This piece from Rachel Tabachnick on strategic level spiritual warfare (SLSW), the ideology behind the growth of “prayer warrior” networks across the nation, reminded me of something I wanted to highlight from book I have been reading by Chuck Pierce called “The Future War of the Church: How We Can Defeat Lawlessness and Bring God’s Order to the Earth.”

Pierce has not been as openly political as have been the likes of Cindy Jacobs and Lou Engle, but he has been making inroads, having been involved in Janet Porter’s May Day rally. Pierce has deep ties to Jacobs and is actually next in line to take over C. Peter Wagner’s New Apostolic Reformation dynasty, with Wagner recently explaining that his Global Harvest Ministries was merging with Pierce’s Glory of Zion (GOZ) International into something called Global Spheres, Inc. (GSI).

Whenever I write about how this new brand of prophetic intercessors is working their way into the mainstream Religious Right movement, I tend to end up relying on the word “literally” a lot, as in: “when they call themselves prophets and apostles, they mean that ‘literally.'”

I do that because I think that people tend to assume, when they hear these activists talk about things like waging spiritual warfare against demon strongholds, that they are speaking in some figurative or metaphorical sense.

They’re not.

In his book, Pierce lays out the explanation of why they must engage in this type of spiritual warfare, explaining that sin allows Satan to gain strongholds in homes, families, communities, and cities that can only be broken by properly directed spiritual warfare … and again, let me point out that he means this literally:

Satan gains access to an area in the same way he gains access to an individual’s life or a family line: through sin. He does this by encouraging individual or family sin to escalate into corporate sin. When corporate sin enters into our assigned boundaries, we need to be aware of how that sin can build a throne of iniquity and how we, being positioned in God’s army, have the authority to dismantle it. Corporate sin – for example, idolatry, bloodshed, immorality and covenant breaking – creates a break in God’s purpose, or order, for a region. Once this break begins to occur, Satan will take advantage to gain an upper hand and being to establish his influence in that area. … Satan uses ongoing problems within a community, such as murder, violence, pornography or gangs, to strengthen his throne of iniquity within the community. If your community is plagued by these and other corporate sins, you must realize that Satan has a throne of iniquity in place that is being maintained through these sins. … Satan’s confederation, through which he maintains his system of worship, is not just limited to witchcraft or covens but can manifest itself through many forms of occultic practices, including satanism, psychic hotlines, spiritism, paganism, goddess worship, voodoo, fortune-telling, palmistry, demon worship, the use of spirit guides, and other New Age practices. The enemy’s confederation also extends to those who practice any form of false religion – including Mormonism, Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hinduism, Eastern religions, Native religions, Christian Science, and Bahai – and to those embroiled in secret societies such as Freemasonry, Shriners, Oddfellows and the Elks. Even though many involved in these practices would deny that they are being driven by a satanic confederation, the fact is that through their practice of what the Bible clearly identifies as evil, these people are contributing to the throne of iniquity upon which Satan is seated in the area.

Earlier this week I noted that Lou Engle and TheCall were operating a mobile prayer strikeforce for exactly this purpose. Called the Prayer Strike Program, these groups “will be developed and deployed to key regions in the earth where breakthrough is needed for the spreading of the Lord’s justice and salvation. In those regions, the teams will engage in concentrated worship, prayer, and fasting.”

So if you live in an area with a large population of Mormons or Elks clubs, don’t be surprised when you see a battalion of spiritual warriors descend upon your town in order to break the chain of corporate sin and free the region from Satan’s control … literally.