Witchcraft, Evil Spirits And Curses (3)

 We continue our articles about witchcraft, evil spirits and curses. We will meditate on the verses in Deuteronomy “When you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations.   "…, 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.” {De 18:9-14}

 Any one who conjures spells

The word conjure means some one to summon a devil or a demon as well as to perform magic. The words actually means some one who summon a demon away from someone who is sick or have a problem. This was a heathen practice and satanic. It is done by two ways, the first is to cut a peace of paper to the shape of human and they pierce it with a pin while they repeat words such as: we pierce the body of so and so for he gave so and so a bad eye and after they finish remembering every person who could possibly gave this person a bad eye then they burn this peace of paper. The second wasy is they bring incenses and burn them while they repeat certain words that express summoning demons away. In the Arabic translation I have quoted few sentence from an Islamic website that  explains how important it is when someone conjures a spells to get someone who is experience in summoning demons away. They say this is done by a familiar spirit, which is an evil spirit and God forbid us from dealing with evil spirits at all. If a Christian is sick we seek the healing of Jesus Christ like what happened when I had a stroke, I prayed to Jesus and He healed me.

 Or a medium, or a spiritist

the word of God forbid us from calling on a medium or a spiritist. The word in Hebrew in which the Old Testament was written means familiar spirit. Familiar spirit means: an evil spirit that is familiar to a certain person and it does communicate with this person to give him information and it can be a divination spirit. We will talk about this spirit when we talk about evil spirits in future articles. I will mention some verses that speaks about this issue and how God forbid us from seeking such spirits.

“Give no regard to mediums and familiar spirits; do not seek after them, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.” { Le 19:31} “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.” {Le20:6} “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” {Le20: 27} And let us see what the word of God says about King Saul “So Saul died for his unfaithfulness which he had committed against the LORD, because he did not keep the word of the LORD, and also because he consulted a medium for guidance” {1Ch10:13} God was so angry when Saul consulted a medium for guidance to ask for the prophet Samuel.

I will finish the part of who asks a medium or a spiritist with this verse which express the feeling of our God towards anyone who seeks a medium or a spiritis “ And when they say to you, "Seek those who are mediums and wizards, who whisper and mutter," should not a people seek their God? Should they seek the dead on behalf of the living?” {Isa 8:19} God is very angry when His people seek the dead for the sake of things concern the living. We should seek the Holy Spirit only or those who are filled with the Holy Spirit.

 Or one who calls up the dead

This kind of divination is used by many in many countries. I do remember this, in the sixties there was a wave of this kind of divination where there were so many calling up the spirits of the dead to communicate with them. And a spirit would come and move some furniture to prove that she is present and the family of the deceased believed that it was the spirit of their loved one. But in reality it was an evil spirit for God would not allow a spirit of anyone passed away from this world to come back to earth again. I want to mention that there are some TV programs claim that they can communicate with the spirit of the deceased but in fact they communicate with an evil spirit and it is a spirit of divination, that is why they know details about the deceased persons.

Everyone should know these facts: when someone departs from our world he will go in one of these two place only: the first one is paradise if he believed in the salvation of Jesus Christ and read the Bible and obey every word in it. The following verse shows this “Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed  in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” {1Co15:51,52} And the second place is hell: if the person ignores the salvation of our Lord Jesus Christ until the coming of Jesus Christ to judge everyone according to his deeds, good or bad. All deeds  are written in the book of life and they will be exposed “And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books” {Re20:12}.  but for those did not hear about the salvation of Jesus Christ, God will judge them according to His wisdom and justice. A lot of people ask me the following: how about the people who did not hear about the salvation of Jesus? My answer to them is worry about your salvation and God will worry about them.

We should know that everyone he passed away from our world he will only go to two places, paradise or hell and they will stay in these places and they will not be able to leave it for God will not allow any spirit to leave. So if anyone calls up the spirit of the dead is not a Christian principal at all. We have to understand that anyone who calls a spirit of a dead person, he is actually calling a demon and mostly this demon is a spirit of divination. God will not allow the spirit of dead person to come back to our world unless it is to glorify His Holy Name. It happened in the Old Testimony that King Soul went to a woman sorcerer to call the spirit of the prophet Samuel, when he asked her to call the spirit of Samuel she was not astonished this is because she  knew she was going to summon an evil spirit. But when she saw Samuel she screamed with a loud voice because she saw Samuel rising as Gods from the ground. The Lord allowed Samuel to rise for the Glory of our Lord so he can give king Soul a clear message of conviction. We did not see another incident in the Bible where the Lord allowed the spirit of anyone to leave paradise to deal with someone on earth, but if the Lord only allows it for the glory of His holy name.

In summary, you should not accept prayers from any person, monk, pastor, or even bishop if he does not offer the supplication in Jesus name. We must pray in Jesus name because no one can say Jesus is Lord without the Holy Spirit. (…no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit( {1Cor 12:3}.

In the next article we shall talk about Envy: is there envy? If so is it mentioned in the bible? How does come to pass? Does it affect everyone? Or it does only affect people who do not keep the commandments of the bible in his life. It is an exiting subject when you know the answers to all  these questions through the word of God. As it is the convention, I always find the reference to my  answer in the bible.

Saad and I wish every reader all the blessing for the season of the Pentecost together with the glory of the Resurrection.

To be continued ……