S5 E12: Should We Always Blame Demons?

Season 5 covers the supernatural and paranormal from a Spirit-led perspective. In this episode, Glenn discusses the demonic and offers an approach to viewing situations where people perform practices prohibited by God. These practices are things like fortune telling, speaking to the dead, and necromancy. Glenn explains why these practices are to be avoided by Christians.

The Bible will be the source of truth for this season, even though extra-biblical books and podcasts will be discussed. As discussed in Episode 1, Glenn will be kind to the authors and podcast hosts discussed throughout the season.

This episode has a transcript. If your podcast player does not support transcripts, please go to the Transcripts section of https://spiritledhope.com/  These transcripts have been edited for accuracy and are typically of higher quality than those produced automatically by many podcast apps.

Transcript

S5 E12 TRANSCRIPT 

SHOULD WE ALWAYS BLAME DEMONS?

INTRODUCTION

Hello everyone and welcome to Spirit-Led Hope. My name is Glenn Erichsen, and in this episode, we are asking the question…

     SHOULD WE ALWAYS BLAME DEMONS?

In the last episode we talked about ghosts and in the episode before that we talked about astral projection. During those episodes, I mentioned that talking to the dead is off limits for Christians. And I based that statement on Deuteronomy 18:9-14. The core directives are in verses 10-11 so let me read those…

“No one among you is to sacrifice his son or daughter in the fire, practice divination, tell fortunes, interpret omens, practice sorcery, cast spells, consult a medium or a spiritist, or inquire of the dead.”

Deuteronomy 18:10-11 CSB

What is interesting about these verses is that they do not say WHY we should not do these things. Why are actions like divination, inquiring of the dead, and fortune telling off-limits? That is what we want to answer in this episode. And once we get the answers, we want to think about the implications. This episode is going to stretch a few people, and it will force me to adjust what I have said before, so let us get into it.

WHY THE PROHIBITIONS?

There are two big reasons why God has prohibited the actions we just read about. I am sure there are more, but the main reason is that things like divination, sorcery, and inquiring of the dead, move us away from a reliance on God. In other words, by seeking answers apart from God, we are elevating those other things above God. For example, if you use a medium to get answers from dead people, you are saying that a dead person can answer you better than the living God.

The prophet Isaiah talked about this. I am going to read a section from Isaiah Chapter 8. The “they” in these verses are the people among the Israelites who do not follow Yahweh. This is what Isaiah said…

Here I am with the children the Lord has given me to be signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of Armies who dwells on Mount Zion. When they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the spiritists who chirp and mutter,” shouldn’t a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? Go to God’s instruction and testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, there will be no dawn for them.

Isaiah 8:18-20 CSB 

Isaiah implores the people to go to God instead of the dead. To do anything else brings darkness.

For Christians, there should be no reason to go to anyone but God. God has given us his Word in Scripture. The Holy Spirit lives within us. And not only that, but God has given us spiritual gifts like prophecy, words of wisdom, words of knowledge, and healing. There is no reason to go anywhere else but to God.

Now I know that spiritual gifts are debated within the Church. But this is another reason why I point to a charismatic worldview. Used properly, gifts of the Spirit show us how worthless and dangerous these prohibited practices are. In fact, some of these prohibited practices can be viewed as counterfeits to the gifts of the Spirit. If the subject of gifts of the Spirit is new to you, please listen to Season 1 where I cover all the gifts of the Spirit in detail.

A second reason why God has prohibited things like divination and inquiring of the dead, is that these practices involve contact with evil spirits. Often, you will hear Christians say that mediums are speaking to demons. If that is the case, then anyone seeking the dead is setting themselves up to be deceived.

What I find interesting, and I could be wrong, is that I do not think the Bible explicitly teaches that evil spirits are one of the reasons we avoid practices like necromancy and divination. But Scripture certainly gives us enough information to understand that evil spirits are involved. 

A good example of this is found in the book of Acts where Luke describes an encounter with a fortune teller. Let us read about it…

Once, as we were on our way to prayer, a slave girl met us who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She made a large profit for her owners by fortune-telling. As she followed Paul and us she cried out, “These men, who are proclaiming to you a way of salvation, are the servants of the Most High God.” She did this for many days. Paul was greatly annoyed. Turning to the spirit, he said, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” And it came out right away. When her owners realized that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to the authorities.

