This Present Darkness Is An Eye Opening Book About Spiritual Warfare

This Present Darkness is an eye-opening book about spiritual warfare. In this book, Paretti gives a brief insight to his theological stance on spiritual warfare. He mainly focuses on the involvement and effects of demons and angels on human behaviors. Early in the book Parretti gives the assumption that Demons can take over or even possess people without their own will. In chapter 7 Sandy is listening to Shawn talk about being in tune with the universe, and how everything was connected. All the while Sandy starts to believe these theories, but underlying in the backdrop is a demon whispering sweet things and stroking her hair. Temptations are available to us around every turn, and quite frankly they tend to be rather inviting. The problem is believing that the demons made her believe that she was in tune with the universe. Sandy was shown the temptation of this new way of thinking and eventually, after entertaining the idea, she accepted the belief.

In scripture, we can see that more than once Jesus cast out demons from people and had the power to shut their mouths. In Luke 11:14 one can see the power of Christ over demons, “And He was casting out a demon, and it was mute; when the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke; and the crowds were amazed.” Another place in scripture that we can see where evil gets its power from is in the book of Job. Satan had to ask for God’s permission to torment Job. We know by this that any authority Satan has, has been given to him by God. God has given him the authority over worldly things as mentioned in John 14:20; however, it is important to remember that Satan cannot do anything that is outside of God’s will and purposes. In 1 John 4:4 we are reminded that as long as we have Christ in us, we ...

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...eater than he who is in the world”. Christians have greater power than Satan but those who are not Christian may not have this same power. Nowhere in scripture does it speak of non-believers being able to resist possession but as for Christians, we do have the power within us to not be “taken over” by the evil one.

Perretti gives the impression that evil spirits can take over anybody that they wish at any time, but as discussed in this paper that idea is not biblical. The Bible tells us that Christians are strong enough to withstand this, it does not speak to those who are without Christ in their hearts, so this may not hold as an absolute truth for them as well. If you do not belong to Christ, you belong to the world, and Satan is the ruler of the world. In my personal opinion, you belong to Satan and all of Satan’s wills and wishes if you are not following Christ.