Hiebert speaks of the flaw of the excluded middle in the thinking of some evangelicals who have a cosmology of God in heaven and humans on earth, but have ignored the "middle" realm of the angelic and demonic. Some critics have linked the rise in aggressive forms of prayer to the increasing militarization of everyday life that characterizes twentieth century cultural shifts towards the widespread normalization of highly militarized discourse. This rhetorical and ideological stance has crept into the practices and rituals of religious prayer and conversion, just as it has similarly expanded into sectors like technology, immigration, humanitarianism and education, just to name a few spheres that have also been influenced by Militarism. Despite the seeming opposition between the submissive and morally upstanding associations with prayer and dominating violence associated with militarism, these two spheres interact in a dialectical way—they are entangled to produce one another. The association of spiritual warfare with a rise in militarization serves to contextualize some of the ways that prayer warriors create meanings around their own actions and tactics, as well as around those they are trying to criticize or change. "Spiritual battles" and "prayer strikes" on the "prayer battlefield" use highly politicized language to forcefully impose change onto another party or group, piggybacking on the power of militaristic rhetorical function to achieve this aim. The excesses of allegations made in the satanic ritual abuse phenomenon of the 1980s and 1990s have prompted critical reviews; however, these are due to the surreptitious nature of these cases. Some apologists in the Christian countercult movement have expressed concerns that spiritual warfare techniques seem at times to have been based on spurious stories and anecdotes without careful discernment and reflection. Some of these general concerns have been expressed by apologists like Elliot Miller (Christian Research Institute), and Bob and Gretchen Passantino in various articles published in the "Christian Research Journal". Others, such as Mike Hertenstein and Jon Trott, have called into question the claims of alleged ex-Satanists like Mike Warnke and Lauren Stratford whose stories have subsequently influenced many popular books about spiritual warfare and the occult. Bill Ellis's work, "Raising the Devil", has detected the presence of folkloric stories about the occult and demons circulating in evangelical and charismatic circles, which later become accepted as unquestioned facts. Popular fictional portrayals of spiritual warfare are found in novels by Frank E. Peretti, "This Present Darkness" and "Piercing the Darkness", and Darrin J Mason, "Ominous".