Well... this is an interesting one. Here is my take on it in a nutshell. Emphasis on unseen spiritual warfare that is going on all around us is either extremely downplayed, or extremely misconstrued in the modern church. Typically in reformed circles the emphasis lies so much on the absolute authority of God that we tend to forget about the scores of fallen angles roaming the Earth, under the command of Satan, who was the arguably the most powerful angel ever created. The notion of Satan and his minions is much more of an academic understanding than it is a rightly placed Christian concern.
In contrast however, those who are much more Armenian in their beliefs tend to make the focus of all evil about Satan himself. While Lucifer may make the occasional house visit (i.e. Job), he is not omnipresent and can't be directly involved in everybody's life at once. Unfortunately, the label of demonic influence can be used to impose fear to do the right thing, rather than true conviction.
The Bible is full of references to the demonic forces at work around us, and Jesus Himself had more than a few encounters with demons (Mat. 9:32,33; 12:22; 15:22; 17:18). Of course there was also the famous tempting by Satan as well (Mat. 4:1-11). Both (Acts 19:12-17) and (Jam. 2:19) make special mention of their open rebellion toward God despite the intimate knowledge of who Christ is, and the power He possesses over them.
In the end, there is a balance that we must have. We must acknowledge that we have no one to blame for our sin except ourselves (Jam. 1:13-15), but we must also realize that we are surrounded by demonic influence everywhere and at all times. We are constantly bombarded by evil on all sides. Paul takes it so seriously that he equates it to warfare, and recommends that we arm ourselves against those demonic forces the way that a soldier would arm themselves for battle (Eph. 6:10-18).
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