A TRUE AND FAITHFUL WITNESS
Are you committed to being a true and faithful witness to the Lord Jesus Christ of the New Testament Gospel?
The "Script" Underlying Spiritual Warfare Christianity
by Orrel Steinkamp, The Plumbline, Volume 8, No. 4,
November/December 2003
Some time ago a pastor was telling me his thoughts on how to reach his city
for Christ. He had come to town to grow a large church. He had tried many
canned programs with little result. He was now thinking about an organized
"prayer walk" street, contesting the yet-to-bedetermined ruler demon who
held people captive and resistant to the gospel message. His background
and training gave no hint that he would even be open to this militant
evangelistic technique, but here he was, seriously proposing this particular
"Spiritual Warfare" tactic. The teachers of this view assured him that after
these spiritual warfare exercises were completed, all that remained to be
done would be to go in and "mop up," to bring people to faith and enlist them
in his church; he saw this as possibly the answer to his church planting
frustrations. When I mentioned that this technique was part and parcel of an
identified aberrant teaching, though he was first of all surprised, he then
replied in effect, "Anything is worth a try."
Beware. Techniques and tactics usually come with conceptual strings
attached, often with unrecognized but vital presuppositions. My pastor friend
had no idea about the source of the techniques and tactics that he was
about to tap into, nor that they are part of a system that is alien to the Bible.
A "world-view" is an arrangement of ideas in and through which a person
interprets and judges reality. It is a background "script" that undergirds,
consciously or unconsciously, more or less consistently, a person's thoughts
and actions. In the jargon of biblical/theological studies there is a long
German word "Heilsgeschichte," meaning roughly "salvation history".
"Salvation history" is the series of events and truths that portray God's
redemptive plan across the ages, a worldview focused specifically on the
elements of salvation. From it is drawn the church's historical teaching
about salvation. It is broad in scope, usually beginning with creation and the
fall and moving on through the incarnation of Christ, His substitutionary
death for human sin, His resurrection from the dead, His ascension into
heaven, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the founding of the church by the
apostles, the second coming of Jesus, the final resurrection and judgment,
and the final state of glory. It is a consistent biblical paradigm of what God
has done in history to make salvation from sin not only possible, but an
assured reality.
There is room to flex when interpreting some of the details, but all orthodox
Christians "color within the lines" and remain true to the overall script of
biblical salvation history.
Again, beware. In recent decades a radically different script of salvation
history worldview has entered the scene. Unfortimately, it is rarely
recognized as being outside the boundaries. It has many things in common
with orthodox Christianity, but its underlying heilgeschichte is fundamentally
different. It is a rival salvation history, which promotes a false gospel. The
current evangelical culture of downplaying theology in favor of pragmatic
evangelistic strategies is a main reason why this alien heilgeschicte is often
undetected when it creeps, or even stalks boldly, into the church. This
movement appeals widely because it promises heretofore unheard-of
success in evangelism and rapid church growth.
A play has a plot, or story line, that drives the whole presentation and the
dialogue supports the plot. While enacting the play there may be some
room for improvisation in reciting the scripted lines, and even miscues and
blown lines don't usually ruin the play. But just think of the chaos that would
result if an actor slipped into a different role and began reciting lines from a
different play. My pragmatic pastor friend was about to import lines and
stage directions from an alien script.
Does the idea of a radically alien view of God's redemptive plan frighten
you? It does me!
The evangelical community has always known that evangelism is an attack
on Satan's domain and that at times there will be confrontation. That is
nothing new. But "Spiritual Warfare Evangelism" is not simply a new way to
"get the job done." Though it claims to be within the broader evangelical view
of salvation history, it is an alien technique, masquerading in faux-biblical
costuming.
Again, the danger is that, for many, when they adopt these new spiritual
warfare practices, there is little awareness of their origins. The new Spiritual
Warfare (SW) teachers have a unique and consistent theological paradigm
which underlies and undergirds all they do and is the standard by which they
interpret and judge everything. Prayer walking, spiritual mapping and
whole-cityreaching are connected to recognizing a return of the offices of
apostle and prophet. This theology sometimes is called "Dominion
Theology" or "Kingdom Now." This teaching is a mutant form of the "Latter
Rain," a radical fringe movement of Pentecostalism that flourished at
mid20th century and then went underground for a period of time. It has
been and is now reappearing, often unrecognized, within Pentecostal and
Charismatic churches as well as in wider evangelical circles.
