Break them all - Cause your Lord has overcome them all

• The church is presently faced with two substantial external challenges to its continued expansion: “demonic entrenchment” and “the lateness of the hour”
  
  Demonic entrenchment
  
  - Found in Egypt by Hebrews
  - Found in Babylon
  - Found in Ephesus by Paul
  
  
  In some places of earth demonic pacts have been serviced continually since post- diluvian time and spiritual light is nearly imperceptible
  
  The lateness of the hour (from a human time perspective)
  
  Rev 12:2
  
  The devil has come down to you having great wrath because he knows that he has a short time
  
  If we are to successfully overcome the works of the enemy, “We must learn to see the world as it really is, not as it appears to be”.
  
  Therefore we must superimpose our understanding of forces and events in the spiritual domain onto places and circumstances in the material world
  
  Those who practice spiritual mapping already possess a keen understanding of the spiritual domain
  
  Spiritual mapping is a means whereby we can see what is beneath the surface of the material world; but it is not magic.
  
  Today spiritual battlefield
  
  The church of Jesus Christ must not shrink back from taking a long, hard look at the spiritual obstacles that stand between it and fulfillement of the great commission.
  
  It has become obvious that something is out there, and this something is manifesting itself in our material world.
  
  * Spiritual darkness is increasing and is becoming more sophisticated
  * There is a geographical pattern to evil and spiritual oppression
  * They do not understand the spiritual dimension as well as they thought.
  
  
  
  Territorial strongholds
  
  The Bible touches on the subject of spiritual territoriality in both testaments. The most cited instance is the prince of Persia in Daniel 10. (see also Ezekiel 28:12-19; Deuteronomy 32:8, Ephesians 6:12)
  
  Why …
  
  - Are some areas more oppressive ?
  - More idolatrous ?
  - More spiritually barrens than others ?
  - Why does darkness seem to linger where it does ?
  - For instance has Mesopotamia put out such a long string of tyrannical rulers ?
  - Is the nation of Haiti the premier social and economic eyesore in the western hemisphere ?
  - Do the andean nations of South America always seem to rank near the top of the world’s annual per capita homicide statistics ?
  - Is there so much overt demonic activity in and around the himalayan mountains ?
  - Has Japan been such a hard nut to crack with the gospel ?
  - Does the continent of Asia so dominate the 10/40 window ?
  
  There is in fact a great research challenge
  
  It is helpful to think of this process in terms of the medical researcher who has just identified a certain virus as the causative agent behind a particular disease. He or she has made an important discovery, but much hard work is ahead if this knowledge has to be translated into practical help for those who are suffering from, or endeavoring to treat, the ailment in question
  
  
  
  Acknowledging the role of spiritual territoriality, therefore, is only the departure point for any quest to understand the whys and wherefores of the modern spiritual battlefield. For example :
  
  - How are spiritual strongholds established ?
  - How are they maintened over the time ?
  - How are they reproduced in other areas ?
  
  Two universal characteristics of spiritual strongholds
  
  - They repel light
  - They export darkness
  
  Teritorial strongholds are inherently defensive and offensive in nature: while their dark ramparts ward off divine arrows of truth, demonic archers are busy launching fiery darts in the direction of unprotected targets abroad. While their spiritual prison camps retain thousands of enchanted captives, evil command and control centers are releasing manifold deceptions through the spiritual hosts of wickedness in their employ.
  
  How are territorial strongholds established
  
  If we are to understand why things are the way they are today we must first examine what happened yesterday. Concluding that territorial strongholds exist is not enough, we must also solve the riddle of their origin. Where did they come from ? How where they established ?
  
  Babel : the obvious starting point
  
  Genesis 11 informs us it was from the plain of Shinear in ancient Mesopotamia and Zachary 5:5-11 teaches us about the woman sitted down in the epha. Thiw woman was the iniquity and it is said in Zachary 5:11 she will be built a house in the country of Shinear.
  
  Zachary 5:5-11
  
  5 Then the angel who was speaking to me came forward and said to me, “Look up and see what this is that is appearing.”
  
  6 I ask, “What is it?”
  He replied, “It is a measuring basket.” And he added, “This is the iniquity of the people throughout the land.”
  
  7. The the cover of lead was raised, and there in the baskek sat a woman!
  
  8 “This is wickedness,” and he pushed her back into the bsket and pushed the lead cover down over its mouth.
  