Acts 16:16-19 CSB

Those verses are clear that an evil spirit was possessing and empowering the young girl to tell fortunes. And we have no reason to believe that this is a special case (although the possession part may have been unusual). When we look at the way Scripture talks about idols, evil spirits, and doctrines of demons, we see a picture of an ongoing battle between us and evil spirits. And so, we avoid the practices which put us into a situation where we can be deceived or hurt by evil spirits. And those practices are things like fortune telling, necromancy, inquiring of the dead, divination, sorcery…everything mentioned in Deuteronomy.

The bottom line is that we avoid these practices because we should always rely on God first and avoid placing ourselves into a compromising position with evil spirits.

SHOULD WE EVER TALK TO THE DEAD?

In the introduction to this episode I stated that I would need to adjust something I said. I believe in a prior episode I said that talking to the dead is off-limits for Christians. And based on what I have said in this episode, you can see why.  When we talk to the dead we are most likely talking to an evil spirit. 

But I do want to clarify something. The prohibition mentioned in Deuteronomy is that we are not to inquire of the dead. In other words, we are not supposed to go seeking the dead for answers. And we are not supposed to seek out a fortune teller or engage in necromancy. In other words, God prohibits us from seeking out and actively engaging in these practices.

But what if an evil spirit, in some way, presents itself to you…maybe as someone deceased. In other words, you did not seek it out. In that case, you may have no choice but to talk to it. I do not intend to go into this deeply right now, but this would be a case where we are told to test the spirits. And that may involve talking to whatever it is. In the verses we read from Acts, Paul did speak to the evil spirit, but only to command it. And that may be a situation we find ourselves in.

The point I am trying to make here is that I do not want anyone to take my comment about not speaking to the dead as a blanket statement with no exceptions. There could be a case where you cannot avoid it. 

I hope that makes sense. I suspect we will talk more about this when we talk about exorcisms.

SHOULD WE ALWAYS BLAME DEMONS?

With that background we can now answer the question…should we always blame demons?

We just saw that we can legitimately point to evil spirits as likely being involved in the things we just mentioned, like fortune telling or speaking to the dead. But does that apply to all cases of fortune telling or speaking to the dead? And does that mean that demons or evil spirits are present in all supernatural or paranormal situations?

What about a tarot card reading or fortune-telling at the county fair…are demons empowering the readings? Is Bigfoot a demon? Are aliens demons? And what about telekinesis and telepathy…are they powered by demons? What about that unexplainable strange sound that makes you uncomfortable at night? Is that caused by a demon?

I have met some Christians who most likely would say yes. They will look at everything that seems supernatural, paranormal, or a little sketchy, and be convinced that evil spirits are at work. And because they believe evil spirits are at work, they may react very strongly to whatever the situation is.

But I want us to take a step back and do a little analytical reasoning. And I think this is important because we are called to be seekers of the truth. We want our actions to be based on the truth and not on knee-jerk reactions or responses based in fear of the demonic.

Even though I have seen many crazy spiritual things, I do not start from a position that believes everything is demonic. In fact, I believe that can be unhealthy if carried to an extreme. There is no evidence in Scripture that Jesus was ever confused about what was demonic and what was not. So how can we become more like Jesus in this area?

The first thing we want to understand is that God has equipped humans with an intellectual ability to sort out and understand what we are facing. For example, just the other day, my wife received a notification on her phone that a package had been delivered. But a little bit later when she went to pick up the package, it was not there.

Now, was her first assumption that a demon had taken the package? Of course not. Why? Because we know there are a lot of possible natural explanations. There was no reason for her to jump to a supernatural explanation until she had exhausted the natural ones. Maybe the delivery person went to the wrong house. Or maybe a package thief had been following the delivery truck. All of these should be considered first. In fact, it turned out that it was a package-thief…sort of. We discovered our daughter saw the package and brought it into the house without my wife knowing. No demons were responsible.