While participants of this view of salvation history often disagree with each
other about the details, they are sufficiently homogenous to know and
recognize each other as comrades. They may have their "family squabbles"
and disagree about how they "color within the lines" of their novel scheme of
salvation history, but they all know they are in the same extended family.
They draw from one another the support needed to develop their strategies
for gaining preeminence in the church around the world; they all zealously
propagate new revelations from their restored prophets; they also assert
that there is a restored office of Apostles who have absolute authority in the
church. They believe God has reserved all of this for the very last days of
the church. But it is their basic, alternate and aberrant view of salvation
history, their Dominion / Kingdom Now theological paradigm, which forms the
common conceptual framework on which the techniques and tactics are
hung.
Modem evangelistic pragmatists (my pastor friend included) behave as if we
can deviate from or even get along without a clear doctrinal "script." It is
assumed that a person or church can mix and match ideas from here, there
and everywhere, willy-nilly, as long as they have the prospect of growing the
number of churches and growing the churches in numbers
Allow me to use another analogy in giving a bird's-eye overview of the SW /
Kingdom Now / Dominion system into which these individual techniques and
teachings fit (remembering that bits and pieces of the SW teaching can be
used and/or adopted without the users being aware of the foundational
distortions):
On Christmas day there are usually some gifts that have a bonus of
"someassembly-required" instructions; they must be followed before the gift
can be properly enjoyed. From personal experience, it can be a frustratingly
arduous task to follow the instructions point by point. Most often I resort to
the picture on the box to get an overall view of how the pieces fit together.
The modem SW proponents have been "presenting" the church with
evangelistic techniques, guaranteed to succeed if their detailed, how-to
instructions are followed point by point. There is a picture on the box cover,
a replica of the SW paradigm, and the pieces inside do, in fact, "fit' into this
picture. The problem is that the picture is distorted. If that isn't bad enough,
the SW picture-on-thebox is nested inside another, bigger box whose
box-top panorama is Kingdom Now/ Dominion theology.
In our overview, it will be helpful to name names and cite the words of the
proponents of this unbiblical understanding of salvation history.
Using Earl Paulk's words as his primary point of reference, Robert M.
Bowman, Jr. has written about Kingdom Now / Dominion teaching. In the
process he has given us a condensed summary of the Kingdom / Dominion
ideology. Remember, current SW practice finds its conceptual home in this
setting. Bowman writes:
"In the very beginning God created the universe and populated it with spirits
(or angels) who lived in perfect obedience to Him. However, a third of these
angels, led by Lucifer, rebelled against God's authority; becoming the
demons... The angelic rebellion occurred in a "gap" between Genesis 1:1
and 1:2. The result was that the earth, which was the "capital city" or
headquarters of the demonic Evil Empire, was brought into chaos and made
formless and void (Gen. 1:2). In order to win back unchallenged dominion
over the universe, God introduced into the earth, Man, a race of creatures
which God intended to become a resistance movement that would conquer
the Devil's home planet and thus lead the way in taking back dominion over
the entire universe. Man was to be a race of "little gods," exercising divine
sovereignty ... thus overwhelming the devil's forces. Unfortunately the father
of this race was tricked by the devil into forfeiting Man's place in this plan
and actually brought God's first plan to naught. God was then forced to
come up with a "Plan B" to take dominion over the earth. His solution: to
introduce into this fallen race a man in whom the divine nature dwelled fully,
who would become the prototype of a new race of human beings in which the
original godhood of Adam was restored. This divine Man was Jesus Christ, a
perfect manifestation of God, the Father, and the "first fruit" of the
"incarnation of God." This race of "little gods" who are spiritually united with
Christ as members of His "body" is the church, constituting collectively with
Him the complete incarnation, a corporate manifestation of God in the flesh,
which together will overcome the devil and restore God's dominion
unchallenged on the earth. Ultimate victory over the devil, then, depends
finally upon the church accepting the calling to be little gods. It further
depends on the church's submitting to the fivefold ministry through whom
God is seeking to mobilize the church into a unified army prepared to take
dominion back from the devil." 1
As stated above, Adam was tricked out of his real identity. Kermedi
Copeland states, "After Adam had given it away, God didn't have any more
authority here." 2 Ed Silvoso echoes: "Because Adam, God's deputy on
earth, transmsferred his legal dominion to Satan, God became obligated to
recognize Satan's legal standing." 3
According to Copeland, Pauk and Silvoso, God's authority was terminated
on planet earth and he was now on the outside looking in. Jesus' death and
resurrection was an attempt to regain from Satan what Adam had transferred
to him. It was an attempt to reclaim legal authority over the earth, authority
which Adam had forfeited. In what is called "identification teaching" some
spiritual warfare enthusiasts teach that after Jesus' death He descended into
hell, was attacked by Satan, and became a sinner. But God raised him from
the dead and Jesus was "bom again." He became the first bom-again man
and the prototype or "pattern son" for all born-again believers. Believers are
meant to partake of the same power and authority as Jesus and, with this
endowment, reclaim the earth and the heavenlies through spiritual warfare.
