Think how foolish someone would appear who said, “There must be many smoking spirits over that city, because so many people in that city smoke cigarettes.” What were those “smoking spirits” doing before those cities existed? Where were they then? What were they doing before tobacco was ever used for smoking? Is the reason fewer people are now smoking is because some of those old “smoking demons” are dying off or moving to new territories?
Do you see how foolish it is when we say such things as, “That city is controlled by spirits of lust, which is why there are so many houses of prostitution there”? The truth is that wherever people are not serving Christ, there exists the kingdom of darkness. Many evil spirits operate in that dark realm who entice their subjects to sin and continue in their rebellion against God. Those spirits will tempt people in every area of sin, and in some places, people yield more to one sin than other sins. Their only hope is the gospel that we are called to proclaim.
Even if there were specific kinds of evil spirits who specialized in certain sins and who ruled certain geographical areas, it wouldn’t help us to know about it, because there is nothing we can do to remove them. Our responsibility is to pray (in a scriptural manner) for the people there who are deceived and to preach the gospel to them.
The only good it would do to find out about the most predominate sins in a certain city would be so that we can preach more convicting messages to the unsaved living there—by specifically naming the sins that hold them guilty before God. But there is no need to research a city’s history to determine that. One only needs to visit for a short while and keep his eyes and ears open. The predominant sins will soon become evident.
Finally, there is no example in the New Testament of anyone doing “spiritual mapping” as a means of preparing for spiritual warfare or evangelization. Nor are there any instructions in the epistles to do so. In the New Testament, the apostles followed the Holy Spirit in regard to where they should preach, faithfully proclaimed the gospel and called for people to repent, and relied upon the Lord to confirm the word with signs following. Their method worked quite well.