  9 Then I looked up – and there before me were two women, with the wind in their wings ! They had wings like those of a stork, and they lifted up the basket between heaven and earth.
  
  10 “Where are they taking the basket ?” I asked the angel who was speaking to me.
  
  11 He replied, “To the country of Babylonia to build a house for it. When it is ready, the basket will be set there in its place”
  
  This is the the text from my Thompson chain – reference Bible it says Babylonia instead of Shinear, but in my french scofield Bible version Louis Segond it is said at verse 11
  
  11 Il me repondit: elle vont lui batir une maison dans le pays de Schinear; et quand elle sera prete {la maison} il {l’epha = basket} sera depose la dans son lieu.
  
  
  There in Shinear, The coherent people were dispersed by God into the four corners of the earth.
  
  - But what happened to this ancient people as they migrate from Babel ?
  - Do ancient artifacts and oral traditions offer us any clues ?
  o And if so, will these clues have any relevance to our quest to understand the origin of
  territorial strongholds ?
  
  
  But we should remember the fact that demons are found wherever there are people and that they have no reason to be anywhere else. There is no evidence in scripture that they are interested in inanimate or nonmoral creation such as mountains, rivers, trees, caves, stars and animals, unless and until people are there. Their bitter mandate is to steal, kill and destroy that which is precious to God; and clearly human beings created in the divine image are at the top of heaven’s list of valuables.
  
  
  This is the underlying explanation for the darkness that seems to engulf so many of the world’s cities. Wherever people congragate in force, demons will be attracted to the scent. Was this not why Babel prompted such swift intervention by God ? Is it hard to imagine that he unique concentration of humanity in Shinear would have precipitated the most profound ingathering of demonic powers in history ?
  
  
  
  We don’t know much about the original movements of the first people groups out from Mesopotamia, what it seems that these movements were made with at least one experimental common denominator : traumas (inability to traverse forbidding mountain ramparts that blocked their paths, sudain lack of sustenance brought about by severe climatic conditions, mortal combat,…)
  
  
  These traumas bring people face to face with their desperation. How would they resolve their challenge ? Each case was loaded with moral implications. Each circumstance was an opportunity for a specific people in a specific place to return to God in repentance, thereby establishing Him as their rightful ruler and sole deliver, but unfortunately the sackcloth prostrations of Nineveth have proven to be a rare exception to the rule. The overwhelming majority of people down through history have elected to exchange the revelation of God for a lie.
  
  Heeding the entreaties of demons, they have choosen in their desparation to enter into quid pro quo pacts with the spirit world. In return for a particular deity’s consent to reslve their immediate traumas, they have offered up their singular and ongoing allegiance. They have collectively sold their proverbial souls
  
  It is through the placement of these ancient welcome mats, then that demonic territorial strongholds are established. The basis of the transaction is entirely moral.People make a conscious choice to suppress truth and believe a falsehood . In the end they are deceived because they choosed to be.
  
  (Roman 1:18-25)
  
  18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
  
  19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
  
  20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, beeing understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
  
  21 For altough they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their fulish hearts were darkened.
  
  22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
  
  23 and exchange the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
  
  24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
  
  25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is foever praised. Amen
  
  
  Because many of the oldest pacts between people and demonic powers were transacted in Asia, and Asia now hosts the planet’s greatest population centers, it should not surprise us that the continent presently dominates the great unreached frontier known as the 10/40 window. Population and pact lognevity both have a great deal to do with the territorial entrenchment of spiritual darkness.
  
  Ishmael
  
  There are many territorial strongholds in this country. I just don’t know right know all of them and the hierarchy between them but those of Ishamel are there also. Their demonic power may be upon Rachid and some other men that commited their lives to them. We should ask God to unveil these men identities and their wickedness acts and also the strongmem who are ruling them so that we can take authority against them and get them bound and layed down to the feet of the Lord, having in the same time their victims blessed in the name of Jesus and set free
  
  Jeremy 33:3
  
  3 Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.
  
  3 Invoque moi et je te répondrai, je t’annoncerai de grandes choses, des choses cachées que tu ne connais pas
  
  
  
  Genesis 16: 1-16
  
  This scriptures tell us how Sarai, Abram’s wife acted when she saw that she could not give birth: she asked Abram to sleep with her maidservant so that she could build a family through her”.
  
  Surely Sarai was thinking of doing good but shed did something very wrong. It reminds me also of Uza.
  
