Cult and Occult - Satan’s Snares Disclosed

I’m going to deal with these three successive things. The domination of one person by another. Secondly, heresies, departures from the Christian faith. And thirdly, a false religion.

Let me begin briefly by speaking about a situation in which one person is dominated by another. It is never the will of God for any human soul to be dominated by any other human soul. It is never the will of God for parents to dominate their children, for a husband to dominate his wife, for a wife to dominate her husband, for a pastor to dominate his congregation or for any other person in any other situation to dominate another person. Yet, many people have grown up in life either dominating or being dominated by. I have discovered recently that one of the greatest single hindrances to people receiving complete deliverance is the fact that they have been dominated by their mothers. Many mothers seek to control their children’s lives, to plan their destiny, to arrange the vocation that they will follow and to keep them under their control. This is extraordinary how far reaching it is.

An evangelist came to me about four years ago and he asked to counsel with me and I spent some hours eating a meal with him and talking with him. At the end we went back to his hotel room and he asked me to pray for his deliverance. Before we prayed I said this, “I only have one source of information about yourself and your family and that is from what you have told me personally. On the basis of what you told me I have to tell you one thing. In my opinion, your mother is a witch.” He said, “That’s what my wife says.” I said, “I agree with your wife.” His mother was a good Pentecostal lady sitting up in the front rows of Pentecostal church every Sunday and so on and so forth. Well, I prayed for that man and he spent the next 20 bringing out great streams of slimy fluid substance. I prayed with him for maybe half an hour, 45 minutes, left him and phoned him the next day to find out how he was doing. He said, “I feel wonderful but I feel as if I’d just been through a 12 mile race. Every bone in my body is aching.” I said that’s the result of deliverance. Then he said to me something which impressed me. “Do you know, isn’t it remarkable. Yesterday you and I had lunch together and I ate fried chicken. But whatever I brought up, there was no vestige of chicken or anything else that I’d eaten in it. Wherever it came from, it didn’t come from my stomach.” That really made me think. I’ve seen—I wouldn’t like to count—the buckets of fluid that I’ve seen people bring up in deliverance. Let me say this, as I understand it, this is not the demon but it’s the nest that the demon has made in your body. When the demon goes, its nest better go with it. Sometimes people go on with this process of physical cleansing for three or four days or even a week. They’ll go on bringing up and bringing up. I say don’t turn it off, go through with it and get your body cleansed. That’s not the demon, you don’t see the demon. It’s his particular little nest that he’s built up in your body to inhabit. You see, the Bible says he that committed fornication sinneth against his own body. This is a definite statement of scripture. I believe personally that everybody that practices fornication invites a demon which builds his own unclean area of inhabitation inside that body.

As a matter of fact, in many cases I can tell people what they are being delivered from by seeing the form that their deliverance takes. Almost each type of evil spirit is characteristic in what it tends to produce.

To go back to this evangelist. Then he said to me, “We have a daughter who has tremendous problems. She’s 13, goes out all night with men, is on drugs, is attending a well known full gospel high school, and we can do nothing with her. Do you advise anything?” I said, “First of all, go home, talk with your wife and tell her what’s happened to you. Get together in prayer and get to the point where you really agree in the spirit. Then take some item of clothing that your daughter wears, lay hands on it and curse the demons.” That was what I told him.

A year later he was back in the area, he phoned me and he wanted to tell me how he was doing. I said, “How are you doing?” “Fine, things are changing. I’m not without struggles but my ministry is quite different from what it was before.” I said, “What about your daughter?” He said, “She’s enrolled in an Episcopal girl’s school, has a scholarship and is doing wonderful. Straight A’s all the way through, she’s straightened out and become a responsible girl.” I said, “What about it, how did you operate?” He said, “We did what you said. We got a blue T-shirt which she liked very much and without telling her we prayed over it and then just watched her wear it. There’s something more than that. One day the girl’s grandmother, my mother, came to the house and did something she wouldn’t normally do. She offered to do some washing for my wife. In the items that she washed was the blue T-shirt. Ever since my mother washed that T-shirt she’s been a different woman!”

