One Ripper of a Prayer Meeting!

By David Hobbs

We hear a lot about demonic attacks, and I’ve experienced a number of them. But I had never experienced anything like what I’m about to relate to you.

 I’ve started going to this intercessory prayer meeting at my old church led by Stephanie, my long time prayer compadre, and Cheryl, the pastor’s wife, with whom I have spent hundreds of hours in prayer over the last 10 years. Because of the seriousness of the days we are in, the meeting runs 2 hours a day, 5 days a week. We spend the first hour mostly praying in tongues--the first half of which we pray independently, and the second half we sit together in a circle holding hands while we pray. Then we take a few minutes to let people share what they saw or experienced in this first hour praying in the Spirit. The second hour we intercede (“pray into”) those things which people saw in the first hour. Usually there are 6-8 prayer warriors praying, but I have counted as many as 13.

The prayer can be quite intense and I often leave wrung out physically and emotionally, yet energized wondrously in the spirit from crying out to the Lord. Many times I start out with my soul completely dry. I have to go through the motions for a while, but almost invariably the Holy Spirit will come on me at some point and I will be completely quickened. It’s a wonderful prayer meeting!

Two weeks ago to the day we were in the second half of the first hour, circled up and praying in tongues. I sensed a lot of spiritual energy in the room, like static electricity in the air before a thunderstorm, but it wasn’t coming together in focus on any one thing. Then Stephanie launched into a song in the Spirit. Now when I sing a song in the Spirit, it is usually free-flowing and melodic. But Stephanie’s song was martial in character, crisp in cadence like a military marching song--loud and emphatic. It was powerful, but still didn’t draw everyone together. I tried to find a place to flow with it but couldn’t.

When we shared what we were experiencing, I said that I sensed a lot of spiritual energy, but it seemed unfocused. I got some agreement to that. Then we went into the intercession time, but people began slipping away. Stephanie had to leave, and others as well. About 20 minutes into it there was only Cheryl and me and dear sister Sherry, who rarely says anything, though she experiences things deeply in her spirit.

Then it happened!

When I see things in the Spirit I get momentary flashes of mental images, like in my Walking in the Spirit book, where, in the chapter “Spiritual Warfare in the Garden House,” I kept getting images of hideous, angry, demonic faces while feeling their presence in my spirit.

Now, suddenly I saw images of flashing swords, rearing horses, and the chaos of battle. “I think there’s a spiritual battle going on!” I said excitedly to Cheryl, “I’m going to pray into it!" We both started praying and the Spirit swept in and energized us incredibly. The forces of heaven had launched an all-out attack against the armies of hell in the room and we were right in the middle of it!

The battle was no contest. The hosts of heaven were victorious wherever they turned, just like when they went out in front of Israel’s armies in the Old Testament. It’s never a question of who is stronger--God’s forces are always stronger. The question is whether the people of God can qualify for heaven’s help. This morning we had qualified and the battle was engaged. I began casting down demonic strongholds over the area and calling in everything the devil had stolen from us: our health, our callings, our resources, our children, our hopes, our vision—demanding that he restore it all with interest, demanding that he give up all his ill-gotten gain--that he restore seven-fold. We called out for total victory in our area and for the hundred mile radius around us—no more sickness, no more suicides, no more crime, no more demonic influence--the Kingdom of God here on earth just like it is in heaven.

It came in waves. One wave would pass and then another one would come with new images which sparked new prayers. At one point I saw the gates of hell bulging from the pressure coming against them. “The gates of hell shall not prevail against the church!” I shouted over and over. “The gates of hell shall not prevail!” I saw the gates again in vision form splintering as the pressure against them caused bits of wood to break loose and fly off. I never saw them burst open as I hoped, but they suffered significant damage.

The time went on and on with the fire and glory of God all around us and the hosts of heaven routing the wicked foe on every hand. I really thought that we had entered a new reality in God, that this was Armageddon or something--that we had crossed over a divide never to return.

There are times that does happen in the Bible. Enoch walked with God and one day, “poof!” was no more, for God took him. He entered a new realm in God never to return to the old normal. Joel 3:18 says a day is coming when:

 … the mountains shall drip with new wine, the hills shall flow with milk, and all the brooks of Judah shall be flooded with water; a fountain shall flow from the house of the Lord and water the Valley of Acacias.

 Zechariah 14 talks about a similar day:

 6It shall come to pass in that day that there will be no light; The lights will diminish. 7It shall be one day which is known to the Lord—neither day nor night. But at evening time it shall happen that it will be light. 8And in that day it shall be that living waters shall flow from Jerusalem, Half of them toward the eastern sea and half of them toward the western sea; In both summer and winter it shall occur.

