Spiritual Warfare

 So lately obviously I'm interested in spiritual warfare, I mean, who wouldn't be?  It involves swords, danger, epic battles for for the souls of men between darkness and light, what's not to like?   So recently I've been pondering this and have thus started reading books by Frank Perretti.  I was not disappointed.

I started with This Present Darkness.  All in all, awesome.  It was really something different for me, coming from a conservative background, I didn't think of angels much, though I was well aware of demons and Satan.  So this book did shed a little light (pun intended) on angelic figures.  True, Frank P. books aren't the Bible, and that should be our place for finding out the way things really are.  So I did a little Bible research on angels and found Perretti's display of heavenly beings to be consistent.  Though the Bible certainly doesn't present literal battles in the woods between spiritual forces like Perretti does, it certainly doesn't discourage or seem to indicate to the contrary in that area.

Next book was Piercing the Darkness, my absolute favorite of all of them.  It was more personal IMO than This Present Darkness.  I felt for the characters more and I thought the actions/battles were more.....maybe intense is the right word?  It basically boiled down to one woman having to break at the foot of the cross so she could be strong enough to face her own demons, and her own past.

The Oath, is what I just read a while ago.  It was....different.  Not what I was expecting, but certainly in a good way.  It just didn't move me the same way the other two did.  I think it was because there was no physical representation of the forces of light.  Though there was a representation of evil, a blood thirsty dragon, there were no angels and no demons, just one man against a dragon and a whole town that despises him.  The presentations of sin were stark, vivid and correct, just the story didn't grab me the same way. Ok, I admit it, there were no swords, that definitely changes things in my mind.

I'm taking a couple week break from spiritual warfare books right now, just because I haven't had time to fully concentrate while I'm reading, but I intend to be reading more very soon.  My advice?  Read some F. P. books, they seriously change they way you look at the world.