A practice known as "prayer walking" has become popular within Charismatic circles. Supposedly popularized by a pastor named Henry Gruver, this teaching has also made its way to Japan. Practitioners are encouraged to imitate the fall of Jericho by walking around a building 13 times while praying.
Prayer Walking Is Nowhere to Be Found in the New Testament
However, the New Testament nowhere instructs us to walk around buildings 13 times based on the Old Testament account of Jericho. Neither Jesus nor Paul engaged in prayer walking, nor did they try to peek into past tragedies with "spiritual eyes." It is a human-made doctrine created through arbitrary adaptation. Still, prayer itself cannot be denied, and I acknowledge it may have some positive aspects.
The problem, however, is that a considerable number of Charismatics who frequently practice prayer walking visit places where tragedies occurred—such as stigmatized properties, sites of martyrdom, or former battlefields. Under the banner of "intercessory prayer," they meditate on and recall past events, engaging in intense intercession for the dead. They even go to places like mountains, claiming there are "dragon spirits" to fight against through prayer, approaching these sites under the assumption that they will perceive the spiritual realm.
I believe this teaching blatantly ignores biblical principles. While praying for a land itself might not be entirely bad, these practitioners meditate to evoke past events. Furthermore, by exercising their characteristic "spiritual vision," they attempt to awaken what happened in the past.
Moreover, because they adhere to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, their mindset operates on that exact premise. Expecting the spirits of the deceased to be wandering around those locations, they recall past events and even claim to preach to these spirits.
However, the immortality of the soul is not actually a biblical teaching. If someone perceives something that looks like the spirit of a deceased person, it is merely demonic forces impersonating them. This is precisely why the Bible strictly forbids contacting or speaking with the dead.
The Bible commands us to preach to and pray for the living descendants of Adam and Eve who are subject to death. It does not instruct us to fervently pray for land or for those who died in the past, nor to offer prayers so that they may be "taken up to heaven."
Praying something along the lines of, "May so-and-so be resurrected in the future and receive mercy," with the understanding that souls are not immortal, is appropriate. However, the doctrine that spirits of the dead are wandering around a specific location is false.
Enthusiasts of prayer walking often claim things like, "When we did a prayer walk at a certain spot, suicides there decreased." But that simply means people stopped committing suicide at that specific location; those with suicidal ideation will eventually take their lives elsewhere.
In short, our mission is to preach to people, not to the land. We should share the Gospel with individuals struggling with suicidal thoughts, rather than attempting to evangelize the soil.
Since I do not often see visions, it might seem presumptuous to completely dismiss them. However, watching extreme Charismatics engage in prayer walking to pray for the spirits of the dead makes me feel that the teaching of "prayer walking" itself has become an obstacle to the truth—a demonic deception leading people down the path of destruction.
Prayer Walk Believers Resemble Spiritual Mediums
Meditating to connect with spirits or visiting stigmatized properties to gain information from the "spirits of the dead" to accurately divine past events is precisely the work of a medium. As seen on platforms like YouTube, mediums go to unsolved crime scenes and accurately identify past events, the names and traits of perpetrators, and even the victim's terror.
These mediums speak vividly as if the spirits of the dead were alive and possessed emotions, saying things like, "The victim's spirit gave me this information," or "The victim was too terrified to remember the killer's face, so I can't know everything," while revealing details to provide leads for solving the case.
This is a practice strictly forbidden in Scripture. When the spirit of Samuel appeared before King Saul, it spoke with remarkable accuracy and vivid emotion—reverent toward God, saying, "Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up? The Lord has departed from you." Yet this was clearly the work of a demonic spirit, and the Bible explicitly condemns it.
Using "prayer walking" as a tool to pray for spirits supposedly wandering the earth so they can be "taken up to heaven" is a misuse of prayer. Personally, I have no interest in prayer walking, nor do I intend to condemn those who do it purely.
However, when excessive adaptations are made, people ultimately end up trying to reawaken past events or talk to the dead, opening the door to mediumship.
"Should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?" — Isaiah 8:19
While praying purely for a land and its blessing can bring grace, our primary focus must be preaching to and praying for living human beings. Meditating to clear your mind, entering trance states to glimpse the spiritual realm, or praying for the land and the spirits of the dead under the assumption that they are present are unbiblical practices that should be abandoned immediately.
Christians who lack biblical knowledge and engage in prayer walking tend to believe everything they see. In their pursuit of the spiritual realm, they become overly reliant on experiential faith, completely unaware that they are stepping into the realm of mediumship. Once they start believing they can see the dead and that these spirits are truly alive, leading them to speak to them, they have crossed into the world of spirit mediums.
If you meditate, indulge in imagination, enter trances to see spirits, and go to lands assuming the presence of the dead to reflect on the past and pray, your prayers cease to be biblical—and your "spiritual eyes" will almost certainly be opened to the wrong realm.
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