Spiritual Warfare - Practices in Christianity

Practices in Christianity

Christian practices of spiritual warfare vary throughout Christianity. The development of specific spiritual warfare techniques has also generated many discussions in the Christian missions community. Critical exchanges of views may be found in periodicals like the Evangelical Missions Quarterly (such as in volume 31, number 2 published in 1995), and in conferences sponsored by the Evangelical Missions Society. In 2000, an international collaborative attempt was made by evangelicals and charismatics in the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization to reach some common agreement about spiritual warfare. The conference gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, and yielded a consultation document as well as many technical papers published as the book Deliver Us from Evil.

Spiritual warfare has also been practiced by non-Christians and in non-Christian countries. According to the Christian Broadcasting Network commentator Carl Moeller, spiritual warfare is practiced even in North Korea, a country that has been described as the most dangerous place on earth to be Christian. Non-Christian media reported on the African spiritual warrior Pastor Thomas Muthee visit to America who prayed over a 2008 presidential candidate. The Nigerian Tribune, the oldest surviving private newspaper in Nigeria, has published articles calling for the need for spiritual warfare.

Expositors of spiritual warfare include, Jessie Penn-Lewis, who published the Pentecostal 1973 book, “War on the Saints”, and Kurt Koch published "Occult ABC", which contain elements of the concept of spiritual warfare, if not explicitly using the expression. In 1991, C. Peter Wagner published "Confronting the Powers: How the New Testament Church Experienced the Power of Strategic-Level Spiritual Warfare” and edited "Territorial Spirits". In 1992, Dr. Ed Murphy wrote a modern 600 page book on the subject, “The Handbook of Spiritual Warfare“, from the point of view of deliverance ministry. Laws of Deliverance, From Proverbs," 1980, 1983, 1995, 2000, 2003, written by Marilyn A. Ellsworth, is another important Biblical work of authority, as is her book "ICBM Spiritual Warfare, God's Unbeatable Plan." Other notable expositions on spiritual warfare were written by Mark Bubeck and Neil Anderson.