There Really is a Religious Spirit Working Here

"In order for you to impact your city you must identify and break down the ruling principalities that may be hindering the Gospel there. The more common principalities in the western world would include the religious spirit, mammon, pride, and freemasonry to name a few. Ask God to give you wisdom and discernment as you prepare to deal with local and regional principalities." (Os Hillman, "The Queen of Heaven" November 1, 2010)


Occasionally, as regular readers know, we are questioned as to whether we know what we are doing in this blog. The questions range anywhere from, "What makes you think there is a religious spirit over the Santa Maria valley"? to "Why do you think you have the authority to challenge a ruling spirit anyway?" Then sometimes we come across a quote like the one above that seems to answer both questions. We are not so naive as to believe that those who read these words will embrace the battle, or even change their minds about the battle. However, this is something that needs to be said to remind believers and skeptics alike (and us too) that we are fighting a real fight and things will not be quite right until the enemy is put to flight.


We think we have our facts right about the following observations. If you have better information, please comment here or contact us another way. We participated in a prayer walk of repentance with the Pentecost Walk ministry several weeks ago. It was a rainy, but not too cold afternoon when something like 200 of us walked from the Santa Maria Foursquare Church to city hall to participate in the prayer. Tom Demaree was restarting his ministry after a hiatus due to various circumstances. He felt Santa Maria was the place he needed to do the restart. He did. We did. That was it as far as we know.

Then just a couple weeks ago, Tom repeated the event in southern San Luis Obispo county. The estimate I heard of the number of people who participated went as high as possibly 3,000 people. Yes, ten times or so the number of people who participated in Santa Maria. Any guesses on why there was such a dramatic difference in the numbers? We could give some credit to the weather. It was nicer the second time. Perhaps it was because it was the second time and the prayer walks had begun to gather momentum? We would like to suggest the possibility, just for your consideration, the difference might it have to do with a religious spirit keeping a lid on anything spiritual going on here.

Where to go from there? We can give you all the logical and reasonable arguments as to why the presence of a religious spirit is the only possible answer. That still would not satisfy those who do not want to embrace the idea. We wonder if it is even worth making the following points, but we do have the space so why not?


Maybe there were so many more people at the walk because there are some large churches in southern San Luis Obispo county, including a legitimate mega-church with thousands of attendees weekly. Use that rationale and you are making our point. We do not have any really prominent ministries. That is not to say they are not significant in God's economy. All of them are. I wonder how many of those ministries are even known outside Santa Barbara county? Perhaps some of them would be had we already broken the back of the religious spirit.

There is only a quarter-mile, wide riverbed separating the counties. Why would we have a religious spirit and they do not? Spirits, evil or good, are always in subjection to the rules of man, including to the boundaries we draw. We do not know what the ruling spirits might be in San Luis Obispo county. That is not really our business. There is not any point in concerning ourselves with what someone else is or is not doing.




We have often said the worst thing that can happen to a person is to be right and to have the majority, or anyone else, convince him he is wrong. Absent any evidence to the contrary, we are standing firm in the belief that a religious spirit is affecting every individual church and Christian ministry in northern Santa Barbara County--TheChurchInSantaMariaCA. Ultimately we will win. Agreement always helps, but if you cannot agree, why argue about about it? Truth always proves itself.