Spiritual warfare (and stuff)

A few years ago...okay, let's say 15 years ago...I read a book by Frank Peretti called "This Present Darkness." It was sort of THE Christian book to read at the time, sort of like the Left Behind series were recently. It was about spiritual warfare, the theory that angels and demons are battling it out slightly over our heads, with us involved in the battle in some ways. The things that happen, fights, accusations, averting danger, could be attributed to angels and demons. At the time, I just thought it was kind of interesting...the book was riveting in that beach-book way...and I though it was kind of an allegory or something.

Not really anymore. Three years ago almost to the day, my little church had a meeting about their future. I had only been there six months and was already about to be kicked out, or leave, due to crazy phone calls, accusations, and just plain me not doing what they told me to do. The meeting could be described, using Bible langage, as a "pit of snakes" (brood of vipers in the King James translation) with people hissing, anger all around, and none of it really even about me or justified. Afterwards, I called a friend of mine who spent 30 years in Singapore as a missionary. "Dude," I said, "I think we need an exorcism."

He explained to me that people could not have demons cast out of them if they were not willing, but what I could do was to claim a building for Jesus Christ. I could walk the building, praying that anything not of Jesus would be bound and cast out. So I did. I walked it before a meeting with one of the women who was the main "viper." And when she came in, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I felt "electrified" in some way...and then the thunderstorm started. When the woman came in, she seemed physically uncomfortable and sat as far away as she could from me in my small office. When I told her that she could not continue to make calls behind my back to stir up trouble and still be a part of this church, a HUGE clap of thunder sounded, and at that, she ran out of the church, and literally never came back.

Today, I was expecting a fight from the remaining vipers. We were having a meeting to vote on closing the church, a move that I was recommending as it had become obvious over the past year or so that despite many changes, a spirit of unhealthiness remained...that same spirit that had been there several years before.

So this is what I did. I walked the building. I prayed at the entryway, along the aisle, over the altar, along the chairs and the baptismal font. I laid my hands on the chairs of the people who I expected to cause trouble and bound and cast out anything not of Jesus in His name.

When church started, they were not there. They did not come to worship or the meeting, for the first time in three and a half years, barring hospitalizations. We had a lovely, healthy, if a bit sad, meeting, voting to close the church until a full-time pastor could be found for the area, with a brand new start. People expressed their grief, and also their knowledge that this was what needed to happen. They expressed their hope, as did I, that this would lead to better things in the future. We will end in a few weeks with a closing worship and picnic, with talk of meeting once a month for Bible study to stay in touch.

I could not have asked for a better ending to such a conflicted, twisted, situation. I can only imagine that the spirit that had kept hounding us was driven out, if only for the day, so that we could talk and grieve and make plans for something new, with a new, right, spirit.

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence, O Lord, take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and renew a right spirit within me."