General George Marshall made the observation that all wars are fought first in the minds of people before they are fought on the battlefield. The spiritual war on evil engages an unseen enemy, and the field of battle is your mind – the battlefield of consciousness. This is the theatre where the fight takes place, the minds and hearts of people everywhere, starting with your self. The time of battle is your whole life. There are incredible traps, subterfuges, dis-information, and self-deceptions, which can prevent you from awakening fully to the clear and present danger that threatens you personally and the well-being of those near and dear to you. The second step for spiritual recrudescence then is to discover how to defend yourself, your family, your relatives and friends from the unseen enemy.

One predominant world view recognizes that ordinary people living ordinary lives are often afflicted with intense fears, anger, hatred, and a host of other undesirable personality traits. In other ways they may be exceptionally strong individuals. This humanistic world view recognizes the great psychological value of prayer, self-talk, and the power of suggestion for dealing with root causes of evil, but stops there in acknowledging influences of spirituality in world affairs.

Any talk about spiritual warfare with fallen angels, devils, demons, Satan, and unclean spirits is regarded as absolute nonsense. Such concepts are often attributed to immature understanding of how the human mind works, and to first century concepts and terminology. Any extension of the influence of unseen entities from individuals to economic, political, or diplomatic issues or to modern day problems including war and terrorism is, therefore, considered to be due to overactive imagination and misunderstanding of psychological archetypes. According to this world view improvements in human character are to be realized only as each person takes responsibility for the consequences of their own thoughts and actions.

World View No. 3 – A Consciousness Model

An emerging world view about peace and evil in the world is that the very process of thinking produces thought forms. Negative thoughts and feelings (hatred, anger, etc.) are said to produce thought forms that carry negative energies, often characterized and even personified as “dark forces.” Some people claim that these can be felt and even sometimes seen. Those “dark forces” can be consciously or unconsciously projected to anyone at any location on earth. Presumably prayer thoughts can do the opposite by projecting positive energy.

Therefore, a critical mass of people with positive thoughts, e.g. praying for peace, can have a powerful effect on efforts of diplomats to negotiate for peace between adversaries, while negativity can have the opposite effects. That is, negative thoughts and emotions obstruct peace initiatives and cause war by producing undesirable influences on entire populations. The argument here is that often people who do not perceive the consequences of their thoughts and feelings need to develop greater sensitivity to the subtle nuances of those unseen forces. Exactly how this is to be achieved is not clear, but each individual is considered to be ultimately responsible for policing and transforming their thoughts and emotions.

World View No. 4 – A Religious/Spiritual Model

A dominant view held by People of the Book is that clues for finding an ultimate solution to the current state of affairs in the Middle East and other hot spots in the world can be found in scripture. For example scripture says that the "god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the

Light . . ." - 2 Corinthians 4:4

A widely held belief among the faithful of major religious traditions is that it is not possible to understand the problem of wars and evil by considering only human history. Two invisible spiritual kingdoms exist and are at war: the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan. The latter is hostile and set on destroying mankind. A supernatural being in charge of one-third of heavenly beings (angels) was cast out of the heights of heaven. The belief is that those beings and their leader have to this day maintained an organizational structure, so that world domination means domination by spiritual hosts (armies) of satanic beings arrayed in battle order. The battle is not with people with bodies, but with [fallen angels] principalities, powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world. (Proponents of world view No. 1 hold that this story is religious mythology.)

Are we really up against demon activity and the influence of unseen/unclean spirits?

Are the worldly wise (personified by World View No. 1) already duped by dark forces; their minds and hearts blinded and their ears closed, so that they are unable to hear or see the truth about the horrible invisible enemy? Are people sometimes invaded and animated by the powers of darkness – fallen angels, unclean spirits, and non-corporeal entities? Indeed there is need for discernment “for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood.” Religious minded people often look behind the history of empires and human events to identify dark, satanic forces at work. In this context spiritual recrudescence must include deliverance from forces which inspire people to engage in war and terrorism.

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