Don't Be Bewitched by the Enemy

Witchcraft operates primarily by spells, curses, and I would say, hypnosis. It brings people under control. I’ve met many real practicing witches, quite a number. One woman told me, “I’ve killed people by my curses.” Respectable, middle-class American housewife.

I’ve met several young people just recently, girls that have told me they could put a hex on somebody and make them do what they wanted. Sorcery operates through things like charms, music, dancing, and drugs. This craze for drugs is nothing new. The American, the African witch doctor has known about it for centuries. They’ve long experimented in certain herbs and things that would produce certain strange conditions. And basically, the categorical name for that whole operation is sorcery. Bringing people into a supernatural state of power by the use of certain things like drugs, music, charms, so on. Be careful what you wear around your neck or put around your wrist because you can put on a satanic yoke if you put something that’s supposed to have power. How many people seek protection by a charm or a lucky penny?

Somebody told me about a girl who grew sick, and her mother took her to a faith healer who gave the mother a little charm. Said, “Put this around your girl’s neck, and it will keep her well.” The mother did. The girl became well. But after some time, the mother became illuminated and realized the awful thing she’d done. They took the charm off, opened it up, and inside they read a little poem which said, “Satan, keep this girl’s body well ‘til her soul burns in hell.”

The devil doesn’t mind a little healing, provided it costs you your soul. He’ll gladly call off a minor demon in order to enslave you with a major one. Let me mention very quickly, you find many examples in the New Testament.

“Acts chapter 8, in Samaria, Simon the sorcerer bewitched the whole city with his sorceries.”

Had everybody enslaved by satanic supernatural power. And you see how hard it was for him to repent? He could believe the gospel, watch Philip, stay with him, get baptized, but there was something in his heart that was still after money. You remember the last things ever said to him?

“‘Thy heart is not right. Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter.’”

Peter discerned his motives were still crooked. And I’ll tell you, it’s the hardest thing in the world for somebody that served Satan in this realm to get really free. It demands total repentance, no fooling around, no halfway commitment, but a total renunciation of Satan and a total submission to God. Typically enough, you know the last thing Simon the sorcerer said? He said, “Pray for me.” Oh, how typical. You do the work. You get desperate. I’ll trust your prayers. People come to me sometimes. I say, “Brother, sister, you’re wanting me to be desperate for you. I won’t do it. You get desperate for yourself.”

Don’t ask the preacher to do all the work. You start to get desperate. Dave Wilkerson says to the drug addict, “If you’re desperate, you can be delivered.” That’s true of almost every major area of deliverance. If you’re desperate, you can get delivered. Don’t ask the preacher to be desperate for you.

“Acts 13, ‘A certain false prophet, a sorcerer named Bar-Jesus, who set to keep the preachers of the gospel from the Roman deputy in the island of Cyprus.’”

See, that’s the work of the enemy, to keep a man from the truth. There was an open, head-on conflict between Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, and the sorcerer. I wish I’d been there. If anything I wish I could have seen, it was that. Paul looked at that man and said,

“‘Thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, how long wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?’”

You know what he was talking to? A sorcerer, a false prophet. What is a sorcerer? A child of the devil and an enemy of all righteousness.

“Acts 16, ‘A damsel with a spirit of divination.’”

The Greek says, “With a spirit of Python,” a fortune-telling girl, so successful that as a slave girl, she brought a lot of money to her masters. Now, you’ll never bring a lot of money if you’re never right. She must have been right many times. And when Paul and Silas came to that city, she knew who they were long before anybody else. She followed them every day in the street, saying,

“‘These men are the servants of the most high God, which show unto us the way of salvation.’”

Every word she spoke was true, but she was a servant of the devil. Somebody said if Paul had been a modern missionary, he’d have made her a charter member of the church in Philippi. But he turned to that spirit, said,

“‘In the name of Jesus Christ, come out of her.’”

And the scripture says, “He came out of her the same hour,” and she was no longer able to tell fortunes. Fortune telling is the demon of divination.