  In 1 Chronicles 13: 10 It is said that the anger of the Lord burst againts Uzza and God hit him because he extended his hand to the Ark. Uzza dead there before God.
  
  I don't really know who was Uzza, but he certainly knew the rules for serving before the Ark of the Almighty God: so why did he acted like he did ? Maybe just a reflex, or may be was he looking for a way to personnaly glorify himself as the one who rescued the Ark ? After such an act would'nt had he became a hero ?
  
  So Sarai did wrong things while trying may be to made the promess of God realised. And the drawbacks of her acts are still visible in this world. The spiritual strongman who is ruling Ishamael is, from my point of view one of the most influent over mankind.
  
  Genesis 16: 11-12
  
  11 The angel of the LORD also said to her:
  
  “You are now with child and you will have a son.
  You shall name him Ishmael,
  For the LORD has heard of your misery.
  
  12 He will be a wide donkey of a man;
  his hand will be against everyone
  and everyone’s hand against him,
  and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers
  
  
  How are territorial strongholds maintained ? What sustains thems ?
  
  - If the misplaced choices or acts of earlier generations allowed demonic forces into certain neighborhoods, how do these evil powers maintain their tenancy rights across centuries or millenia ?
  - How do they manage lease extensions once those people who signed the original paperwork have passed on ?
  
  The authority transfer
  
  - During religious festival
  - Ceremonials
  - Pelgrimages
  
  
  See the book The twilight labyrinth
  
  The release of these spiritual powers during such manifestations is accompanied with :
  
  A heightned sense of oppression
  Increased incidentsof persecution
  Wholesale manifestations of demonic signs and wonders
  
  
  Notice that religious festivals, ceremonials and pelgrimages are taking place somewhere in the world every week of the year ( Halloween, Islamic Hajj, Kumba Melha in India, Inti Raymi in Peru, summer Bon celebration in Japan, Foley Fori in Niger, many religious festivals with no biblical fundations in roman catholicism) and they attract huge numbers of participants as well
  
  Dusting off ancient welcome matts
  
  In spite of the fact that these ceremonies seems to be just benign, qaint and colorful cultural spectacles they are really (beyond the visible aspect of things) some conscious transactions with the spirit world. They are opportunities for contemporary generations to reaffirm the choices and pacts made by their forefathers and ancestors. They are occasions to dust off ancient welcome mats and extend the devil’s right to rule over specific peoples and places today. The significance of these events should not be underestimated.
  
  
  Once a people have given in to vain imaginations, demonic powers are quick to animate resulting mythologies. In a manner reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz, manipulating spiritual agents practice the art of shadow – ruling from behind the scenes.
  
  The authority and allegiance rendered to so-called protective deities is quickly absorbed – and from that moment on, the lie is enchanted.
  
  
  Traditions and the enchanted system
  
  Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of children are born into these enchanted systems around the world, and the majority of them has no one to lead them on the right way, to open their eyes so that they could see the Light of The Lord. Nearly all of them grow up hearing about the lie, but it is during the course of puberty rites and initiations that many of them feel its intense gravitational suction for the first time. The power of the lie, fueled by demonic magic, is called tradition; and it is tradition, in turn who sustains territorial dynasties.
  
  Other means used to keep the enchamtment
  
  Tradition is not the only means the enemy uses to maintain territorial dynasties. Of course tradition is a very important mean, but there is another strategy as important as tradition which is called “adaptive deception”
  
  The enemy use adaptive deception when tradition for whatever reason begins to lose its potency in a given society.
  
  Adaptive deceptions are, depending on how one chooses to view them, either necessary course corrections, or upgrades to the devil’s “product line.” They work because of humankind’s propensity to try new things
  
  THE DEVIL HAS LEARNED THAT THERE IS MORE THAN ONE WAY TO SKIN A CAT
  
  Examples of adaptive deception
  
  Folk Islam
  A combination of animist and islamic beliefs
  Japanese new religions
  Curious synthesis of budhism and materialistic concepts
  
  In terms of number of adherents and practicioners, both are hugely successful
  
  
  Adaptive deception do not replace preexisting ideological bondages, they augment them. In this sense, they are analogous on a collective level to the biblical account of the demon that returns to the undefended human vessel with seven other spirits more wicked than itself (Matthew 12:43-45; Luke 11:24-26)
  
  Prevailing bondages and root bondages
  
  Now that we are armed with an understanding of the roles that adaptive deception, traditions and religious festivals play in maintaining territorial dynasties, we must learn one final lesson.
  
