For the full ruling power of a spiritual Tabernacle of David to be experienced in the city, it must be a warring as well as a worship community. It must learn how to attack the demonic strongholds already established in the heavenly places and cast them down.
At the beginning of his reign, David built Jerusalem into a fortified city. One important principle of the Kingdom, which David vividly illustrates, is to give us understanding concerning the difference between cities and villages and their spiritual ability and power to exercise government over a region.
God gave David a strategy to establish the Kingdom that has great meaning for all of us today. In the natural, to take over rulership of a country, a conquering king must always take control of the key cities. Occupying villages does not give a king rule over the land if the major cities remain untaken and continue to resist him. This is a fundamental principle of conquest. To rule land, you must take the cities and subdue them.
India today is a classic spiritual example of what I’m talking about. The whole Democratic Republic of India is divided into about 30 states forming one Federal Republic. Each state is far more diverse and insular (interested only in your state) than the states United States of America. Each one is almost like a separate nation with its own language, culture, and customs. Nevertheless, the whole of India is still one nation with one central federal government ruling over the whole of it.
Let us look at the state of Andhra Pradesh as an example. Andra Pardesh means “central Providence” and the capital city of the state is Hyderabad. This state, with a population of almost 80 million, is divided into about 350 regional subdivisions. Each of the subdivisions is called a “tarluk” and is like a country in the US. In each tarluk, there is a main city called the “tarluk” headquarter city. Regional government offices are in that city. From these offices, various governmental officials of city, state, and nation exercise rule over the whole tarluk.
Scattered around each tarluk are many small towns and hundreds of villages. The residents of these smaller communities come into this main city to buy and sell local produce, trade land, go to the bank, visit various governmental offices to get their government paper signed, and so forth. Everything important is done in these tarluk headquarters cities. They are like hubs (centers) from which everything is ruled and regulated for the whole of the tarluk.
Each of the hundreds of villages in a tarluk has a population ranging from a a couple hundred to maybe a few thousand. When God began to bring his Kingdom into this region, he told Alan Vincent not to spend their time primarily evangelizing the individual villages. Instead, he said they should go straight into the tarluk headquarters city and establish a regional church there.
From that regional center, they could then reach out to all the surrounding villages and smaller towns. These tarluk cities already were the centers of secular government and civil authority. God showed them that this natural administration was the pattern for bringing the Kingdom effectively to the whole region and a means of establishing proper spiritual rule. So, they concentrated on first raising up a regional church in each tarluk city. From there they were to reach out to the surrounding villages and small towns. It has proven to be very successful.
Unfortunately, the powers of darkness have understood these principles far longer and far better than the church. Therefore, Satan has for a long-time targeted key cities and has sought to control them so that from these key cities he can spiritually rule all regions over which these cities have authority and influence.
Led by the spirit of God, David did something in his day that was like what Alan Vicent and his wife learned to do in India. He started with Jerusalem, the capital city. He took it completely and made it into an impregnable fortified city (2 Samuel 5: 6-9). Then he went across the whole land of Israel and made every significant city into a fortified city. He put a Garrison (companies stationed in a fortress to defend it) of his troops in each one that would secure the city and rule over their smaller communities in all the land on his behalf. (2 Samuel 5: 6-9; 13).
Then he went into the land of the Philistines. He thoroughly defeated them in three very successful God driven battles (2Samuel 5: 17-25). The philistines then became subservient to him. He did not bother to occupy all their villages. He went straight to the major cities, took control of them, put a Garrison there, and exercised Kingdom rule over the whole land. The villages had no power to resist him once he had control of the cities.
He then did the same thing with the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Edomites, the Amalekites, and all the other “ites” (2 Samuel 8: 1-15). He took their cities, put garrisons in all the key cities, and subdued the land. For the rest of his reign and well into the reign of Solomon, Israel never had any trouble from any of their enemies. They were undisturbed for about 40 years. Throughout the Kingdom, everybody enjoyed peace and prosperity.
In a similar way, if the church is ever going to bring the Kingdom of God to a nation, it must first bring the Kingdom of God to the primary cities. If you’re going to bring the government of God to a particular city, you must have a united, apostolically LED warring church in that city.
In the natural, you cannot conquer a nation and overthrow a king by waging a guerilla war from a few of the villages. If there is a rebellion against the king in some of the villages, they may be able to harass the king somewhat and maybe even kill some of his soldiers. They can fight a guerrilla war and have some limited, local success. But they cannot change the government without first taking charge of the major cities, especially the capital city.
If you have watched the growth of the charismatic movement for over a number of decades. In 1925, there were about 7 million Spirit filled believers worldwide, mainly in traditional Pentecostal churches. This growth sprang out of the revivals at the beginning of the 20th century. Some amazing statistics are being published that should encourage everyone who’s watching the church’s growth. World Christian encyclopedia estimates the number of Pentecostal/Charismatic Christians in the world as follows:
1900 -981,400
1970-72 million
1990- 425 million
2000-524 million
2025-812 million
2050-1066 million
As I consider this vast increase of Spirit filled (those who speak with tongues) believers worldwide, I have not really seen our western cities changing for the better spiritually. In fact, in Western countries, the cities particularly seem to be getting much worse. Spiritually, they are much darker in spite of all these new believers supposedly anointed with power.
So, what’s the problem? Why haven’t we impacted the cities, why are we not changing our society? In fact, everything has seemed to be getting worse.
The Lord said, the reason is because we are building the wrong kind of churches. What you are doing spiritually is building little local, individual, contradictory village churches, and they have no power to enter the heavens and change the environment over the cities, and therefore, they cannot rule the nation. We must concentrate, as David and the early church did, on building city churches, which become strong regional and Apostolic centers, heavenly embassies. Only this kind of church is capable of spiritually taking over the cities and impacting the region.
When Jesus sent out the group of 70, he sent them into every city and place where he himself was about to go (Luke 10: 1). When Paul went to break open a new region, he always went first to the major city of that region and then trained the new city church to reach the rest of the region themselves (Acts 16-19).
In (1 Thessalonians 1: 2-8) we see a great example of this. When Paul arrived in Thessalonica he was only able to stay for three weeks before he was driven out of the city by an angry mob of hostile Jews ( Acts 17: 1-10). But in that short time, he was able to preach to the idol worshipping pagans of that city with such effect that they turned from their idols to serve the living God.
In the first two chapters of his letter to the Thessalonians, we learned that they received Paul for who he really was: an angel- messenger of God, as Christ Jesus (Galatians 4: 14). They received his word for what it really was, “the Word of God”. As a result, this Word was able to do its work in them because they believed. They became imitators of Paul and the Lord (2 Thessalonians 2: 14) and we’re soon shaking the whole region of Macedonia and Achaia with mighty miracles-so much so that Paul essentially declared, from you the whole region is being reached, so we do not need to say anything (1 Thessalonians this 1: 5-8).