Now, the point about this mother was that with all the best intentions in the world she was dominating her son, her son’s wife and her son’s children. She was using spiritual power to control an entire family. Now listen, witchcraft is the attempt to control people and make them do what you want by a power other than the Holy Spirit. And, if you have a power in your life that you can use, it isn’t the Holy Spirit because no one uses the Holy Spirit except God. This is tremendously common. Many, many people are still tied by a spiritual umbilical cord to their mother. In many cases total deliverance does not come till that umbilical cord in the spiritual realm is cut.

I’m not teaching disobedience, I believe the Bible teaches honor thy father and thy mother that it may be well with you. But nevertheless it is not the will of God for any one person to dominate any other person, to control them. It’s remarkable that you find many times that a mother will know when her daughter is seeking the Lord will phoning and bringing pressure upon her. She may be eaten up with self-pity and every time that family is going to move on in God the mother will phone, “Come and help me, come and hold my hand, come and stand by me.” I want to warn you, don’t let anybody dominate your life. And if you’ve been in that situation where you’ve been dominated by a father or a mother, this afternoon before this meeting closes, exercise the authority given to you in the name of Jesus and loose yourself from that dominion. If you have hatred or unforgiveness in your heart as a result of that attempted domination, forgive the father or the mother or the person, whoever it may be. You cannot loose yourself from someone if there is resentment or hatred there. The very resentment and hatred itself constitutes a bond which ties you to them.

It is not always a parent, it may be other cases. In many, many cases some of you have been influenced by “spiritual” persons who’ve tried to take you over. This happens very often with prayer groups. Some dominating, strong, spiritual lady will move in and just begin to exercise control over that prayer group. Listen, the Holy Spirit never causes a minister of the gospel to dominate others. If you come to the place where you’re more tied to that woman than you are to the Lord, you are bound and not in a good way and not by the Spirit of the Lord.

There is a church where the biggest item in expense is long distance phone bills because every time the pastor wants to make a decision he phones a certain lady in another state and gets her to give him the mind of the Lord. She flips the pages of the Bible, uses the name of Jesus and comes out with a pronouncement which is what runs that entire church. I could tell you some extraordinary and even ridiculous examples of this but I’m not going to do it. That church and its minister are bound and the people that attend that church come under that bondage. The woman behind it in plain simple language is a witch. A religious witch, a full gospel witch, a Charismatic witch and all the more dangerous for that.

Now let’s go on to the second phase of our teaching, heresies. These are departures from the Christian faith. 1Timothy 4:1–2.

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times [the times in which we are living] some shall depart from the faith...

The faith is Christianity. So, here are people who have been in the Christian faith and turn away from it. We are not dealing with unbelievers or people who’ve never made a profession of faith in Christ; we’re dealing specifically with those who have professed faith in Christ. It says:

...some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of demons; [and then it’s the demons and not the people who] speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron...

And it gives examples of two doctrines. One is food fads, commanding people not to eat certain kinds of meat. It doesn’t mean meat in the sense of flesh but it means food, that’s Old English. Never let anybody start dictating to you about the kind of food that you’re to eat. No pork, no bacon and all this business. It is not scriptural. Every creature of God is good and to be received for it is sanctified with the word of God and prayer.

Now, the Jews under the law of Moses were forbidden to eat a lot of things but we are not under the law of Moses. There are only four things required of Gentiles who come into the Christian faith. First of all, that we abstain from fornication. Secondly, from idolatry. Thirdly, from things strangled and fourthly, from eating blood. We are not permitted to eat blood with flesh, that is still out just as much as fornication or idolatry. It’s in the same category. This you’ll find in Acts 15 but we are not commanded to observe any other rules that were imposed upon Israel under the law of Moses. Any attempt to force you under these food and dietary rules in the name of making you more spiritual is demonic. If you don’t like bacon you don’t have to eat it but don’t make a religion out of it. That’s all.