But the Church, like Adam, botched the plan because of its unbelief and
ignorance. Finally, now at the end of the age, in the time of the Latter Rain
(since the 1950's), the Church has been given new prophets and apostles to
lead the church to establish God's lost rule in the earth. Using Spiritual
Warfare techniques and tactics, the Church will take whole cities and nations
for God and will at long last take control of the heavenlies, having cast Satan
down.
Ed Silvoso writes: "The Church now has been placed potentially in the
control of the heavenly places once ruled by the prince of the power of the
air. But this reconstituted church must engage and defeat the enemy and
retake the heavenlies in the name of her Lord, so that the eyes of those still
being held captive by Satan will be opened." 4
This is the Kingdom/Dominion planof-the-ages. It is the master plan out of
which flows the sundry variety of techniques, tactics, and rationale found in
the SW movement. Leaders, who espouse SW theology and push it,
operate knowing the whole of the plan, but often it seems like the movement
is marketed like a jigsaw puzzle without the cover picture. Saying this
another way, many followers just "belly-up" to the SW smorgasbord and
choose those selections that most appeal to them with the hope that these
choices will help their plans of evangelism--they are dangerously unaware of
the larger and distorted context of the Spiritual Warfare movement.
This Spiritual Warfare scheme and its pattern of "biblical" history is radically
different and diametrically at odds with many points of the Biblical model of
salvation history:
1. The SW paradigm paints a false view of Adam and the Fall that is taught
neither in Genesis nor in the rest of Scripture. It pictures Adam as a god
who lost his godhood when Satan tricked him.
The Bible says that Adam, the first man, fell into sin through moral rebellion
and this resulted in God's judgment of death on him and his posterity.
(Romans 5:12ff) *
2. SW claims that because of Adam's failure, God lost His jurisdiction and
legal authority over the earth to Satan.
The Bible does not picture God as losing His legal authority over His
creation. Multiple texts show the Lord's original and ongoing control over all
aspects of His creation. For example: God controls natural forces (Job
37.-15), the fall of sparrows (Matt. 10:29), and the rise and fall of nations
(Dam 4:17). Not only that, Satan had to ask the Lord's permission to afflict
Job (1:6-12) and to sift Peter's faith (Luke 22:31). God did not lose his
authority over the earth to Satan at Eden. Far from it! Jesus Christ has all
authority in earth and heaven (Matt. 28:18).
3. Copeland says: "God's reason for creating Adam was a desire to
reproduce Himself." 5 Copeland and others appear to teach that the Church
is as much God-in-the-flesh as Jesus was, that the Church is an extension of
the Incarnation. The only occurrence in Jesus is that he was a "first fruit."
Scripture never suggests that the church is an extension of the incarnation.
Jesus in no way was a "Pattern Son" with many other incarnations in
Christians. The orthodox teaching is that Christ indwells His church through
the Holy Spirit This SW teaching diminishes the unique divinity of Christ and
the uniqueness of His incarnation (1) Jesus is God's "only begotten" Son
-John 1:14. (2). Jesus is entitled to equal honor with the Father -- John
5:23. (3) Jesus is the Creator of all things -- John 1:3. (4) Jesus is worthy of
worship -- Rev. 5:12.
4. The SW "mythology," which fuels many of the SW themes and practices
throughout evangelicalism, teaches that the Church was given the
commission to invade the heavenlies, defeat the principalities and powers
there, and occupy and rule the earth from the heavelies.
Scripture never teaches this. Instead the Church is to preach the Gospel
and make disciples. (Matt.28:19-20).
