Then a demon-oppressed man who was blind and mute was brought to him, and he healed him, so that the man spoke and saw. 23 And all the people were amazed, and said, “Can this be the Son of David?” 24 But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons.” 25 Knowing their thoughts, he said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. 26 And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? 27 And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. 28 But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. 29 Or how can someone enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house. 30 Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
Matthew 12:22-30
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Ephesians 2:1-3
Dealing with the devil is always a touchy subject. CS Lewis wrote:
There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves (the devils) are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.
CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
In our Western materialist world, we usually fall under the first error of disbelief in the demonic. When Christians play this game of sticking our heads in the sand regarding demons, we are committing the same error as the atheist. God does not not exist just because the atheist says he doesn’t exist. Likewise, demons do not not exist just because we don’t believe they exist or don’t want them to exist. Truth is truth, reality is reality, and it is to our advantage to acknowledge what is and not what we wish was.
Our two texts support an idea. The idea is that there is a prince of demons. That means there is a hierarchy in the demon world. Somebody is the boss of demons. Ultimately in the kingdom of darkness, of course, it is Satan. However, even Satan has a boss. Satan is not autonomous. Our triune God who created all things, including Satan, and sustains all things is Satan’s final boss and all of his domain of demons.
Satan, through his hierarchy of demons, does have some authority in the earth. In the beginning, God gave the responsibility of exercising dominion over the earth to Adam and Eve. When they sinned and were removed from God’s garden, they lost the authority to exercise that dominion in all of its glory. Satan then became what Paul refers to as the “Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience.”
Within this hierarchy of demons, I believe there is a geographical assignment to certain levels of demons. We see this in Daniel 10:13, where a particular demon is referred to as the prince of Persia who withstood the angel who was delivering the answer to Daniel’s prayer. Then, in the kingdom of God, a chief prince, the angel Michael, came to assist the first angel to break through the demonic resistance to deliver the message to Daniel. The point is that there was a demon referred to as the prince of Persia, a demon who is assigned to rule over Persia in the spirit realm. I believe this can be extrapolated to understand that each geo-political region has demon rulers who do their best to keep the people under bondage to sin and away from the kingdom of God.
Jesus says, “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” The kingdom of God and demons don’t get along. They are not compatible. Demons have been defeated through the cross-work of Jesus.
Jesus is “is the head of all rule and authority,” including the demonic rulers and authorities. “He (Jesus) disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him (Jesus).”1 The Father has given all authority in heaven and earth to Jesus who in turn has told us to go and preach the gospel to all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teach them to obey all things Jesus commanded us. Jesus has delegated his authority to the church, the followers of Jesus, you and me, in the Great Commission.
One aspect of serious prayer that intends to see a region won to Christ is to overthrow through prayer the power of darkness in the region. These spirits blind the minds of the unbelievers and hold them captive to doctrines of demons. It is our prayer life that exerts kingdom authority and binds the strongman in our given region. Wherever you live, if you seriously want to see the region powerfully affected for the kingdom of God, you and your fellow Jesus-followers have to exert your authority in Jesus’ name and oust the strongman. I live in North San Diego County, a region with a population of approximately one million people. Of those million people, a reasonable estimate is that about eight hundred fifty thousand are far from God. To see at least half of those brought into the kingdom of God, we will have to do serious battle with the demonic forces that are blinding them to the truth. Of course, the other major weapon that will have to be unleashed is the truth of God’s word. These people are presently being held captive by the devil to do his will by blinding them to the truth.
The two most important weapons we have for the advancement of the kingdom of God in our respective regions are prayer (and fasting, another subject) and the word of God. Churches who fudge on the truth of God’s word are not a threat to the enemy of men’s souls. Be sure you are in a battalion of saints (a church) who knows and wields the sword of the Spirit that is sharp, not dulled by error or unbelief. Understand this; we are on a war footing. We do not live in spiritual peacetime.
If you do not have a praying group with whom you can get serious about prayer and fasting, ask God for one. Ask him to raise up laborers who will pray seriously and go to battle for the kingdom of God. If you are in North San Diego County and would like to join with some other prayer missionaries, join with the NSDC Prayer Force every Saturday morning at 8:00 AM. It is only 45 minutes each week except the first Saturday of the month when it will be 1 1/2 hours on Zoom. To join in, go to nsdcprayerforce.com/prayer and click on the button on that page to join the Zoom prayer room.
If you want to learn more about fasting to go along with your prayer life, click on the fasting button under the “cloud” section in the right-hand column (of the desktop version) of this post. On your phone, scroll all the way down to the “cloud” section.
Become a prayer missionary and advance the kingdom of God. Without extraordinary prayer, there will be no disciple-making movement. It will be church as usual, and I, for one, am not satisfied with church as usual. People are perishing, and we have the message of life.
