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Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices by Thomas Brooks
When I started learning about Spiritual Warfare, I had questions about the Christian supernatural worldview. I read in the Bible about Jesus casting out demons, and I learned about the heavenly host that surrounds God and carries out His will on earth. Genesis explains that fallen angels produced monstrous offspring with human women that were later destroyed in the Flood. The pseudepigraphal Book of Enoch adds to this explanation that the spirits of the destroyed Nephilim remained on earth to torment humanity. Were these the same demons that Jesus cast out?
Angels (or messengers) appear in the Bible many times, but there are many orders of angels, each with vastly different appearances and different functions. Similarly, in Deuteronomy 32, the earth was divided between the fallen angels at the Tower of Babel event. Psalms 82 amplifies this theme when God chastises the fallen angels for mismanaging the world so badly, and then He condemns them to death.
At every stage of my search, the information poured in and increased in complexity. To make matters worse, my awareness grew that people were out there struggling with very real problems and desperately seeking answers. They feared the demonic possession of spouses, children, and other family members. They sought relief from spiritual attacks leading to addiction and suicide. Many seemed to be fighting to save their immortal souls.
I became afraid to write about this subject. Who am I to counsel anyone on matters of Spiritual Warfare? I did not know if I should be recommending “power encounters” with territorial spirits or just advocating for people to live as an example of Christian light by standing in the Armor of God. What if something I wrote caused a person with mental illness to miss vital treatments? What if something I wrote caused groups to polarize and hurt each other? I worried deeply that anything I said might have catastrophic consequences.
Then I found Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices. First published in 1652 by the Puritan preacher Thomas Brooks, this book is a practical, useful, and concise guide to Spiritual Warfare written by a man who was an experienced veteran of supernatural battles. The power, clarity, and authority of Brooks’ words jumped out at me immediately, and I knew that our post-modern society is in as great a need for his methods and techniques as they were 400 years ago.
For Brooks, the enemy is Satan. It doesn’t matter the nature or type of demon or the academic analysis of ancient texts; it’s just Satan.
The battlefield is the human mind. This is the same conclusion I have arrived at, and it is the device I employ in my novel.
The combatant is the reader. This is not a book about helping others or battling over geographic territories. This is about you and your personal confrontations with Satan.
The weapon is reason. Again and again, Brooks asks you to recognize the spiritual attack and consider what it means to you personally. He does not call for intercessory prayers or any form of ritual. He is direct and takes his counterattacks straight at the enemy.
Brook’s approach avoids the pitfalls of misdiagnosing mental illness or causing religiously induced mob violence. Read for yourself and see if you are not persuaded, as I was, that these skills and techniques of Spiritual Warfare are the safest and most practical place to learn the warcraft. I don’t see how you can help others until you first master yourself.
I was so influenced by this book that I have purposed to write a series of blogs detailing each of his Precious Remedies in a format more easily digestible to a popular audience. This project is likely to take me many months, and you can follow my progress, and see all of the Remedies HERE. Be sure to bookmark the site and get regular updates.
Be warned, however: Do not take the time to read this book if you are not willing to put its lessons into action in your own life. If you gain the knowledge, but do nothing with it, then this very same knowledge will become an eternal torment for you as you consider the consequences of your inaction that led you to Hell.
