I want to begin by sharing an experience with you, which happened to me a number of years ago. Ever since I can remember, I've been interested in the supernatural. I think some of us are born that way. And so I began to drag my wife around to all kinds of very strange little... spiritualist church meetings, all kinds of little occult get-togethers, where the fortune tellers operated, where the mediums operated, and where people operated in the powers of darkness.

Now, I did not understand fully then that these were dark powers that were operating. Nevertheless, I became fascinated much more than my wife, and because she was obedient, she went along with me. But we made the acquaintance of a house group. Now, I'll tell you, it was different from the house group that we have today.

This was a house group, was a house meeting of a spiritualist church, although the people professed to be Christians. And the leader of the group was a woman who was a spiritualist medium. She was a trance medium. That is, she would go into a trance and then a spirit would take over from the other side, from the occult side of the spiritual world, and speak through her, utilizing her lips and voice to tell fortunes and to answer questions and this sort of thing.

A strange and fascinating kind of experience. And it was valid in the sense that it was real. This woman was not a charlatan. She operated in a brightly lighted room. And she put a blindfold over her eyes. She would sit down behind a table, put a blindfold across her eyes, and encourage us to sing a Christian hymn or two.

We'd usually sing something like, "I Come to the Garden Alone." And I would even play the piano for the... for the hymn singing and while we were doing this she would go into a trance. She would lay her head on her arms leaning forward against the table and after the singing was over she would open she would raise up her head and this voice would begin to speak through her which purported to be the spirit of her dead sister, her sister who had died in childhood.

And then this sister, this spirit that at least was impersonating her sister, would greet us. And many times we would have written questions and put them on little slips of paper or put them in a basket and set them before Dorothy, the woman who was the medium. And we saw all kinds of evidential things happen in those meetings.

We attended them regularly for some weeks. And I became increasingly fascinated with what I saw because this woman... under the influence of this familiar spirit that was operating through her, could simply reach out and touch one of these folded sheets of paper and read the question off of it, tell who the question was from, read it, and then would proceed to answer it.

For example, if I would ask some question, put a piece of question on a piece of paper, it would be folded and put in that basket, and she would turn the basket upside down and sort of shuffle around the papers on the table, and then she'd reach out and touch one. And then she would say, "Ah, I see this is from our young student minister." And he would, this is what he's asking. And she would read that question through her fingertips.

And then she would proceed to try and answer the question. Well, I tell you, this kind of evidential... material is fascinating. We saw many things happen that made me absolutely convinced that what was going on was supernatural. Yet at the same time, I was enough aware of scriptural truth to know that what I was doing was dangerous, or at least I suspected it was.

And yet I was so fascinated with the reality of this that I tried desperately to reconcile the psychic phenomena that I was experiencing. with the reality of the Christian faith. I have to confess to you, I did that for a number of years in my own thinking. And some of you today are trying to do that. You're knowing, you know about a number of the things that are taking place across this land in terms of spiritualism and fortune telling and Ouija boards and Gene Dixon and Edgar Cayce and all of these other interesting supernatural philosophies.

And some of you are desperately trying to reconcile the reality of these things with the reality of the Christian faith. And I hope you'll be convinced by the time we finish this afternoon that the two realms are mutually exclusive. They have nothing to do with one another, any more than light has to do with darkness, or darkness has to do with light.

So I would pray to God, I'd say, "God, I feel a little uneasy about this, but this is so fascinating and we'd keep going back to it, you see." And then, to my amazement, I discovered through the words or the messages that were coming through from this other side, through this woman, through this medium and through the spirit that was operating through her, that I had a particular kind of spirit guide.

I found out we all had spirit guides according to this demonic, spiritualistic kind of theology. that we all have invisible helpers from the other side, spirits of departed relatives and spirits of departed friends, and so forth. And oftentimes you'll find that if you get involved in this, that those friends that are helping you will turn out to be famous people.

I mean, that's what's said, that there are the spirits of famous departed people who are trying to work back through the people in this life to contact the earth plane. This is all a part of Satan's attempt. to ensnare you egotistically in the fact that you're going to be some mighty great person because the spirit of George Washington wants to work through you.

