10 - The Persons in Whom the Spirit of the World Work

In Eph 2:2 we have a very important statement bearing directly on our subject. We are there reminded that we once “walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” The god of the age and spirit of the world is here given another title. We learn that he is the head of those evil spiritual powers which occupy the space surrounding our earth. These are the Christian’s spiritual foes, and they are brought prominently to our notice in this epistle which contains God’s highest revelation of our place in the heavenlies and of the spiritual blessings appropriate to that place. Here we learn that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ (Eph 1:3). But our possession and enjoyment of these spiritual blessings are vigorously disputed by the spiritual enemies in the same heavenly places; for we contend, “not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the wicked spirits in the heavenlies” Eph 6:2). Of this vast and mighty host, constituting “the powers of the air,” Satan is the prince, the commander-in-chief.

Very few Christians have anything like a correct idea of the nature of this mighty being, or of the sphere in which he operates, or of the purposes which he is seeking to accomplish. This deplorable ignorance is due to the fact that the current conception of Satan is derived, not from Scripture, but from Faust and the comic papers.

    The wicked spirits, or demons, who form part of this spiritual host, displayed abnormal activity at the time of our Lord’s first coming; and now again, as His second coming approaches, they are aroused to a state of great activity. Spirit “control” and “possessions,” accompanied by unusual physical demonstrations, rigor, protracted unconsciousness, convulsions, hysterics, spasmodic movements, strange noises, which may or may not be articulate speech of some sort (and hence easily confounded with the Holy Spirit’s “gift of tongues”), are now quite common and becoming more so. These abnormal manifestations are no longer confined to circles where spiritism, hypnotism, and the like are openly cultivated, but are now breaking out among groups of God’s people who have been induced to stray away from Scriptural ground to seek for excitements and “experiences,” who are urged by misguided teachers to yield themselves, to come under “control,” to seek “power” instead of weakness, and otherwise to disregard the plain injunctions of Scripture. The unhappy and restless souls who are thus misled expose themselves to the power of the enemy who is quick to take advantage of it. The only place of safety in these closing hours of the age is on Scriptural ground. Nowhere in the Word of God is there any warrant for seeking the experiences which so many are now seeking, under the direction of the teachers and leaders who have suddenly come into prominence, who are pushing aside those to whom God has given a knowledge of His Word and the gift of teaching, and who never open their lips without betraying gross negligence of Scripture.