Listen to Bill Randles' pithy analysis to the whole SW ideology:
"Today's spiritual warfare is all about man, not God. It is man's attempt to
elevate himself to the 'God-level' and to intervene in the plans of history...
And as for Satan; he is mocking all these human attempts to 'pull down
strongholds.' He knows full well that his finest hour is yet to come; that he
and his cohorts will not be cast down until the appointed time... Satan waves
his red rag, and - obediently the Christian Church charges! By all modem
standards, Paul failed at spiritual warfare. He never researched the
territorial spirits; he didn't rebuke the strongholds of pagan religion; he didn't
see whole cities come to the Lord. Yet, in truth Paul didn't fail at spiritual
warfare, he won... This [anointed Gospel preaching] was Paul's commission,
and it is ours. We are called to preach the gospel of grace and forgiveness,
turning men from the darkness of this world's vain philosophies to the light of
truth... We wage war against Satan most effectively when we allow God's
anointed Word to go forth to touch unbelievers' hearts and souls, convicting
them, converting them, and opening them up to God." 6
Bob Dewaay pointedly challenges SW teaching with its alien view of salvation
history and its Goddishonoring theology:
"The story of God, man and eternity is not about a cosmic footrace with an
uncertain ending. God's eternal purposes are not tenuous, compromised,
and about to be thwarted by man or devil. God will accomplish all of His
purposes for His church, Israel, and the human race, these false teachings
not withstanding. He will do so through the simple message of the gospel.
"For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to
know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message
preached to save those who believe." (I Cor. 1:21) 7
Bruce Ware clearly summarizes the biblical Gospel this way:
"God, in eternity past, foresaw the future sin and the consequent just
damnation (apart from his grace) of the human race that he would create,
and he planned then and there to save the lost, helpless, and hopeless
sinners. Though all deserved his eternal condemnation, he graciously
chose people who would comprise a great host--it would include, in the end,
men and women from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation!--and he set
out, in love, to save them from their sin. To accomplish their salvation, he
chose his very own Son to enter human existence as the incarnate
God-man, to live a perfect life, and to offer himself as a sinless sacrifice for
the sins of others, paying the penalties that each of them owed as their sin
was imputed to him in his death on the cross. By his resurrection from the
dead, God vindicated his Son as the victor over sin and death. And, through
repentance of their sin and faith alone in this conquering Savior, all who so
savingly believe may be justified before their righteous God, be assured of
God's presence with them through all of life now, and in the end receive
eternal life through his name. " 8
1 Robert M. Bowman, Jr., "The Gospel According to Paulk - A Critique
ofKingdom Theology," The Christian Research Journal, Volume 10, Number
3, Winter/Spring 1998, p.8.
2 Keimeth Copeland, "Following the Faith of Abraham" [Audio cassette],
(Fort Worth, TX 1982).
3 Ed Silvoso, "That None Should PerishHow to Reach Entire Cities for Christ
through Prayer Evangelism" (Regal: Ventura CA 1994), p. 195.
4 Silvoso, p.117.
5 op cit., Copeland.
6 Bill Randles, "Making War in the Heavenlies", (Self-published: Cedar
Rapids, IA, Undated), pp. 114-116.
7 Bob DeWaay, CIC, Issue 48, p. 10.
8 Bruce Ware, "Beyond the Bounds", (Crossway: Wheaton IL, 2003), p.309.
For More Articles Like This Go To: www.atrueandfaithfulwitness.com
by Orrel Steinkamp, The Plumbline, Volume 8, No. 4,
November/December 2003
Some time ago a pastor was telling me his thoughts on how to reach his city
for Christ. He had come to town to grow a large church. He had tried many
canned programs with little result. He was now thinking about an organized
"prayer walk" street, contesting the yet-to-bedetermined ruler demon who
held people captive and resistant to the gospel message. His background
and training gave no hint that he would even be open to this militant
evangelistic technique, but here he was, seriously proposing this particular
"Spiritual Warfare" tactic. The teachers of this view assured him that after
these spiritual warfare exercises were completed, all that remained to be
done would be to go in and "mop up," to bring people to faith and enlist them
in his church; he saw this as possibly the answer to his church planting
frustrations. When I mentioned that this technique was part and parcel of an
identified aberrant teaching, though he was first of all surprised, he then
replied in effect, "Anything is worth a try."
