CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 14, 2023 – When Jesus wanted to spend some alone-time with God, he’d go into the wilderness or up a mountain. He wouldn’t go into a city. Cities tend to attract the worst of the worst and be openly hostile to God-fearing people. That is less a judgement than a statement of fact. Before I was born-again, I wanted only to live in big cities, the bigger the better. The dark frenetic energy in me was drawn to the dark frenetic energy in them. But after I was born-again, I felt alienated and out of place in cities, even in those where I’d previously lived for years. That’s when I made my shift first to the suburbs (slightly better than cities, but not by much) and then to rural areas and small towns and villages.

Today, cities repulse me, and I have no intention to live in one again.

Everywhere we go as born-again believers, God and Jesus are with us through God’s Holy Spirit, but cities are so full of evil now, they’re best avoided. It’s almost as if you’re tempting God if you live in a city, he has to erect such a massive bulwark around you to keep you spiritually and physically safe. That’s not to say you don’t also need God’s protection in small towns and rural areas, but not as much, not in most small places.

I spent the winter in relative isolation in a house in the woods in northern New Brunswick. God and Jesus had me all to themselves for three whole months. It was the best winter I ever had! When I left, I visited Niagara Falls for a week, which was to me like a spiritual culture shock. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. The evil was palpable and all around me all the time. God was adamant that I not stay there, so he whisked me away to a little village out in the boonies.

Cities have always been a magnet for tormented souls and their attendant demons, but the sheer volume of dark souls and entities crowding into cities these days is rapidly changing the urban spiritual landscape dramatically for the worse. Even urban churches are so heavily compromised now as to be Christian in name only. When I was forcibly removed from a chapel last fall in Toronto, God revealed to me that these former holy sites are no longer consecrated and therefore no longer his jurisdiction. Sure, he owns and controls everything in creation, but he’s given the administration of the world into the hands of Satan and to whomever Satan seduces into serving him. Which means that Satan, not God, is now in charge of most churches.

Making things even worse, the recent influx of newcomers to former Christian lands is introducing new fallen entities into the mix. Many of these demons have not been in these places before, or at least not in sufficient numbers to be a force to contend with. They’re wasting no time expanding their spiritual turf by winning over new converts to Satanism.

When you’re physically isolated from unbelievers, you’re physically isolated from the demons that attend on them. God’s Holy Spirit is with you regardless of whether you’re in a crowd or all alone, but it’s better to be as far away from people’s attendant demons as possible.

I’m not saying to avoid people who aren’t God-fearing; Jesus didn’t teach us to do that. All I’m saying is that cities have become (as scripture warns us they would) “the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit.” These places aren’t meant for born-again believers to live in.

Spiritual Babylon reigns in the cities of former Christendom. Unbelievers want to live in a world without God and his Commandments, and this is what a world without God and his Commandments looks like: crowded, expensive, violent, lawless, corrupt, mistrustful, fragmented, and dirty, not to mention slowly but surely turning locals into despised and displaced strangers in their own land. Moses warned it would be like this for those who turn their backs on God, and so it is.

There’s no happy ending on this planet for us born-again believers, just a series of temporary reprieves in quiet out-of-the-way places until it’s time to go Home. But thank God for his sanctuaries! He will continue to carve them out and place us in them as long as we choose to remain his people.

Like Jesus showed us, out in the boonies is where we should be anyway, as there we’re closest to God.