This example shows a good strategy. Look for the natural explanations first, and do not jump to the supernatural until the reasonable natural ones have been eliminated.

In looking for the natural explanations, we also consider the possibility that people have their own skills and abilities. It is possible that the lady doing fortune-telling at the fair is using demonic abilities. But it is also possible that she is just good at figuring people out and finding ways to convince them to pay her money. I am not saying this makes what she is doing spiritually safe or right. I am just saying that we should not automatically assume she is possessed or communicating with demons.

We also need to keep in mind that the world is full of wonders that we may not understand. I did not mention this in Episode 10 on remote viewing, but some Christians believe that humans have natural ability with their minds to do things like remote viewing. The idea here is that before Adam sinned, humans had powerful minds that functioned way beyond the way ours do today. And things like telepathy and remote viewing are simply residual powers shining through our fallen state. If that is true, then we might be wrong to accuse a remote viewer of dancing with demons, or something like that.

If all this sounds confusing, do not despair. Fortunately, not only has God given us an intellect and Scripture to help guide us, but the Holy Spirit also helps us. As I said earlier, in Season 1 we looked at the gifts of the Spirit in detail. One of the gifts can help us know if demonic forces are present. If this is new to you, check out Season 1, Episode 26. This gift, which gives the ability to distinguish between spirits, is very helpful, especially when deception is present. And the Holy Spirit is very generous in giving this gift when needed.

The bottom line is that we should not blame demons for everything that seems strange or even opposed to God. Natural things happen and people can choose to reject God without the help of demons. It is up to us to use our intellect in concert with the Holy Spirit when discerning the source of something. 

This is one of those topics that probably does not get discussed enough in the Church. Sadly, I do not know about you, but I have seen too many Christians cry “demon” when they should not. And we need to be sensitive about this. 

When I was a boy, it was mainly my mother who took us to church. My dad did not go very often. He liked staying at home and instead, he often watched one of the televangelists who was popular at the time. I was pretty sure my father believed in God, but I did not understand his aversion to organized church until I was older.

It turns out that my father had a disagreement with a Lutheran pastor over the concept of tithing.  We did not have a lot of money, but we did have fresh food that we grew on our small farm. And my father, wanting to give, often donated crops that he would normally sell, to feed the hungry. 

Well, my father thought that this was doing what God wanted. But the pastor felt that it was more important to give money to his church, which we attended. And that caused a big disagreement. As the story was told to me, in the heat of the argument, the pastor told my father that he thought my father was demonically possessed. You can imagine how well that was received. And I understand why my father was leery about attending church in person after that, even when we switched churches.

So, we need to be careful about waving the demon flag unnecessarily. If we are careless, we can hurt people. With respect to God’s words in the book of Deuteronomy, God has prohibited certain practices to protect us from demonic beings. But it does not mean that everyone practicing these things is demonically possessed or is being deceived by demons, although some may be.

If we keep God first in our lives and our attention on him, the ability to recognize the demonic becomes easier. And it also becomes easier to love people who are being deceived by demons or evil spirits. This is critical, because ultimately it is our love for people which will encourage the deceived to come to us for help. And they will get help as we introduce them to Jesus whose death and resurrection made it possible for them to be free.

If we need to deal with the demonic, so be it. Every Christian has the authority in Jesus, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to do what needs to be done in the case where demonic foes are present. Again, I am sure we will talk more about that when we discuss exorcisms.

CLOSING

In the next episode we are going to start looking at telepathy by discussing a podcast called, “The Telepathy Tapes.” And this will give us a chance to practice what we just talked about in this episode. Because in “The Telepathy Tapes,” we are going to hear the stories of people who do the very things God prohibited in Deuteronomy.  

As always, you can send me comments, suggestions, or questions, by email at glenn@spiritledhope.com, or simply use the Contact Form at spiritledhope.com. You can also send me a one-way text message by going to the episode show notes and clicking on the link with your smart phone. If you find these episodes useful, please spread the word and share them with your friends.

As you practice using your intellect in concert with the Holy Spirit…

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope, by the power of the Holy Spirit.  

Until the next episode, take care.

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