The Work
This Present Darkness was published in 1986 by Crossway Books (Westchester, Illinois). It was initially rejected by several publishers - including the major Christian houses - and was published by a small evangelical press that specialized in theological and apologetics titles. Word spread through evangelical churches and prayer groups entirely through personal recommendation, and the book eventually sold over 3 million copies, making it one of the best-selling Christian novels of the twentieth century. A sequel, Piercing the Darkness, followed in 1989.
The novel is approximately 370 pages and operates on two parallel narrative tracks: one following the human characters in the fictional small college town of Ashton (a reporter named Marshall Hogan, a pastor named Hank Busche, and various supporting characters), and one following the spiritual beings - angels and demons - engaged in a simultaneous invisible warfare over the same town. The two tracks are woven together throughout the novel, with the human events consistently shown to have spiritual causes and the spiritual warfare shown to be affected by the prayers and faith of the human characters.
Biblical Engagement
Ephesians 6:12 is the book's governing text and is effectively its entire premise: 'For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.' Peretti's entire narrative structure is a fictional dramatization of this verse: the human conflicts (political corruption, educational infiltration, manipulation of the local media, pressure on the small church) are presented as the surface manifestation of a deeper spiritual warfare being conducted by hierarchically organized demonic powers. The 'principalities' and 'powers' of Paul's language become specific characters - named demon captains, regional powers, subordinate spirits - with their own strategies, conflicts, and fears.
Daniel 10:13 ('But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia') provides the most direct Old Testament precedent for the novel's angelology. Daniel's account of the angelic messenger who was delayed by a 'prince' of Persia - a demonic power associated with a specific geographical region - for three weeks before being helped by the archangel Michael is the biblical foundation for the concept of territorial spirits that Peretti develops at length. The novel presents Ashton as a territory contested between angelic and demonic powers in precisely the terms of Daniel 10.
Revelation 12:7 ('And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels') provides the cosmic backdrop for the novel's spiritual warfare. The heavenly war of Revelation 12, in which Michael and the angelic hosts fight against Satan and his angels, is the eternal archetype of which the earthly warfare of the novel is a local instance. Peretti draws on the rich angelological and demonological tradition of Jewish apocalyptic literature (Daniel, 1 Enoch, the War Scroll of Qumran) as mediated through the Revelation's cosmic imagery.
2 Corinthians 10:4-5 ('For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ') is the Pauline text that most directly addresses the nature of spiritual warfare as a contest over ideas and worldviews rather than physical combat. Peretti translates this into narrative: the demonic forces in the novel work primarily through human minds and institutions - a New Age consciousness movement, a corrupt local government, a university ideology - rather than through direct physical possession. The prayer of the Christians works by 'pulling down' these ideological strongholds.
The novel's specific understanding of how prayer affects the angelic warfare is drawn from a reading of the 'effectual, fervent prayer' of James 5:16 and the 'unceasing prayer' of 1 Thessalonians 5:17, combined with the Daniel 10 precedent. In the novel, when Christians pray, the angels are strengthened and empowered; when prayer ceases, the angels are weakened and the demonic forces gain ground. This theology of prayer as the medium through which humans participate in the spiritual warfare is the novel's most theologically controversial claim.
Author & Context
Frank Peretti was born in 1951 in Lakeview, Montana. He grew up in a Pentecostal/charismatic family and was educated at UCLA and Seattle Pacific University. He worked for many years at the Assemblies of God headquarters before becoming a full-time writer. His background in charismatic Christianity gave him direct access to the spiritual warfare theology and practice that the novel dramatizes: prayer warfare, binding of territorial spirits, intercession, and spiritual mapping were all features of charismatic practice in the 1980s.
This Present Darkness was written during a period of significant evangelical cultural anxiety. The 1980s saw the rise of the New Age movement, the beginning of the culture wars over educational content and media values, and a widespread sense among evangelicals that American society was moving away from its Christian foundations under the influence of secular and occult forces. Peretti's novel gave narrative form to the spiritual warfare interpretation of these cultural trends that was already widespread in charismatic and evangelical prayer movements.