Beware. Techniques and tactics usually come with conceptual strings
attached, often with unrecognized but vital presuppositions. My pastor friend
had no idea about the source of the techniques and tactics that he was
about to tap into, nor that they are part of a system that is alien to the Bible.
A "world-view" is an arrangement of ideas in and through which a person
interprets and judges reality. It is a background "script" that undergirds,
consciously or unconsciously, more or less consistently, a person's thoughts
and actions. In the jargon of biblical/theological studies there is a long
German word "Heilsgeschichte," meaning roughly "salvation history".
"Salvation history" is the series of events and truths that portray God's
redemptive plan across the ages, a worldview focused specifically on the
elements of salvation. From it is drawn the church's historical teaching
about salvation. It is broad in scope, usually beginning with creation and the
fall and moving on through the incarnation of Christ, His substitutionary
death for human sin, His resurrection from the dead, His ascension into
heaven, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the founding of the church by the
apostles, the second coming of Jesus, the final resurrection and judgment,
and the final state of glory. It is a consistent biblical paradigm of what God
has done in history to make salvation from sin not only possible, but an
assured reality.
There is room to flex when interpreting some of the details, but all orthodox
Christians "color within the lines" and remain true to the overall script of
biblical salvation history.
Again, beware. In recent decades a radically different script of salvation
history worldview has entered the scene. Unfortimately, it is rarely
recognized as being outside the boundaries. It has many things in common
with orthodox Christianity, but its underlying heilgeschichte is fundamentally
different. It is a rival salvation history, which promotes a false gospel. The
current evangelical culture of downplaying theology in favor of pragmatic
evangelistic strategies is a main reason why this alien heilgeschicte is often
undetected when it creeps, or even stalks boldly, into the church. This
movement appeals widely because it promises heretofore unheard-of
success in evangelism and rapid church growth.
A play has a plot, or story line, that drives the whole presentation and the
dialogue supports the plot. While enacting the play there may be some
room for improvisation in reciting the scripted lines, and even miscues and
blown lines don't usually ruin the play. But just think of the chaos that would
result if an actor slipped into a different role and began reciting lines from a
different play. My pragmatic pastor friend was about to import lines and
stage directions from an alien script.
Does the idea of a radically alien view of God's redemptive plan frighten
you? It does me!
The evangelical community has always known that evangelism is an attack
on Satan's domain and that at times there will be confrontation. That is
nothing new. But "Spiritual Warfare Evangelism" is not simply a new way to
"get the job done." Though it claims to be within the broader evangelical view
of salvation history, it is an alien technique, masquerading in faux-biblical
costuming.
Again, the danger is that, for many, when they adopt these new spiritual
warfare practices, there is little awareness of their origins. The new Spiritual
Warfare (SW) teachers have a unique and consistent theological paradigm
which underlies and undergirds all they do and is the standard by which they
interpret and judge everything. Prayer walking, spiritual mapping and
whole-cityreaching are connected to recognizing a return of the offices of
apostle and prophet. This theology sometimes is called "Dominion
Theology" or "Kingdom Now." This teaching is a mutant form of the "Latter
Rain," a radical fringe movement of Pentecostalism that flourished at
mid20th century and then went underground for a period of time. It has
been and is now reappearing, often unrecognized, within Pentecostal and
Charismatic churches as well as in wider evangelical circles.
While participants of this view of salvation history often disagree with each
other about the details, they are sufficiently homogenous to know and
recognize each other as comrades. They may have their "family squabbles"
and disagree about how they "color within the lines" of their novel scheme of
salvation history, but they all know they are in the same extended family.
They draw from one another the support needed to develop their strategies
for gaining preeminence in the church around the world; they all zealously
propagate new revelations from their restored prophets; they also assert
that there is a restored office of Apostles who have absolute authority in the
church. They believe God has reserved all of this for the very last days of
the church. But it is their basic, alternate and aberrant view of salvation
history, their Dominion / Kingdom Now theological paradigm, which forms the
common conceptual framework on which the techniques and tactics are
hung.
