The plain fact is that neither Jesus nor any of the New Testament apostles practiced the kind of spiritual warfare that some are claiming is the missing key to effective evangelism today. We never find Jesus, Peter, John, Stephen, Philip, or Paul “pulling down strongholds” or “binding the strong men” over the cities in which they preached. Rather, we find that they followed the Holy Spirit in regard to where He wanted them to preach; we find them proclaiming the simple gospel—calling people to repentance and faith in Christ—and we find them enjoying marvelous results. And in those cases where they preached to unreceptive people who rejected the gospel, we don’t find them “doing spiritual warfare so that Satan wouldn’t be able to continue blinding their minds.” Rather, we find them “shaking the dust off their feet” as Jesus commanded and going to the next city (see Matt. 10:14; Acts 13:5).
It is amazing that anyone could claim that “pulling down strongholds” and “binding the strong men” is a prerequisite to successful evangelism when there are so many thousands of examples of great revivals in church history where such “spiritual warfare” was never practiced.
“But our techniques work!” someone will say. “Since we started doing this kind of spiritual warfare, more people have been getting saved than ever before.”
If that is true, I’ll tell you why. It is because there has been more scriptural prayer and evangelism done at the same time, or because a group of people has suddenly become more receptive to the gospel.
What would you say if an evangelist told you, “Tonight, before I preached at the revival service, I privately ate three bananas. And when I preached, sixteen people were saved! I’ve finally found the secret to effective evangelism! From now on, I’m going to make sure I eat three bananas before I preach!”?
Surely you would say to that evangelist, “Your eating three bananas had nothing to do with those sixteen people being saved. The key to your success is that you preached the gospel, and there were sixteen people listening who were receptive.”
God honors His Word. If God gives a promise, and someone meets the conditions to that particular promise, God will keep His promise, even if that person is doing other things that are unscriptural.
This is true with the present spiritual warfare practices. If you start passing out tracts and “binding the strong man” over your city, a certain percentage of people will be saved. And if you just start passing out tracts without binding the strong man, the same percentage of people will be saved.