Have you noticed about health food stores that the unhealthiest people are always there? Did you ever notice that? Brother, if their gospel worked, they’d look different! Please don’t misunderstand me. If you don’t like or don’t wish to eat certain kinds of food you are at complete liberty but don’t let it become a spiritual law because that’s a deception. I was on the verge of this and God yanked me back. I was drinking so much carrot juice I was turning yellow! Literally! I mean literally yellow. And I was talking to a preacher whom I didn’t regard as very spiritual. For one thing, he was rather fat and I have a sort of thing about fat preachers. I was telling him how careful I was about what I ate. He quoted to me, “every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused.” Oh, how I praised God for that man. He got me out from the very verge of the ditch. I had enough humility to listen to him and say he’s right, I’m wrong.

Another form of Satanic deception mentioned here is the turning away from the normal marriage sex relationship. Do not let anybody fool you into being super-spiritual by living an unnatural sex life because it just isn’t right. If you’re married, you’re married—totally. I say this because again I’ve seen cases where there was a certain man on the west coast some years back, a Presbyterian baptized in the Holy Spirit. He said, “Come on, these Pentecostals aren’t with it. They don’t tell you half the truth. I’ll tell you how to be a real overcomer. Step number one, you come out and listen to me. (That’s always step number one!) Step number two, you sell what you have. Step number three, you stop living with your wife.” Brother, those people ended up one after another in a mental breakdown. Be on your guard, the gospel rightly proclaimed is the most normal, healthy, sane thing in the world. Never go off on a tangent in order to be spiritual because you may be spiritual but it’s the wrong spirit.

Let’s look in 2Peter 2:1. I want to go on on the theme of heresies.

But there were false prophets also among the people [that’s Israel], even as there shall be false teachers among you [the church], who privily [in a sneaky, underhanded way] shall bring in damnable heresies [heresies that bring damnation], even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

We are specifically warned that in the church there will be false teachers who in a sneaky underhand way will introduce heresies that bring damnation to those who teach them and those who believe them. This has happened and is happening.

A heresy means literally choosing. And heresy is, in essence, choosing how much of the Bible you will believe. Every heresy accepts part of the Bible. All heresies claim to start from the Bible. All heresies quote Jesus Christ but the essence of a heresy is you decide how much you’ll believe. God didn’t ask you to make that decision and it doesn’t rest with you. God says this is his word and you better believe it all.

The essence of a damnable heresy is summed up in that phrase “even denying the Lord that bought them.” It’s a denial of the Lord Jesus Christ and his redemptive work on the cross. And any heresy, any teaching under the guise of Christianity that touches the person, the nature and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ is a damnable heresy. You better believe that churches which might be called Methodist, Presbyterian or Episcopalian or any other such thing are literally filled with damnable heresies. In many cases it’s the ministers who are preaching these damnable heresies.

Let me give you an example, let me tell you what I believe about Jesus. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe that he’s divine eternally. I believe that he was born of a virgin, that he led a sinless life, that he died an atoning death, that he rose the third day physically from the dead, that he’s ascended into heaven and that one day he’s coming again in person just as he was seen to go. If you have any problem about any of those statements, you better check your spiritual foundation. Any kind of teaching that denies any one of those statements is a damnable heresy. We have been warned. No matter how respectable it may be, the main source of these damnable heresies is the seminaries. They are the actual fountainhead of these heresies. The fact that a man has been trained in a seminary and has three kinds of degrees after his name should be a warning to you to suspect damnable heresies, not to believe what he says.

1 John 2:18–22. Again, a warning about the last days and deception and error and a particular spirit of deception, the spirit of antichrist. Let me say that antichrist means two things. The word anti means, first of all, against and secondly, in place of. The spirit of antichrist has a double work. First of all, it’s against Jesus Christ to get him out of the church. Secondly, its design is to replace him by the false Christ.

Somebody told me the other day—who is acquainted with the person—that the lady in Washington—and I’m not going to mention her name—speaks about the Christ but you’d better check because when she speaks about the Christ she means the false Christ. This is very prevalent. At the moment, in most Protestant denominations the spirit of antichrist is at work getting Jesus out of the way. I have friends in Methodist churches—and I’m not attacking Methodists but they just happen to be Methodist—they tell me, “In our church Jesus is a dirty word. You can speak about Socrates, Buddha, Plato, Martin Luther King and it’s perfectly all right but don’t talk about Jesus.” That is the spirit of antichrist. It’s getting Jesus out of the way. What these people do not realize is that’s only the first step. The next step is to put the false Christ in his place and the scripture indicates that millions and millions of people will shortly be deceived by the spirit of antichrist. You better be sure you aren’t going to be one of them. Now let’s read about it. 1John 2:18:

Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists [a mark of the last time]; whereby ye know that it is the last time. They went out from us...