  It has to do with descerning the the difference between “prevailing bondage” and “root bondage”
  
  Due to the lack of teaching on this subject, Christian warriors are often misled by surface appearances when they endeavor to identify territorial strongholds
  
  
  
  
  An example
  
  A few years ago a large number of people insisted that the spiritual stronghold over Albania was Stalinist communism, it was no doubt that it was the prevailing bondage at that time but maybe not the root bondage if we consider the fact that communist did not become the predominant ideology in the country until 1944.
  
  
  The expansion of the darkness
  
  - How can we understand the territorial expansion of the kingdome of darkness ?
  - Is this kingdome geographycaly dynamic ?
  - If so, how are the characteristics of certain strongholds reproduced in other areas ?
  
  The Banyan way
  
  Starting from a massive trunk, the banyan’s sinuous branches extend laterally in all directions. From these, in what is surely, the tree’s most remarkable feature, aerial roots descend to the ground to form new trunk. In this fashion the banyan can more laterally over great distances – creating as it does, an often impenetrable thicket of twisting, vine-like branches and trunks.
  
  These extending branches and descending roots represent the two ways territorial expansion takes place: “ideological export” and “trauma-induced strongholds”.
  
  Ideological export
  
  Ideological export is a latteral extension of territorial strongholds and it is accomplished through the broadcast of ideological or spiritual influence from transmission sites, or export centers, in various areas of the world
  
  - Cairo
  - Tripoli
  - Karbala
  - Qom and Meca (muslim world)
  - Allahabad and Varanasi (hindu world)
  - Dharamsala and Tokyo (budhist world)
  - Amsterdam, New York, Paris and Hollywood (materialistic world)
  
  Trauma – induced strongholds
  
  Having learned from past experience how effectively desperate circumstances can draw men and women into his web, the enemy will often use the greed, lust and dishonesty of depraved individuals to create fresh crises.
  
  
  Example
  
  In Haiti, taking advantage of the greed of Efik tribesmen and french slave traders, huge number of West Africans were brought to the Caribbean and mistreated to the point of desperation. Choosing to resolve their conflict by entering into fresh pacts with the spirit world, these slaves established an animist-based system of worship and secret rule known as voudon. Today the dark reward of this system are widely known.
  
  The Threshold generation
  
  As the armies of the Lord Jesus Christ begin to collapse the remaining task of world evangelization on the 10/40 window, it is curious that the geographic centerpoint of this region should be the site of ancient Eden (i.e in the area of Iraq, also see Gen 2:8-14). Could it be that it is God’s plan for his church to complete the great commission on the very selfsame soil where the original commandment was delivered to earth’s first family (Genesis 1:27-28)
  
  Whatever the answer is it is clear that Christian warriors who dare to march this final road will face formidable opposition from an implacable and invisible adversary. If their mission to liberate enchanted prisoners is to succeed, they will require accurate intelligence of the enemy command and control centers, and the spiritual equivalent of the military’s night vision goggles The hope is that the readers who are contemplating imminent rescue missions be aware of the fact that new tools are becoming available to guide them through the twist and turns of the twilight labyrinth.
  
  
  Reflection questions
  
  - Do we agree with the fact that The Kingdome of Satan may be well organized with evil principalities assigned to different geographic regions ?
  
  - In which ways can we apply the concept of “spiritual territoriality” to the country we are living in ?
  
  - What are the spiritual strongholds of our city ? Can we try to draw a spiritual mapping of the country, with detailed mapping for the big cities.
  
  - In Ezechiel 28, we see Satan personnalised by the King of Tyre and the same in Esai 14:9-17. Moreover the book of Daniel unveil the fact that Nebuchadnetsar was the Gold head of a spiritual complex empire. In fact Nebuchadnetsar was certainly ruled by a very powerful darkness entity, and I do believe it was Satan itself. On the same pattern do we know something about the history of this country which can lead us to unveil the demonic powers which were ruling the influent men of the country ?
  
  - Religious festival, ceremonials and peligrimage can reinforce the authority of evil powers over an area. Name and discuss as many of these festivals as you can think of. Are they taking place here ?
  
  - Demonic strongholds over a city or nation can be induced by traumas. Can you think of any such traumas in the history of your city or nation that might have produced strongholds ? Check through the history of the country and see.