International spy-thrillers have always been among my weaknesses. I’ve spent far too much time over the years enmeshed cerebrally within one such story or another. Robert Ludlum was perhaps my favorite author within the genre, with such enthralling tales of espionage at the highest levels as The Bourne Identity and The Matarese Circle. I was also hooked at one point on fiction involving Blackford Oakes CIA intrigues authored by William F. Buckley, Jr.

It’s difficult to find such books in electronically-presented form (in Word document) that my synthesized voice, computer program can read for me. I’m now blind due to a retinal disease, and the JAWS (Jobs Accessible Word System) program reads to me most all correspondence and other written materials over the Internet.

It’s just as well that I can’t easily access such books, because these, though entertaining, would be time-wasters for me, especially considering the compression of time I believe we are presently operating within─as we move quickly toward the consummation of human history. There are far more important things to accomplish than being entertained by fictional stories of clandestine doings within top-echelons of governments.

On second thought, we read in our headlines almost hourly of just such intrigues taking place in reality, that if not entertaining─certainly are quite thrilling, in the frightening sense at many levels. So as a fellow watchman with many of you who are reading this column, I, like some of you, am really not missing anything but the love of fiction factor. And, things of factual import are developing at a pace and in fashion precisely the way the greatest of all authors─the Lord Himself─has foretold for all to read.

One such spy-thriller comes to mind that helped bring out in me the interest in Bible prophecy that would in later years transform my thinking in a profound way. That 1960 novel’s title is, In High Places. Its author, Arthur Hiley, a British/Canadian writer who was among the first to produce such novels that later, writers like Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy would take to great book marketing heights.

In High Places is a story of a fictional Canadian prime minister and his political machinations while trying to maintain power, during the time of the cold war─that was fraught with nuclear threat and Canada’s troubled dealings with immigration. The author attempted and did a good job at showing the evil, wicked and even perverse interactions of politicians at the very top of power politics and in governments at the highest levels.

Even as a very young man reading the novel, I noticed Hailey’s use of biblical reference in selecting his title. The phrase, “in high places” of course is found in the apostle Paul’s passages on spiritual warfare:

“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” (Ephesians 6:12).

I realized even as a young man of 18, upon reading the book and thinking on its title that the Bible’s use of the phrase was infinitely different in scope from Arthur Hailey’s. Yet at the same time, what I didn’t understand at the time was that the malevolent forces in the fictional realm of Hailey’s geopolitical thriller reflected and represented evil, other worldly forces at work in real life.

I’m not so sure that the author of the novel, In High Places fully realized it, either. One thing for sure, no one in government in the highest of places today where true wickedness is happening, nor the journalists of our world who are supposed to be the watchdogs on behalf of the citizenry, indicate in the slightest way that they understand the true source from whence the wickedness this way comes.

If they do understand it, they must be in collusion with it, because they aren’t letting us know. But, that’s really a kook-conspiracy notion, is it not? (Human beings in power at the top levels in cahoots with the likes of Satan and his minions!)

Yet, I believe this is precisely what the apostle Paul was saying under inspiration as he penned the words to the Ephesian Christians, and to us─who would follow.

The ultimate battle is being waged in the very highest places. The devil and his minions are using every device at their disposal that is allowed by the God of heaven, who is always in complete control. Those include human beings, who do the demonic entities’ bidding, whether realizing it or not in many cases─probably most cases in these end of the age days.

Look for the demonic influences in high places to become ever more evident while evil men and seducers grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived (2 Timothy 3:13).