They started with the Christian church, they all do. They all claim to be Christians.

...but they were not of us: for is they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.

This is typical. Every antichrist starts in some way in association with the Christian church then goes out. Without being in any way controversial or personal, we have had the most remarkable demonstration of this in the person of Bishop Pike who began in the Christian church a keen preacher of Jesus. He was confronted very closely by one of his closest workers and by others with the truth of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, rejected it, turned away from it and moved into the only other main spiritual field left, the spiritual field of the occult and Satanic power and ended up with a death very similar to that of Judas Iscariot. Remember, the only two persons who are called the son of perdition in scripture are Judas Iscariot and the antichrist. Each of them begins in the church.

Going on reading:

But ye have an unction [an anointing] from the Holy One, and ye know all things [by the anointing].

The spirit of truth in you should tell you what’s true and what’s false. It should answer to the truth and reject false and you better have that alarm clock inside you really well wound up because you’re going to need it.

I have not written unto you because you know not the truth [he’s not writing to unbelievers], but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth.

What’s the truth? The word of God. Anything that conflicts with the word of God is a lie. Verse 22:

Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ [the Messiah]? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.

Notice he does not deny God but he denies the relationship within the Godhead of Father and Son. Basically he denies that Jesus is the Son of God and has come in the flesh. Turn to 1John 4.

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

A false prophet is a person with a false spirit. No prophet operates in his own spirit. That is not a prophet. A true prophet operates in the spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit. A false prophet operates in a false spirit. Therefore, when you meet a prophet, try the spirits. Is it the Spirit of God or is it a false spirit. And if it was true then that many false prophets have gone out into the world it’s ten times truer today in modern America.

Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come...

It’s very easy. Does the spirit, does the person confess that Jesus the Messiah has come in the flesh? If so, it’s of God. But any person that denies that Jesus the Messiah has come in the flesh is motivated and controlled by the spirit of antichrist.

If you deny that Jesus was born of a virgin, you deny that he is the Messiah because the Messiah had to be born of a virgin. This is the spirit of antichrist. That’s the spirit of antichrist.

The spirit of heresy and seducing spirits, and they all center around the truth about Jesus. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” If you have come under the influence of any teaching that in any way touches upon the person, the nature or the work of the Lord Jesus Christ you had better get clear. Loose your spirit and clear your mind from these poisonous lies of the enemy and come back to God in repentance. Bow at the foot of the cross and ask Jesus to take you back.

Now we’re coming on to the third realm which is false religions, non Christian religions. Let me lay down certain simple principles. There are two sources of supernatural power. One is God, the other is the devil. Any supernatural power that does not come from God does come from the devil, it’s that simple. There is one way and only one way into the realm of God’s supernatural power and that way is Jesus Christ. Let me give you two or three scriptures. John 10:9, Jesus said:

I am the door; by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved...

I am the door. By implication, there is other.

John 14:6:

“I am the way, the truth, the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me.”

There is no other way to God the Father but by Jesus Christ and him crucified.

And Ephesians 2:18. Maybe if you have your Bible you can turn to that because it’s rather important to read it.

For through him [Jesus Christ] we both [Jews and Gentiles] have access by one Spirit unto the Father.

Notice through him [Jesus] and through him alone by how many spirits? One spirit. There’s only one spirit that gives the human access to God the Father, it’s the Holy Spirit. He operates only through the Lord Jesus Christ. If you come by any other door than Jesus or if you come through any other spirit, no matter what that spirit may profess to be, you do not have access to God; you have access to the realm of Satan. Instead of coming into the realm of light you come into the realm of dark. But remember, Satan is transformed as an angel of light and his ministers are transformed as ministers of righteousness. Many, many times they’ll use beautiful, sweet, loving words and long psychological phrases and even quote scripture to get you into the realm of darkness under the guise of being angels of light.