Modem evangelistic pragmatists (my pastor friend included) behave as if we
can deviate from or even get along without a clear doctrinal "script." It is
assumed that a person or church can mix and match ideas from here, there
and everywhere, willy-nilly, as long as they have the prospect of growing the
number of churches and growing the churches in numbers
Allow me to use another analogy in giving a bird's-eye overview of the SW /
Kingdom Now / Dominion system into which these individual techniques and
teachings fit (remembering that bits and pieces of the SW teaching can be
used and/or adopted without the users being aware of the foundational
distortions):
On Christmas day there are usually some gifts that have a bonus of
"someassembly-required" instructions; they must be followed before the gift
can be properly enjoyed. From personal experience, it can be a frustratingly
arduous task to follow the instructions point by point. Most often I resort to
the picture on the box to get an overall view of how the pieces fit together.
The modem SW proponents have been "presenting" the church with
evangelistic techniques, guaranteed to succeed if their detailed, how-to
instructions are followed point by point. There is a picture on the box cover,
a replica of the SW paradigm, and the pieces inside do, in fact, "fit' into this
picture. The problem is that the picture is distorted. If that isn't bad enough,
the SW picture-on-thebox is nested inside another, bigger box whose
box-top panorama is Kingdom Now/ Dominion theology.
In our overview, it will be helpful to name names and cite the words of the
proponents of this unbiblical understanding of salvation history.
Using Earl Paulk's words as his primary point of reference, Robert M.
Bowman, Jr. has written about Kingdom Now / Dominion teaching. In the
process he has given us a condensed summary of the Kingdom / Dominion
ideology. Remember, current SW practice finds its conceptual home in this
setting. Bowman writes:
"In the very beginning God created the universe and populated it with spirits
(or angels) who lived in perfect obedience to Him. However, a third of these
angels, led by Lucifer, rebelled against God's authority; becoming the
demons... The angelic rebellion occurred in a "gap" between Genesis 1:1
and 1:2. The result was that the earth, which was the "capital city" or
headquarters of the demonic Evil Empire, was brought into chaos and made
formless and void (Gen. 1:2). In order to win back unchallenged dominion
over the universe, God introduced into the earth, Man, a race of creatures
which God intended to become a resistance movement that would conquer
the Devil's home planet and thus lead the way in taking back dominion over
the entire universe. Man was to be a race of "little gods," exercising divine
sovereignty ... thus overwhelming the devil's forces. Unfortunately the father
of this race was tricked by the devil into forfeiting Man's place in this plan
and actually brought God's first plan to naught. God was then forced to
come up with a "Plan B" to take dominion over the earth. His solution: to
introduce into this fallen race a man in whom the divine nature dwelled fully,
who would become the prototype of a new race of human beings in which the
original godhood of Adam was restored. This divine Man was Jesus Christ, a
perfect manifestation of God, the Father, and the "first fruit" of the
"incarnation of God." This race of "little gods" who are spiritually united with
Christ as members of His "body" is the church, constituting collectively with
Him the complete incarnation, a corporate manifestation of God in the flesh,
which together will overcome the devil and restore God's dominion
unchallenged on the earth. Ultimate victory over the devil, then, depends
finally upon the church accepting the calling to be little gods. It further
depends on the church's submitting to the fivefold ministry through whom
God is seeking to mobilize the church into a unified army prepared to take
dominion back from the devil." 1
As stated above, Adam was tricked out of his real identity. Kermedi
Copeland states, "After Adam had given it away, God didn't have any more
authority here." 2 Ed Silvoso echoes: "Because Adam, God's deputy on
earth, transmsferred his legal dominion to Satan, God became obligated to
recognize Satan's legal standing." 3
According to Copeland, Pauk and Silvoso, God's authority was terminated
on planet earth and he was now on the outside looking in. Jesus' death and
resurrection was an attempt to regain from Satan what Adam had transferred
to him. It was an attempt to reclaim legal authority over the earth, authority
which Adam had forfeited. In what is called "identification teaching" some
spiritual warfare enthusiasts teach that after Jesus' death He descended into
hell, was attacked by Satan, and became a sinner. But God raised him from
the dead and Jesus was "bom again." He became the first bom-again man
and the prototype or "pattern son" for all born-again believers. Believers are
meant to partake of the same power and authority as Jesus and, with this
endowment, reclaim the earth and the heavenlies through spiritual warfare.
But the Church, like Adam, botched the plan because of its unbelief and
ignorance. Finally, now at the end of the age, in the time of the Latter Rain
(since the 1950's), the Church has been given new prophets and apostles to
lead the church to establish God's lost rule in the earth. Using Spiritual
Warfare techniques and tactics, the Church will take whole cities and nations
for God and will at long last take control of the heavenlies, having cast Satan
down.