The book was also written in the context of the dramatic growth of the charismatic and Pentecostal movements in the 1970s-1980s. The Third Wave renewal movement, associated with C. Peter Wagner, John Wimber, and others, was developing a theology of 'spiritual mapping' (identifying the demonic powers associated with specific geographic regions) and 'strategic-level spiritual warfare' (prayer campaigns targeting these territorial spirits) that directly corresponded to Peretti's fictional methodology. The novel both reflected and shaped this theological movement.
Structure and Argument
The novel's dual narrative structure is its most technically innovative feature. Peretti tracks the human and spiritual stories in parallel, cutting between them with cinematic efficiency. The human story - Hogan's investigative journalism, Busche's pastoral struggles, the corruption of Ashton College - operates with the conventions of the thriller genre: conspiracy, investigation, danger, and resolution. The spiritual story - the hierarchy of angels and demons, their tactical maneuvering, their dependence on human prayer - operates with the conventions of military fantasy.
The spiritual warfare is governed by rules that Peretti derives from his reading of the biblical texts: demons cannot act without human permission or invitation; angelic power is connected to the prayers of Christians; the redemption of individual souls is the fundamental strategic objective; and specific geographic territories are contested by regional demonic powers who must be displaced by both prayer and human action.
The resolution of the novel - in which sustained corporate prayer by the small faithful church empowers the angels to defeat the demonic powers and expose the human conspiracy - dramatizes the theology of prayer intercession and spiritual authority that Peretti drew from the charismatic tradition.
Critical Reception
The novel was embraced by evangelical and charismatic readers who recognized its theological framework as consistent with their own spiritual practice. It was largely ignored by mainstream literary critics.
Theological critics within evangelicalism raised significant concerns about Peretti's angelology: the specific details of his angelic hierarchy, the mechanics of how prayer empowers angels, and the concept of territorial spirits all go significantly beyond what the biblical texts actually specify. Critics argued that Peretti was converting the biblical texts' general affirmation of spiritual warfare into a detailed theological system that could encourage unhealthy preoccupation with demonology and a mechanical understanding of how prayer works.
C. Fred Dickason's Demon Possession and the Christian (1987) and Peter Wagner's Engaging the Enemy (1991) were theological works that engaged with the same spiritual warfare tradition from different perspectives. Wayne Grudem and other evangelical theologians questioned whether the 'territorial spirits' doctrine was adequately grounded in Scripture.
Theological Significance
The novel's most significant theological contribution is its popularization of a worldview in which the spiritual dimension of reality is as concrete and causally significant as the physical. For millions of evangelical readers who had grown up in a largely secular cultural environment, the novel made tangible the New Testament's language about principalities, powers, and spiritual warfare.
This has been both its greatest achievement and its greatest danger: it made spiritual warfare vivid and real for readers who might otherwise have treated the Pauline language as metaphor, but it also risked encouraging a demonological worldview that saw evil primarily as the result of personal demonic activity rather than structural sin, individual moral failure, or the ordinary consequences of human weakness.
Legacy
The novel launched the genre of the Christian spiritual thriller and influenced dozens of subsequent Christian novelists. Its most direct successors include Ted Dekker's Black Trilogy (2002-2004), the Left Behind series' use of spiritual warfare themes, and numerous lesser-known works. The novel also directly influenced the development of spiritual warfare prayer movements in evangelical and charismatic Christianity through the 1990s and 2000s.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study Ephesians 6:10-18 (the full armor of God and the nature of spiritual warfare), Daniel 10:1-21 (the angelic warfare in the heavenly places), Revelation 12:1-12 (the heavenly war), 2 Corinthians 10:3-6 (the weapons of spiritual warfare), James 5:13-18 (effective prayer), Colossians 1:13-20 (Christ's supremacy over all powers), and 1 Peter 5:8-9 (the devil as a prowling lion).
Further Reading
- Clinton Arnold, 3 Crucial Questions About Spiritual Warfare (1997) - a balanced evangelical treatment of the biblical basis for spiritual warfare theology, engaging both Peretti's fictional version and the charismatic prayer warfare movement with critical discernment. - C. Peter Wagner, Warfare Prayer (1992) - the theological program that Peretti's novel dramatized, from the primary advocate of 'strategic-level spiritual warfare' in the 1990s evangelical world. - Gregory Boyd, God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict (1997) - a scholarly evangelical treatment of the cosmic warfare theme in Scripture, providing academic resources for the theological questions Peretti's novel raises.