Well, this is one of the things that happened to me. I found out that according to this weird theology that there was a spirit guide whom they claimed a famous man who'd been seeking for years to have some clear channel through whom he could work. And he'd chosen me.

And this was Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great English man of letters, the writer and philosopher. And oh, I was eventually flattered by the fact that this man, supposedly the spirit of this man was wanting to use me. And yet all the time I had these little alarm bells going off inside saying, "Watch out, Basham." You know, you know, this isn't scriptural, but I'll tell you, it was fascinating and it flattered the ego.

And I found out as this so-called spirit spoke through the medium relating Dr. Johnson's message to me, he said, Dr. Johnson wanted to use me like this spirit was using her sister. He wanted me to become a medium. He wanted me to begin to practice meditation and all this sort of thing.

Again, I was flattered but scared stiff, fortunately. And so I went home and prayed about it. And I said, "Lord, I want you to show me if this isn't you." And I knew deep down I was on dangerous territory. But I said, "I want a sign from you. If this isn't from you and if it's dangerous, then we don't want to have anything to do with it."

But we're asking you for a fleece. Well, a couple of weeks later when we went to the meeting, and again, these things were taking place. Evidential material was being presented and questions were being answered. And the descriptions of heaven were being given about how it's a wonderful place.

And everybody's all filled with sweetness and light, and there is no darkness over there, there is no such thing as hell or evil spirits, that everybody's just progressing from plane to plane. And it all sounds wonderful, you see, but it isn't scriptural.

But anyway, we were in one of those kind of sessions when all at once the medium, who still had the blindfold over her eyes, and this voice was speaking through her, the medium suddenly began to experience some kind of physical distress. She began to writhe and to twist on the chair, and she began to groan and moan, and suddenly she began to choke.

And all at once this... so-called spirit that was speaking through her said, "There's interference from this side. I have to leave now. I'll come back in half an hour." And suddenly the woman slumped forward and put her head on the table, and she came out of the trance choking. She got up and went into the kitchen, got a drink of water, cleared her throat, came back feeling some physical distress, and we were a little upset about what happened.

But sure enough, 30 minutes later, we agreed to have her go back into a trance. We sang another hymn, and she put the blindfold back on. Again, this spirit spoke through her, this time in a whiny, complaining voice.

And this is what it said. It said the interference on the other side, that it was being compelled to tell us this, the interference from the other side was from an evil spirit, the spirit of an evil man who had been in the parents of this woman and of her dead sister.

This evil spirit had been in the parent and the father who hated the children. And now this spirit was trying to interfere with what was going on. It broke into the meeting and was trying to take the life of the medium by inserting its fingers into her windpipe and choking her to death.

And then the medium began to cry and to wail, and she collapsed on the table again, and that was the end of the trance. It was also the end of our attendance at the seances, because God had given us the sign we sought.

We realized how dangerous this sort of thing was, that for all of the talk of heaven and sweetness in life, here was an attempted murder. taking place as a result of this kind of experience.

And so that sort of thing shot me into an awareness that there is a certain impassable gulf between the psychic and the spiritual. And it wasn't until years later that I became aware of how clearly the scriptures teach against this.

And finally, eventually, when I got into the deliverance ministry that I'm in now. I'd been in it for some months when we got into a situation where a person identified a demon of spiritualism, and that racking thing got a hold of me, and I had it, you see. It rose up in me, and I had to be delivered as well.

I had to be delivered from a demon that I had picked up by going to those seances. Now, what I'm saying essentially is this, that everything in that whole psychic realm, Psychic phenomena of every description, Ouija boards, hypnotism, spiritualism, seances, fortune-telling, palm reading, reincarnation, any kind of thing that offers you supernatural help or understanding while it ignores Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost, while it ignores the blood of Christ or the cross, has tremendous elements of the demonic in it.

And it wasn't until I got into this minister of deliverance that this began to be apparent to me. Now, I want to read a passage of scripture for you this afternoon, which illustrates how this problem of interest in the psychic phenomena has plagued the church through the centuries.