Ed Silvoso writes: "The Church now has been placed potentially in the
control of the heavenly places once ruled by the prince of the power of the
air. But this reconstituted church must engage and defeat the enemy and
retake the heavenlies in the name of her Lord, so that the eyes of those still
being held captive by Satan will be opened." 4
This is the Kingdom/Dominion planof-the-ages. It is the master plan out of
which flows the sundry variety of techniques, tactics, and rationale found in
the SW movement. Leaders, who espouse SW theology and push it,
operate knowing the whole of the plan, but often it seems like the movement
is marketed like a jigsaw puzzle without the cover picture. Saying this
another way, many followers just "belly-up" to the SW smorgasbord and
choose those selections that most appeal to them with the hope that these
choices will help their plans of evangelism--they are dangerously unaware of
the larger and distorted context of the Spiritual Warfare movement.
This Spiritual Warfare scheme and its pattern of "biblical" history is radically
different and diametrically at odds with many points of the Biblical model of
salvation history:
1. The SW paradigm paints a false view of Adam and the Fall that is taught
neither in Genesis nor in the rest of Scripture. It pictures Adam as a god
who lost his godhood when Satan tricked him.
The Bible says that Adam, the first man, fell into sin through moral rebellion
and this resulted in God's judgment of death on him and his posterity.
(Romans 5:12ff) *
2. SW claims that because of Adam's failure, God lost His jurisdiction and
legal authority over the earth to Satan.
The Bible does not picture God as losing His legal authority over His
creation. Multiple texts show the Lord's original and ongoing control over all
aspects of His creation. For example: God controls natural forces (Job
37.-15), the fall of sparrows (Matt. 10:29), and the rise and fall of nations
(Dam 4:17). Not only that, Satan had to ask the Lord's permission to afflict
Job (1:6-12) and to sift Peter's faith (Luke 22:31). God did not lose his
authority over the earth to Satan at Eden. Far from it! Jesus Christ has all
authority in earth and heaven (Matt. 28:18).
3. Copeland says: "God's reason for creating Adam was a desire to
reproduce Himself." 5 Copeland and others appear to teach that the Church
is as much God-in-the-flesh as Jesus was, that the Church is an extension of
the Incarnation. The only occurrence in Jesus is that he was a "first fruit."
Scripture never suggests that the church is an extension of the incarnation.
Jesus in no way was a "Pattern Son" with many other incarnations in
Christians. The orthodox teaching is that Christ indwells His church through
the Holy Spirit This SW teaching diminishes the unique divinity of Christ and
the uniqueness of His incarnation (1) Jesus is God's "only begotten" Son
-John 1:14. (2). Jesus is entitled to equal honor with the Father -- John
5:23. (3) Jesus is the Creator of all things -- John 1:3. (4) Jesus is worthy of
worship -- Rev. 5:12.
4. The SW "mythology," which fuels many of the SW themes and practices
throughout evangelicalism, teaches that the Church was given the
commission to invade the heavenlies, defeat the principalities and powers
there, and occupy and rule the earth from the heavelies.
Scripture never teaches this. Instead the Church is to preach the Gospel
and make disciples. (Matt.28:19-20).
Listen to Bill Randles' pithy analysis to the whole SW ideology:
"Today's spiritual warfare is all about man, not God. It is man's attempt to
elevate himself to the 'God-level' and to intervene in the plans of history...
And as for Satan; he is mocking all these human attempts to 'pull down
strongholds.' He knows full well that his finest hour is yet to come; that he
and his cohorts will not be cast down until the appointed time... Satan waves
his red rag, and - obediently the Christian Church charges! By all modem
standards, Paul failed at spiritual warfare. He never researched the
territorial spirits; he didn't rebuke the strongholds of pagan religion; he didn't
see whole cities come to the Lord. Yet, in truth Paul didn't fail at spiritual
warfare, he won... This [anointed Gospel preaching] was Paul's commission,
and it is ours. We are called to preach the gospel of grace and forgiveness,
turning men from the darkness of this world's vain philosophies to the light of
truth... We wage war against Satan most effectively when we allow God's
anointed Word to go forth to touch unbelievers' hearts and souls, convicting
them, converting them, and opening them up to God." 6
Bob Dewaay pointedly challenges SW teaching with its alien view of salvation
history and its Goddishonoring theology:
"The story of God, man and eternity is not about a cosmic footrace with an
uncertain ending. God's eternal purposes are not tenuous, compromised,
and about to be thwarted by man or devil. God will accomplish all of His
purposes for His church, Israel, and the human race, these false teachings
not withstanding. He will do so through the simple message of the gospel.
