Week 1: Introduction — Setting the Stage in Ashton

1.Peretti opens the novel by immediately introducing two parallel worlds — the human, visible world of Ashton and the unseen spiritual realm. What is your initial reaction to seeing angels and demons depicted as physical beings engaged in real combat? Does it feel biblically grounded, fanciful, or somewhere in between?

2.Hank Busch arrives in Ashton as a young, idealistic pastor and quickly finds that the congregation is small, skeptical, and resistant. What pressures does he face right from the start, and what do those pressures reveal about the spiritual climate of the town?

3.Marshall Hogan is portrayed as a skeptical, hard-nosed journalist — not a church-going believer. Why do you think Peretti chose a secular investigator as one of his two main human protagonists? What does this choice say about how God works in the world?

4.Bernice Kreuger's film is mysteriously destroyed at a local festival — a seemingly small incident that sets the entire plot in motion. Have you ever experienced a minor, seemingly random setback that later turned out to be spiritually significant? What did you make of it at the time?

5.The town of Ashton appears peaceful and ordinary on the surface. Peretti uses this contrast — ordinary exterior, extraordinary spiritual conflict underneath — as a structural device throughout the novel.

6.The epigraph of the novel is Ephesians 6:12: 'For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.' How does the opening section of the novel dramatize this verse? What human situations or conflicts in Ashton are actually, beneath the surface, demonic in their origin?

7.Both Hank and Marshall are, in their own ways, isolated and under pressure from the beginning. Why do you think the enemy's first strategy so often involves isolating individuals — from community, from allies, from truth? Where do you see this strategy at work in your own life or church?

8.What expectations do you bring to this book — spiritually, personally, and as a piece of fiction? What would it mean for this story to genuinely change the way you pray or the way you see your own world?