But, if you do not come by Jesus Christ crucified on the cross and if you do not come by the Holy Spirit of God, you can get into the occult realm, you can get into the supernatural realm. I’m not denying that for a moment because I’ve been there and I know what it’s like. But you get into the wrong realm. I got in by Yoga. I was a practicing yogi before I found Jesus. There was a time when I got out of the natural but what I got into even then, it scared me, I didn’t like it. I decided once was enough. But when I was confronted with the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit some years later, the great barrier between me and Christ was not my carnal sins, it was Yoga. I could not break through that mental barrier. God had to do a miracle of deliverance. The first deliverance service I was ever in there was only one person there awake and one person asleep. There was another soldier asleep and I was awake and in the middle of the floor and God gave me—I tell you, what you’ve seen in deliverance here is nothing beyond what I received then and I never knew about deliverance, I didn’t know about demons but I wanted to come to Jesus. I could not reach him ’till that Yoga demon had lost its power over my mind. You can theorize friend but I was there. I know what it’s like. It’s one of a thousand different ways of being deceived into the territory of Satan and becoming enslaved.

Now, I’m going to give you some Old Testament scriptures on this. Turn to the Exodus 20:3–5. This is part of the Ten Commandments.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

What I want to point out to you is that if you seek for supernatural help and counsel and power from any other being but the true God, you make that being your god. The one to whom you seek for supernatural help and revelation and power is your god. These words apply to every person who’s involved in that list which I’m going to read to you in a moment. They have had some other god before the true God. They’ve allowed another god to come before the true God.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt now bow down thyself to them, nor serve them...

And many people are bowing down and serving alien gods today in the form of horoscopes, Ouija boards and other such things. They’re in this category. I want you to see the particular judgment that’s pronounced upon them if they do not repent.

...for the Lord thy God is a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.

This can bring a curse not only upon you but upon the succeeding three generations in your family. It’s not any form of sin, it’s this particular sin of having some other god. So if you have in your background a Christian Science practitioner, somebody that believed in Unity, a fortune teller, a medium or any of these things, you are quite probably in some measure under a curse. And in many cases your deliverance will not come until you revoke in Jesus’ name the curse that comes from your background. I have proved this conclusively to my own satisfaction in ministering to people, there are times when you cannot get the person delivered simply on the basis of what they are and have done themselves, it’s their inheritance spiritually coming down to them from someone that crossed the wrong border and gone into the wrong realm. God says it will be visited upon their children unto the third and fourth generations. It is.

I’m not preaching condemnation, I’m opening your eyes. First of all, if you do it, you’re bringing it on your children. Secondly, if you parents or grandparents or great grandparents did it, you may still be suffering from their judgment. And you’ve got to learn how to get out from under that judgment. Thank God the curse is canceled in Christ. But you better know where the curse is and in many cases you have to know where it came from.

Exodus 22:18–20:

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Whosoever lieth with a beast [sexually] shall surely be put to death. He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed.

You’ll notice the company that the witch is put in. The one that sacrifices to another god or lies sexually with an animal. It’s not pleasant company to be in.

Before we go any further let’s take these words that are on the blackboard that are the ones used in the King James Version. Most of them do not have much meaning for modern Americans. Let’s look at them. I’m trying to give you the modern English equivalent of these words so that when you read them in another moment you’ll know what you’re reading about.

“Divination” is specifically fortune telling.

“Observing times” is horoscopes. This is a good week to do business or whatever it may be. This is observing time, choosing the right time by the study of the heavenly bodies for certain specific course of action.

“Astrology” or “stargazer,” that’s, of course, astrology.

“Having a familiar spirit,” that’s a word for the medium. A medium has a spirit that comes regularly to him called his guide or some other word like that. This is old, it’s not new. You find it in almost all pagan countries. But in modern America it’s normally called a medium.

“Necromancy” is speaking to the dead for advice and counsel.

A “charmer” is one who uses charms for protection and so on. In Africa we discovered praying with the Africans for salvation that many times you would have to discern that the woman had charms around her waist and tell he to go off and take them away before you could bring her to salvation. None of these things are new.