 There definitely are such “suddenlys” in the Bible. But not this time. After an incredible half hour the troops rode off and the prayer meeting ended right on time! Still, I was pumped up all weekend. And even now when I relate the story to someone, I get pumped up all over again. I had never seen God launch an attack on the hordes of hell, let alone doing it right in my presence. It was, as my sister Cheryl so aptly put it, “one ripper of a prayer meeting!”

The Darkness Before the Dawn

By David Hobbs



I write these blog posts to stir discussion and thinking, especially out-of-the-box thinking, rather than to advance some pet doctrine. Therefore, my last post on the need of “think-tank Christian planners and strategists” was not necessarily advocating for that, but bemoaning the church’s passivity, complacency, and continual playing defense against the devil.

Way too many churches are sitting around waiting for the Rapture or for God to judge/destroy the world like in Noah’s day, instead of imitating Jesus, who came to “destroy the works of the devil.” Believe me, the church will fare much better going through the destruction of the works of the devil than going through the destruction of the world!

If we believe the Bible when it says “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world,” then why don’t we live like it? Why don’t we demonstrate to the watching angels, demons and holy ones that it is true while giving glory to Jesus at the same time? But what glory is it to Him watching us being systematically driven out of the culture (while living lives indistinguishable from the world)?

How bad is it? Has it ever been this bad before? Sadly enough it has. Consider this passage from church revival scholar J. Edwin Orr, as quoted in the Renewal Journal:

Not many people realize that in the wake of the American Revolution there was a moral slump. Drunkenness became epidemic. Out of a population of five million, 300,000 were confirmed drunkards: they were burying fifteen thousand of them each year. Profanity was of the most shocking kind. For the first time in the history of the American settlement, women were afraid to go out at night for fear of assault. Bank robberies were a daily occurrence.

What about the churches? The Methodists were losing more members than they were gaining. The Baptists said that they had their most wintry season. The Presbyterians in general assembly deplored the nation’s ungodliness. In a typical Congregational church, the Rev. Samuel Shepherd of Lennox, Massachusetts in sixteen years had not taken one young person into fellowship. The Lutherans were so languishing that they discussed uniting with Episcopalians who were even worse off. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York, Bishop Samuel Provost, quit functioning: he had confirmed no one for so long that he decided he was out of work, so he took up other employment. The Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, wrote to the Bishop of Virginia, James Madison, that the Church “was too far gone ever to be redeemed.” Voltaire averred, and [atheist] Tom Paine echoed, “Christianity will be forgotten in thirty years.”

Take the liberal arts colleges at that time. A poll taken at Harvard had discovered not one believer in the whole of the student body. They took a poll at Princeton, a much more evangelical place: they discovered only two believers in the student body, and only five that did not belong to the filthy speech movement of that day. Students rioted. They held a mock communion at Williams College; and they put on anti-Christian plays at Dartmouth. They burned down the Nassau Hall at Princeton. They forced the resignation of the president of Harvard. They took a Bible out of a local Presbyterian church in New Jersey, and burned it in a public bonfire. Christians were so few on campus in the 1790s that they met in secret, like a communist cell, and kept their minutes in code so that no one would know.

In case this is thought to be the hysteria of the moment, Kenneth Scott Latourette, the great church historian, wrote: “It seemed as if Christianity were about to be ushered out of the affairs of men.” The churches had their backs to the wall, seeming as if they were about to be wiped out.

 And yet out of that dark and dismal time rose the Second Great Awakening—a series of great revivals that swept across the country up until the time of the Civil War. What caused the turn-around? The church finally woke up to its desperate situation, got serious with God, and began praying in earnest. They quit playing church, got down on their faces before God and implored Him for help. (“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways [their torpid complacency], then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”)

Brothers and sisters, the ball is not in God’s court. The ball is in our court! What will it take for enough people in the church to get so desperate at what’s going on that they will finally pray fervent, even frantic prayers that will bring down God’s saving response? What will it take? When they come for our Bibles? When they come for our children? When we have to hide in the catacombs and keep the records of our meetings in code? When they show up at our door with an executioner’s ax in one hand and a tattoo needle in the other to put the “Mark of the Beast” on us? Will we cry out to God then? When will we get serious?

In the days of the Judges, the people of God were in a similarly indifferent, apathetic, backslidden state; so much so that the husband whose concubine was slain by gang-raping homosexuals had to cut her body into 12 pieces and send a piece to each of the 12 tribes of Israel to get them outraged enough to take action. (Don’t believe me? Read it for yourself in Judges 19-20.)