The Problem of Principalities

Dear friends,

As we meet together as a prophetic board, it becomes clear to me that we have much to learn from each other. In our last meeting, the subject of principalities came up, and I'd like to comment on that.

I may not be an expert, but I cast out my first demon at the age of 21, and over the next 55 years, have often been very active in deliverance ministry. I've enjoyed being a counselor these last 30 years because I get to see the fruit of what I pray and do with people, rather than just speak something into the void and hope that it works. I've never met a human, to my knowledge, who can go up against a principality and win or have much of an effect at all.

The principalities still seem to be with us, despite many people praying against them. Of course, we can humbly ask our Father if there's a problem that we perceive with a principality, and certainly they're part of the overall difficulty of living on a fallen planet, but they are not ours to directly confront. The Father has assigned many large and powerful angels and beings to deal with them, and someday they will definitely be gone. But for now, we have much to do down here.

Many people have hurt themselves with the scripture from Ephesians 6: "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against rulers of darkness, and spiritual wickedness in high places." God has tasked others to deal with the big guys, but there's also a wall between us and them, so they're not allowed to directly hurt us, or, believe me, we would be hurt. But we are given the opportunity. Everything that's on our plane here on earth, we have dominion over, including the demons. And if you learn the basics, the demons down here are not that hard to deal with, particularly if you get heavenly help from angels and the various beings that live up in heaven.

Sometimes I notice some of the bad fruit that I've seen from people talking in kind of a proud way about principalities. They like to rattle off the names of different principalities, as if that gives them great power, but largely it doesn't do anything except needlessly poke a bear you probably don't want to poke. Luckily, rarely does that result in disaster, but occasionally it does.

So I feel that, in the Christian church in America, a lot of people talk with great emphasis, using tiny scraps of scripture, with almost no hands-on experience. And so we hear people who speak with great authority about something they know almost nothing about.

And I would like to start with an explanation of what principalities are like, and I'm going to recount to you a hands-on experience that I had. Fortunately, through God's grace, I have been able to see and hear in both the positive and negative supernatural world. I'm not much impressed with the demonic world, to tell you the truth. I'm very impressed with the heavenly world, and if you want to be afraid of somebody, be afraid of God.

So I would like to tell you something that happened to me, and I'd love not to ever repeat this experience, but I'm going to tell you about it anyhow.

God commanded Nancy and me to go to Israel, and it was during an election period, and there was a lot of terrorism and buses being blown up, and I was afraid to go. And I thought, "No. Why do I have to go there? Jesus is here. What's so special about Israel?"

Well, it turns out that there's something very special about Israel. God really likes Israel. I've never seen so many angels anywhere besides Israel. Israel was just teeming with angels, so for some reason, God really loves them.

And I was sleeping there, and the trip had had so many great highlights. It was like one of those moments when I wanted to whack myself in the head for resisting, you know, because it was a great trip.

But anyway, I was sleeping in my bed in the hotel.

Jesus came and gathered me up in his arms, and I was full adult size, and carried me up, up, up.

And he said, "I'm going to take you to see a principality that is over Jerusalem."

And he didn't say much. We didn't really talk much, and we went up higher and higher.

And the closer and closer we got, I started to see something I can only describe as a floating city. But you have to realize this thing is as big as a big city. It's not little. It's not 30 acres. I mean, it's huge. And it was teeming with toxic, indescribably evil energy and power.

And my contribution was to frantically try to get down. Have you ever seen a little kid who really wants to get down? That's what I was doing. And Jesus just held me, even while I squirmed to get away. So there wasn't much heroism going on there.

And he let me circle it and look at it, again, without much conversation. And then he took me back and put me in my bed.

I had been perfectly healthy when we left that evening. But when we got back, I had very strong flu-like symptoms that lasted for about 10 days afterward, just from being that near the evil that was there while being held by Jesus.

So I want to tell you, this is not a place you want to go.

Okay, so if you will make friends with the angels and the other creatures, like I say, confronting and defeating the demons down here is pretty easy.

I want to discourage us from talking proudly. The Bible says, "Don't think more highly of yourself than you ought." We're much safer under the cloak of humility than we are in pride. You know, when we have pride, God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.

And I find it easier to be humble as I get to know the angels and the different creatures because they're so much bigger than I am, and stronger, more perfect, and smarter. And I am obviously the small fry. And I like it there. I mean, it's easier than pretending that I'm so big and bad.

I have seen people, in some very innocuous ways, get in terrible trouble praying against principalities. And I want to caution you not to do that.

I knew several people who, like a group of people, would get together and say, "Let's go pray against the principality." I think, in this case, it was Raleigh, North Carolina. And they just went out with a group. They weren't a big, you know, spellbinder or anything. And they prayed against the principality.

Well, not much happened except their life fell completely apart. It was like they were covered in tar, and their relationships fell apart. They lost their job. They got physically very sick. And that went on for three years.

I'm usually pretty good at getting people free from spiritual consequences when they make a mistake. But that's one mistake you really don't want to make. And I think I've seen that three times in my counseling career. I'm sure it happens more often.

The other thing I'd like to say to you is there was a prophet that I spent a lot of physical time with that I really respected and enjoyed. John Paul Jackson is a lovely man, a model of humility and prophetic power. So I just liked to be near him. I would go and be with him during his junior beginning classes just so I could stand next to him.

And he wrote a book called Needless Casualties of War, or Needless Casualties, and you can buy it on Amazon. And I would just recommend to you that you read that book because you may save yourself a lot of trouble, or one of your loved ones.