“Enchanter” is one who uses incantations or, more generally, music. Music has tremendous power and Satan often uses it to enslave people.

A “wizard” is a male and a “witch” is a female.

Now then, let’s go to these other scriptures and then I’ll go on further. Remember now the meaning of these words. Let’s turn to Deuteronomy 18:9–14. This is really the main list. Here’s the whole works given you. I’ll read through verse 12.

When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire...

That is offering your firstborn as a living sacrifice to be burned by fire in sacrifice to a pagan god. Notice this is in direct company with all these other activities. They’re all put on the same level.

...or that useth divination [fortune telling], or an observer of times [horoscopes], or an enchanter, or a witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits [one that goes to a medium], or a wizard [a male witch], or a necromancer [one that consults the dead]. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee.

“All that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord.” And we turn to Isaiah for a moment, Isaiah 47 and just notice the picture of Babylon and the reason why God’s judgment came on Babylon. Remember that there is to be a spiritual Babylon that comes forth at the close of this age which is the spiritual counterpart of Old Testament Babylon and has the same traits and characteristics. In Isaiah 47:12–13 you see the central feature of Babylonian religion.

Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail. Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee...

And so on. Notice astrology, stargazing, monthly prognostication, sorcery; these are the marks of Babylon. You know, there are only going to be two religious groups in Christendom at the end of the age, did you know that? One’s going to be the bride and the other is going to be the harlot. The bride will be marked by the fact that those in the bride have remained true to their commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ the bridegroom. The harlot will consist of those who have been seduced by deceiving spirits from their loyalty to Jesus Christ and they will be marked with all the features of Babylonian religion here described. You can read about them in the 17th and 18th chapters of the book of Revelation.

Every one of us in this room is liable to be confronted by the decision “Do I want to be in the bride or do I want to be in the harlot?” I don’t believe there’ll be a third choice.

Now let’s look at these words here. The three common words that are normally used are divination, witchcraft and sorcery. Many, many times I have encountered these spirits that have spoken to me, defied me and challenged me, out of people. As a matter of fact, I have a kind of private war with witchcraft. Many times they’ll say to me, “I know you.” One said to me, “Why did you have to come?”

Divination is essentially getting revelation by supernatural means not through the Holy Spirit. Revelation of the past, revelation of where lost things are, revelation of who committed a crime. Or, prediction concerning the future. I would say in modern language ESP, extra sensory perception is all a manifestation of divination.

I was praying with a woman in a church in Chicago and she had been a medium. The first time she came I refused to pray with her because I said, “I don’t believe you’ve repented.” The second time she came and told me that she had repented. I questioned it but I said I would pray with her. I began to command the spirits to come out of her and various spirits came out. Then I took a little rest and I was just leaning against the altar rail of the church and the woman was standing there by me and she suddenly turned to me and said this, “I see you in a car and it’s wrecked against a tree.” I said, “You spirit of divination, I refuse to accept that from you. I’ll not be in any car that’s wrecked in any tree.” But you see, if I had not been on my guard, had I begun to believe that which was the spirit of divination speaking through her, it was describing Satan’s destiny for me. Had I begun to believe it and think about it, I would have submitted myself to Satan’s destiny in my life and quite likely I would have ended up in a car wreck.

Many, many people go to the fortune teller. “You’re going to divorce your husband and marry another man.” They submit to it and it happens. What you’ve done in that is submit to Satan’s destiny planned for your life.

You know about Harald Bredesen, how many of you know Harald Bredesen? So many of you do. When he went to a church that he was pastoring in New Jersey, it was a very modernistic, liberal church and they organized a bazaar. He thought I can’t stop this now, I better go along with it. Then they told him, “We’re going to have a fortune teller.” His heart sank but he thought, “Well, I can’t stop it right now.” He ended up by allowing the fortune teller and going to the fortune teller. This was all intended to be a joke, nothing else. As he sat there and looked at that fortune teller she looked him in the eyes and said, “Your wife is going to have cancer.” He said, “I realized that was Satan’s voice telling me Satan’s prediction for my wife.” And his wife got cancer but was healed.