It was present in the New Testament church. And this scripture will indicate how, when the deliverance ministry appeared on the scene, this psychic business was revealed for what it was, and people repented and got out from under. all that they had been in.

This is in the 19th chapter of Acts. If you have your Bibles, you turn with me. It begins with the 10th verse and continues down through the 20th verse. This is Paul in Ephesus, and a revival breaks out under his preaching.

We'll begin with the 10th verse. And this continued by the space of two years, so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul, so that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and evil spirits went out of them.

Then certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches. And there were seven sons of one Theba, a Jew, and chief of the priests, which did so.

And the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are ye? And the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them and overcame them and prevailed against them so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.

And this was known to all the Jews and Greeks also dwelling at Ephesus, and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. Now get this, and many that believed came and confessed and showed their deeds, and many of them also which used curious arts.

brought all their books together and burned them before all men and they counted the price of them and found it 50,000 pieces of silver and so mightily grew the word of God and prevailed now I would submit to you this afternoon that that is a very accurate picture of the state of much of Christianity in America today, for that matter, around the rest of the world.

For Satan has systematically infiltrated the ranks of God's people with demonic influences and evil spirits and cunningly attracting people away into all of these kind of occult practices and sciences so that much of Christianity today is in bondage to the forces of the enemy.

I agree with Brother Derek Prince, who says... shares his conviction that the greatest threat to America today is not communism, it's witchcraft. And I tend to agree with him wholeheartedly.

And we see those of us who have gotten into this deliverance ministry and helping set people free from occult subjection and oppression and the torment of evil spirits are continually amazed and astounded at how many times it becomes revealed that the torment began because people innocently began to investigate psychic phenomena.

And the thing we need to be aware of, as we have never been aware before, is that this whole realm of supernatural experience that we call the psychic, or we call the occult, or mysticism, this whole realm of psychical or occult experience is demonic, and it is utterly and thoroughly and repeatedly and continually condemned by the teachings in Scripture.

God is unremitting, God is unrelenting in his attitude toward all of these things, which we have a very tolerant attitude toward.

And I want to take some time and read scriptures, a number of scriptures for you this afternoon. I have about 50 or 60 here. Of course, because we're doing this on tape and because of time, I'm only going to read eight or ten. But I'm just telling you that there are literally dozens of them all through the scriptures.

And the total list that I have is by no means exhausting. But you will find how God is unremitting in his utter condemnation of everything of a supernatural nature. that does not come directly from him are through the Lord Jesus Christ.

And many of these practices that fascinate us, psychic practices, witchcraft, and spiritualism, and astrology, and horoscopes, and all of this, which we find as a part of our culture today, and we tolerate, in fact, even show a morbid fascination for us, are an abomination in the eyes of Almighty God.

So I want to share with you a few of those scriptures now. It begins back in the book of Exodus, the 22nd chapter and the 18th verse. God says very bluntly, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. The punishment for one practicing witchcraft in the Old Testament was death.

And yet look how we tolerate it today. Books on all of the bookstands about it. And we put the famous witches on television programs and seek their advice and their counsel.

And yet God, in his attitude about it, says you will not suffer a witch to live. Here's another one in Leviticus, the 20th chapter, verse 6. And that soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits and after wizards to play the harlot after them. I will set even my face against that soul and will cut him off from among his people.

Again, in the Old Testament, the punishment for one who sought after this kind of experience was banishment from the presence of God and from the people of God. And notice what God calls it. One who seeks after familiar spirits and after wizards to play the harlot after them. This, in the eyes of God, is spiritual adultery.

We've shared this before, but it's worth sharing again, that in the mind of God, Regardless of what your attitude has been before, the scriptures make it plain that in the mind of God it is just as evil and just as disobedient and just as deadly in that sense in the sight of God for a Christian or for a believer to practice any of these things, witchcraft or astrology or horoscopes or fortune-telling or any of these other fascinating things.

