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Binding the Strong Man The Missiological Perspective Missiological Binding Foundational Missiology Endnotes Bibliography Some Dramatic Incidents

MISSIOLOGICAL BINDING

Timothy Warner relates the story of pioneer missionary ]ohn Paton which demonstrates the power of binding the strong man in order to spoil his goods. Three of the most powerful sorcerers in the New Hebrides Islands threatened to kill him through the power of an evil spirit named Nahak. Paton responded,

They have said they can kill me by Nahak, but I challenge them to do it if they can, without arrow or spear, club or musket, for I deny that they have any power against me . . . by their sorcery .12

Warner explains what happened:

When after a week these three demonized men were unable to do any harm to Paton - when they tried to resort to spears, God froze their arms in the air so they could not throw them - you may be sure that the people "heard" the gospel with a clarity with which they did not hear it simply coming from the mouth of the missionary.13

A similar incident took place in Gabon associated with the ministry of Don Fairley, pioneer missionary of The Christian and Missionary Alliance. A widow woman in an isolated village had become a believer in Jesus Christ. The persecution was intense and her life was taken. The opponents of the Message were emboldened to believe that the new teaching would not prevail.

However, a young man, an evangelist named Theophile Mouckagni became greatly reinforced by the martyrdom of the older woman. Believers multiplied and matters came to a crisis one evening. All the believers in the village were huddled together in a thatched hut. Encircled around were the shamans and other opponents of the gospel. After they had worked themselves into a fury of frenetic dancing, they seized lighted torches and approached the thatched roof. Though they sang and danced, approaching the hut again and again, thrusting spears through the walls of the frail hut, and then falling back equally as often, they found that they could not torch the Christians' thatched hut. That the powers had been bound in a missiological context there was no doubt. If some read of this incident and call it a power encounter, I'm agreeable, for that is what it surely was as well. A power encounter in which our Lord's binding power prevailed, publicly and dramatically.14

TREASURES SEIZED

Currently, in Gabon, generations after the awful battles, the life and death struggles in the apostolic ministry of Don Fairley, and indeed the binding of the strong man, a great harvest has come. I have been in many of the fields of the world, but never have I seen men and women rushing pell-mell into the kingdom as in modem Gabon.

In the case of all evangelistic endeavors, the true treasures are the souls of men. Indeed, what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?15 The immense wealth of human souls under the control and domination of the strong man can be spoiled. The rescue takes place when the strong man Satan is bound. Then his house may be plundered.

Jessie Penn-Lewis's article in Alliance Weekly, "How to Pray for Missionaries,"16 is one of the clearest statements to relate Matthew's principle of binding and loosing to missions. Penn-Lewis had earlier addressed the authority of the believer in spiritual warfare in a missiological context at an 1897 China Inland Mission conference. 17

Peter Wagner writes,

It is my view that sound missiological strategy will take responsible, but aggressive, action to bind demonic strong ones, principalities, powers, territorial spirits, or whatever they might be called, who are serving Satan by keeping large populations in spiritual darkness. 18

In reality, the understanding that territorial spirits exist is not a new idea, but was taught a century ago by Jessie Penn-Lewis, referring to " 'Principalities' who rule over various lands."19 It is significant that she taught the concept in a missiological context - in an address at a China Inland Mission conference in London.

It is also important to disassociate with much of the teaching on territorial spirits in that it has a specious biblical foundation (almost none at all!). Still we know there was a Prince of Persia and we certainly know the counter-kingdom is hierarchical.20

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