How many people have told me “I went to the fortune teller just for a joke.” You know what Dennis Bennett says? “It’s like counting the tiger’s teeth just for a joke.” Whether you did it for a joke or not is irrelevant. You went to a servant of Satan for help that you should receive only from God. In doing that you submitted yourself to Satan. You made Satan your god. That’s the truth.

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 kill people by my curses.” It was a 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 African witch doctor has known about it for centuries. They’ve long experimented in certain herbs and things that would produce certain strange conditions. 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 and 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 and 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 had 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 ’till 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’ll find many examples in the New Testament. Acts 8 in Samaria, Simon the sorcerer bewitched the whole city with his sorceries. He had everybody enslaved by Satanic supernatural power. 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 has neither part nor lot in this matter.” Peter discerned his motives were still crooked. I’ll tell you, it’s the hardest thing in the world for somebody that’s 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, do 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 and 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 a 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 sought 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 every 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 will 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. 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 streets saying, “These men are the servants of the most high God who 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 and said, “In the name of Jesus Christ, come out of her.” 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.

Galatians 3:1:

O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you...

You say they weren’t saved and baptized in the Holy Spirit? You couldn’t be more wrong because the next verse says:

Did you receive the spirit by the works of the law, the hearing of faith?

Yes, they were good Charismatic Christians but they were bewitched. Did you know that Spirit baptized people can be bewitched. Believe me, they can. I took over a congregation that was bewitched by the wife of the previous pastor. I came face to face with that power at that time and I learned the truth about the Galatians. What was the evidence that they were bewitched? Galatians 4, Ye observe times, days, months, years. You’re playing with horoscopes. You’re seeking to know the future by occult means. Paul said, “I’m afraid lest I belabor upon you in vain.” I think I’ve wasted my time preaching the gospel to you.

2 Timothy 3, in the last days deceivers shall wax worse and worse. But the Greek word is magicians. I wish you’d notice that. 2Timothy 3:13. Where the King James says deceivers the Greek says magicians. These people are compared with Jannes and Jambres the magicians who withstood Moses. Have you ever thought about the fact that the magicians of Egypt had supernatural power? Have you ever considered that? Moses threw down his rod and it became a serpent. The magicians said, “We can do that.” And they did it. The only difference was that Moses’ snake ate up their snakes.

The next one, Moses took water out of the river and turned it to blood. They said, “We can do that.” And did it.

The third one, Moses called the frogs out and filled the houses of the Egyptians. The magicians said, “Wait a minute, we can do that, too.” And they did it.

The fourth one, Moses turned the dust into lice. The Egyptian magicians tried to do that and could not. Then they said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God. This goes beyond us. You better listen to this man. He’s got something we don’t have.” But they had supernatural power.

I’m serving notice on you that at the close of this age the conflict is not going to be fought on the natural plane. It’s going to be fought in the supernatural. Manifested supernatural power of Satan confronted by and overcome by the manifested supernatural power of the Holy Spirit. You read 2Timothy 3, it is very clear.

Revelation 9 and 18 you’ll find the references to witchcraft and particularly in connection with Babylon the false religious situation.

Now we’ve come to the time when we’re going to have an opportunity for you to be delivered and set free. There are three things basically you have to do. Number one, if you’ve been involved in any of these things: heresies, departures from the Christian faith or any form of Satanic supernatural. There’s the list, I didn’t read it out. Shall I read it out? Ouija boards, fortune telling, ESP, drugs (including all sorts of medical drugs like pep tablets, pain killers, sedation and so on), mediums, clairvoyants, meditation, Oriental cults and philosophies (yoga), reincarnation, astrology, horoscopes, hypnosis, automatic writing, and grapho-analysis or handwriting analysis. That’s just a selection. If you’ve been involved in any of those things or anything like them and you want to be cleared, you want that dark shadow lifted off your life, you want that bondage taken away.

