“He practiced witchcraft and fortunetelling. He held séancesand consulted spirits from the underworld.” (2 Chr. 33:6, Message)
We are currently discussing the fourteen demonic spirits that are specified in the Bible, examining and elucidating them. In the previous teaching we focused on the second spirit, the familiar spirit.
The Word of God forbids any involvement with the realm of the dead. This in itself may actually sound a bit strange, as Scripture clearly states that “the dead know nothing” (Ecc. 9:5). Why forbid it if it is mere dead communication or involvement? Korah, in Ps. 88:11-12, thus actually asks a rhetorical question: “Shall Your lovingkindness be declared in the grave? Or Your faithfulness in the place of destruction? Shall Your wonders be known in the dark? And Your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?” The answer to this is unambiguous: No. Why do we then find these various explicit warnings against it?
- Lev. 19:31: “Give no regard to mediums and familiar spirits; do not seek after them, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God.”
- Lev. 20:6: “And the person who turns to mediums and familiar spirits, to prostitute himself with them, I will set My face against that person and cut him off from his people.”
- Lev. 20:27: “A man or a woman who is a medium, or who has familiar spirits, shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones. Their blood shall be upon them.”
- Ex. 22:18: (BBE) – “Any woman using unnatural powers or secret arts is to be put to death.”
- Deut. 18:10-14: “There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord your God drives them out from before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God. For these nations which you will dispossess listened to soothsayers and diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not appointed such for you.”
The answer is simply, and we discussed it in extensive detail in the previous teaching. It is not the dead that are an issue here, but demons. Selah.
Familiar spirits have the right to influence you based on your bloodline, or through association with ungodly rituals, ideas or actions. Families and exposure to certain activities offer breeding ground for familiar spirits to be carried over. Various things can play a role here: the laying on of hands, naming, blessing, cursing, family rituals, exposure to demonic practices or habits (even unknowingly) in the family circle, visits to graves, items of clothing to which supernatural power is attributed and that act as talismans, etc. We will not be discussing this issue in detail, but let’s place a few matters in perspective:
- Inequities are in other words thus a burden of sin that has not come about through your actions, transgressions that you are not responsible for, but that are carried over through blood lines and are visited across generations. This is a Biblical reality. As part of the Ten Commandments it is for instance made clear that God visits “the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations” (Ex. 20:5). Even in the New Testament inequities are still referred to (Rom. 6:13; 1 John 5:17).
- Many people believe that the fact that they were unaware of these iniquities renders them exempt. This is not true. Isa. 5:13 states “Therefore my people have gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge”, and Hos 4:6 – “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Even according to the law ignorance and naivete is not an excuse.
- Many people think that the dispensation after the cross is marked by the fact that all iniquities have categorically been dealt with. Although we have written about iniquities in the past, we should make it clear that it is the spirit behind these iniquities that is the issue here. The cross and the blood of Jesus is only effective for those who have reached it, in other words before you became born again inequities already had a chance to affect your life (Ps. 51:5). In the Old Testament, in Jer. 31:29-31, the following prophetic view is offered of a new covenant and the role of iniquities within it: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity; every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.” BUT the new covenant is only valid for those who made a covenant with God at the cross, and within that your iniquities are destroyed in Christ (Isa. 53:5).
- Iniquities have to be dealt with at the cross, for it to become a reality in your life. The rest of humanity who are not born again, are alas still under the spiritual law of reaping what you sow (Gal. 6:7; Gen. 8:22; Job 4:8; Prov. 1:31).
The familiar spirit can gain access to you in various ways:
- Through mediums/psychics (even the ‘innocent’ Madame Ferroni in her caravan predicting your future). This does not mean that if you’ve once read an astrology report, or paged through Linda Goodman’s book Star Signs, or came across John Edward’s Crossing Over while channel surfing that you are now possessed by demons. Instead we are concerned about lengthy exposure to, or participation and belief in, the occult world.
- Through necromancy, which the Oxford dictionary defines as “the supposed practice of communicating with the dead, especially in order to predict the future”, but which also includes sex with the dead. In my opinion this should include not only sexual intercourse, but also an unhealthy preoccupation with death, graves, relics of dead persons, etc. There are many people who faithfully perform certain rituals with their dead loved ones, and this may result in a familiar spirit being transferred. It is important to properly mourn the dead, but an enduring sadness can expose you to this spirit. 2 Cor 7:10 makes this clear: “For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.”
- Mysticism can expose you to spirits of divination, and includes various activities, for instance: ESP (extra-sensory perception), the use of drugs or the abuse of and addiction to prescription drugs, automatic writing, over-identification with historical figures (for instance Elvis, Hitler, Mother Theresa, whoever), “speaking” to someone’s spirit (as Arthur Burke for instance does), TB Joshua who places a familiar spirit on you during a visit to his prayer mountain, to fall in the spirit and lose consciousness or faint, any form of mesmerising where you do the same thing over and over again, repeating mantras (like people for instance use the prayer of Jabez), dowsing (by using a twig or wire, not through the use of geological instruments), divination through the reading of palms, crystal balls, tea leaves, tarot cards or the I Ching, exposure to or obsession with the paranormal and Wicca, the so-called “warm hands” of faith healers, ceremonial magick, Satanic rituals, etc, can all expose you to the demonic realm. The purpose of most of these activities is to obtain power and authority from a source outside the God of the Bible.
Until now we have mainly been approaching the topic from a theoretical perspective, but it might be useful to briefly look at the practical aspects thereof, especially in the light of the paragraph which concluded the previous teaching – Endor means fountain of dwelling, or fountain of the generation/age. Keeping in mind that the witch was instrumental in Saul losing his calling and purpose (= fountain), it also shows how this familiar spirit operates corporately to render moot your higher calling in Christ.
A practical testimony in this regard. When I was still in school, my sister, five years my senior, was radically born again and started walking in her high calling. At that stage she was a nurse who mostly worked the night shift. In the long hours they had to stay awake, the nurses usually played with a ouija board.
A ouija board is a flat surface on which the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0-9, and the words yes, no, hallo and goodbye are printed. It also uses a small heart-shaped wooden object which moves across the board, spelling out messages from the dead, especially during seances. The participants lightly place a finger on the wooden object, and it moves and spells out certain words.
My sister was not familiar with the game, and as junior nurse she did not have much of a choice in playing along. One night during such a game, a spirit brought a message to one of the older nurses, a not-so-pretty spinster who evoked no interest from the opposite sex, saying that she would be madly in love and be married within seven days. Another young, single nurse was given the message that she is pregnant. To my sister it said – this time next next year you will be dead.
Needless to say this was an immense shock, especially to the last two nurses. A few days later nurse no 2 found out that she’s pregnant. The first nurse fell in love with a blind patient she was nursing, and they were married in the hospital within a week.
For my sister this sealed her fate – she would die within a year. She decided to not tell anyone but me. It was an immense burden for me, and obviously for her too, and it became a terrible year in our lives. As expected she went through all the phases of an unexpected death sentence – anger, self-pity, fear, uncertainty, doubt. When the time came, a year after it had been divined, she did not die. I started walking the brittle road of hope, but saw that the trauma of the experience had been too much for her. She went on with her life, but in the process lost her faith, and her calling.
- Selah: Ask the Holy Spirit to bring any participation in occult practices to light.
- Read: 1 & 2 Pet
- Examine the OT-typology: 1 Pet. 1:2 (Tip: Isa 65:9 & 22).
- For a deeper understanding: Read Kurt Koch’s book Occult ABC.