"For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to
know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message
preached to save those who believe." (I Cor. 1:21) 7
Bruce Ware clearly summarizes the biblical Gospel this way:
"God, in eternity past, foresaw the future sin and the consequent just
damnation (apart from his grace) of the human race that he would create,
and he planned then and there to save the lost, helpless, and hopeless
sinners. Though all deserved his eternal condemnation, he graciously
chose people who would comprise a great host--it would include, in the end,
men and women from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation!--and he set
out, in love, to save them from their sin. To accomplish their salvation, he
chose his very own Son to enter human existence as the incarnate
God-man, to live a perfect life, and to offer himself as a sinless sacrifice for
the sins of others, paying the penalties that each of them owed as their sin
was imputed to him in his death on the cross. By his resurrection from the
dead, God vindicated his Son as the victor over sin and death. And, through
repentance of their sin and faith alone in this conquering Savior, all who so
savingly believe may be justified before their righteous God, be assured of
God's presence with them through all of life now, and in the end receive
eternal life through his name. " 8
1 Robert M. Bowman, Jr., "The Gospel According to Paulk - A Critique
ofKingdom Theology," The Christian Research Journal, Volume 10, Number
3, Winter/Spring 1998, p.8.
2 Keimeth Copeland, "Following the Faith of Abraham" [Audio cassette],
(Fort Worth, TX 1982).
3 Ed Silvoso, "That None Should PerishHow to Reach Entire Cities for Christ
through Prayer Evangelism" (Regal: Ventura CA 1994), p. 195.
4 Silvoso, p.117.
5 op cit., Copeland.
6 Bill Randles, "Making War in the Heavenlies", (Self-published: Cedar
Rapids, IA, Undated), pp. 114-116.
7 Bob DeWaay, CIC, Issue 48, p. 10.
8 Bruce Ware, "Beyond the Bounds", (Crossway: Wheaton IL, 2003), p.309.
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Rick Warren
Forty Days: False Gospel
Forty Days: A Closer Look
Forty Days: Which Jesus?
PDL: God's Wisdom
PDL: Exalting the Fallen Creation
PDL: A Purpose-Shaped
Worldview
Antichrist
Will Antichrist Be Revealed
Before the Tribulation?
The Great Harlot
"Mystery" Babylon
"Emerging" Church
Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell - Part 1
Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell - Part 2
Church Growth Movement
Schuller, Hybels & Warren
Review of Schuller's "Self-Esteem"
False Apostles, False
Prophets, False Revival
River of Seducing Spirits
Spiritual Warfare Script
Deception of Spiritual Warfare
Flags & Banners...Spiritual Power
Tools?
Davidic Warfare/Worship?
Jesus of the "Signs" Now the
"Christ" of Apostolic Government
Mystical Christianity?
Tenney's Mystical Deity Chase
Richard Foster: Quaker Mystic?
Willard and "The Way of Jesus"
What Oswald Chambers
Might Have Thought About
Todays "Christianity"
Rick Warren
Forty Days: False Gospel
Forty Days: A Closer Look
Forty Days: Which Jesus?
PDL: God's Wisdom
PDL: Exalting the Fallen Creation
PDL: A Purpose-Shaped
Worldview
Antichrist
Will Antichrist Be Revealed
Before the Tribulation?
The Great Harlot
"Mystery" Babylon
"Emerging" Church
Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell - Part 1
Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell - Part 2
Church Growth Movement
Schuller, Hybels & Warren
Review of Schuller's "Self-Esteem"
False Apostles, False
Prophets, False Revival
River of Seducing Spirits
Spiritual Warfare Script
Deception of Spiritual Warfare
Flags & Banners...Spiritual Power
Tools?
Davidic Warfare/Worship?
Jesus of the "Signs" Now the
"Christ" of Apostolic Government
Mystical Christianity?
Tenney's Mystical Deity Chase
Richard Foster: Quaker Mystic?
Willard and "The Way of Jesus"
What Oswald Chambers
Might Have Thought About
Todays "Christianity"