How many times people tell me, “Brother Prince, just when the power of God is strongest in the meeting and I feel I’m reaching out to God and longing to worship him, something comes between.” Do you know the first question I ask? “Have you been to a fortune teller?” About twice out of three times the answer is yes. “Oh, but I was only a little girl when I went. Oh, I didn’t mean it, it was just a joke.” But you went. You went to a servant of Satan for help that should come only from God. God in his mercy is not going to lift that pressure ’till you come to the cause of it and see what you did. It’s essential that every child of God get clear about the dangers of occult involvement from this day onwards, that you’ll never be fooled, never be tempted, never go back and get into that area again.

Now, you want to be free, I’m going to tell you what to do. You confess as a sin the involvement. Having your palm read, playing with a Ouija board, consulting a fortune teller, reading books about Edgar Cayce or Jeanne Dixon and so on. Many, many more.

Secondly, you renounce it. By a deliberate act of your will you disassociate yourself from it. The best words I can think of are those of the psalmist David. “Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee [that’s the whole Satanic, demonic realm], and that I grieved with those that rise up against thee; I hate them with perfect hatred, I count them mine enemies.” Is a Christian allowed to say that? Yes. Not about flesh and blood because we don’t war against flesh and blood but against God’s spiritual enemies. You have to say I hate them with perfect hatred, I count them mine enemies. God will not deliver you from your friends, why should he? But if you’ll make them your enemies he’ll deliver you.

You confess, you renounce and you break every contact. If you have a Ouija board you burn it. If you have horoscopes you burn them. If you have books in that category about transmigration of souls, yoga and all these things, you burn them. You do not leave anything in your house that leaves a chink open in the door for the devil to come back. There has to be a housecleaning for most Christians. In Acts 19 when the power of Satan was revealed and the believers saw what really was happening, it’s a remarkable things. It says great fear came upon all and many that believed [believers] came and confessed and showed their evil deeds. They’d been believers but they’d been playing with the other side at the same time. Those that had books about the occult brought them and burned them and the price was fifty thousand pieces of silver. Fifty thousand dollars worth of books burned. You cannot afford to keep it, don’t sell it, don’t pass it on because you’ll poison somebody else. Destroy it. You cannot fool God. Nor can you fool the devil. Don’t try. Each of them knows when you mean business.

The key word for most people today is repent, stop fooling around and playing church and being a little religious and get desperate. Make a decision.

I think in all fairness what I’m going to do is give everybody here an opportunity to be disassociated from the occult. When I’ve done that if you wish to leave you may do so. I’m going to ask you to do one thing. If in listening to me this afternoon you stand here and realize that in some way you’ve been involved with the Satanic supernatural and you have never dealt with the problem, you’ve never renounced it, you’ve never made a clean break until now but you now desire to do so, I want you to do one thing. I want you to say this out loud after me. When you’ve said it, turn loose. If anything comes out, let it come. I don’t know what could happen here in the next few minutes but let it go. And if you are fearful just remember that if you’re respectful, obedient and cooperative, nothing can harm you.

“In the name of Jesus I bind every demonic power that’s here and I demand that they leave without hurting any person or without hurting others and I claim the protection of the blood of Jesus over the families and relatives and friends and associations of all that are here. In Jesus’ name.”

All right, now you say this: “Lord Jesus Christ, I believe that you are the Son of God, the Messiah who came in the flesh. You died on the cross for my sins and you rose again from the dead. I now confess all my sins. I repent of all my sins. In particular, I confess seeking to Satan for help that should come only from God. I confess as a sin—now name the thing: fortune telling, Ouija board, whatever it is. Anything that the Spirit of God now brings to you say ‘I confess as a sin.’ Lord, I now renounce that. I renounce Satan and all his works. I hate his demons, I count them my enemies. In the name of Jesus I loose myself now from every dark spirit, from every evil influence, from every Satanic bondage, from any spirit in me that is not the Spirit of God. I command all such spirits to leave me now in the name of Jesus.”

Now let them go. “Satan, I bind your power and command you to loose these people and come out from them now in Jesus’ name. Every spirit of divination, sorcery, witchcraft, I bind your power in the name of Jesus and I command you to loose these people and depart from them and from this place in Jesus’ mighty name through the power of the blood of the cross. In the name of Jesus. Satan, be loosed, be cast out in Jesus’ mighty name.”