It is just as evil in the sight of God for a Christian to do that. as it is for a Christian to get involved in an adulterous affair with his neighbor's wife or husband. There is absolutely no difference in the eyes of God in one or the other.

And while there are millions of Christians who are earnest and upright in their moral living, insofar as their own personal lives are concerned, and who would be indignant at the thought, or aghast at the thought of getting involved in immorality.

because it's so clearly forbidden in the scripture. And yet there are literally millions of Christians who feel that way about immorality, who feel perfectly free to buy the books of horoscopes and astrology, feel perfectly free to go to a seance, feel perfectly free to have their fortune told.

And let me tell you, in the eyes of God, you're just as guilty as you are as if you've committed adultery. There is no difference in the sight of God.

Now, if this sounds stern, check it out in the Word of God. I'll tell you, it made me begin to quake in my boots when I saw this in Scripture. It wasn't until after I got delivered from that demon of spiritualism that I began to submit myself to a study of the Scriptures about God's attitude toward the psyche.

Why? Because I dabbled in it. I'd been fascinated by it. I liked to have my intellect stimulated by the things that would happen, you see. It's all very fascinating, and it's all very real.

Don't you think for a minute

Here is the cleaned-up version of the sermon transcription:

That's a fraud. Don't you dare to believe for a minute if one of your kids is playing with an Ouija board and he comes home or he comes into the room where you are and says, "The Ouija board told me thus and so." Don't you think it's a lie? It'll be true. The Ouija board can tell you when your grandmother died, even if you don't remember the date. Ouija boards are one of the most popular toys selling in America today, and people think they're harmless. They aren't. They're a deadly instrument in the hands of Satan. And yet there'll be millions of Christians buying them for their kids as Christmas presents. You watch and see.

We're reading scriptures. Deuteronomy chapter 13, verses 1 to 5. If there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and give thee a sign or wonder, and the sign or wonder come to pass whereof he has spoken to thee, saying, "Let us go after other gods which thou hast not known, and let us serve them." You shall not hearken unto the words of that prophet or dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God testeth you. To know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him. Keep his commandments and obey his voice. And you shall serve him and cleave unto him. So that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death because he has spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God.

Now, how do they do that? Simply by offering you supernatural information and help while they ignore the true revelation of God in Jesus Christ. People say to me, "What's the matter with going to a fortune teller if he warns me of things that I should avoid?" And I find out that what he said was true because you're seeking help from the wrong source. And by his interesting information that he passes on to you, you will begin to become dependent upon it instead of upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And so you will be distracted away from the things of God.

All right, Deuteronomy chapter 18, verses 9 to 19. Promise of God, or the instructions of God concerning the children of Israel. When thou art come into the land which the Lord your God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through fire, or use divination, or an enchanter, or an observer of times. That's astrology.

Did you hear that? If you have ever sought supernatural help, as I did, supernatural experience or information as I did from some other source than God, in the mind of God when I was doing that, and in the mind of God when you are doing it, you are considered an abominable thing in the sight of Almighty God. All these who do these things are considered abominations in the sight of God.

All right, 1 Chronicles, chapter 10, verse 13 to 14. This happens to talk about what happened to Saul, King Saul in the Old Testament, who, because he disobeyed God, God withdrew his spirit from him, and he had repented of ever having made him king over Israel. But Saul had become used to having supernatural help. So when he couldn't hear from God directly, or through the prophets, or through Samuel anymore, what did he go? Where did he go? He went to the witch at Endor. He sought supernatural help from the wrong realm. And because of it, God... condemned him to death.

This is what this scripture says. So Saul died for his transgression, which he committed against the Lord, even against the word of the Lord, which he kept not, and also for asking counsel of a medium to inquire of her and inquired not of the Lord. Therefore he slew him and turned the kingdom into David, the son of Jesse.

And how did it happen? It happened that Saul, going to the witch of Endor, picked up a suicide demon. And then when he was wounded in battle, that suicide demon forced him to fall on his own sword to take his own life. And I tell you, people, I've dealt with people time and again who were troubled by suicidal tendencies.

And in counseling with them, I found it happened time and again that the depression which first preceded the spiritual tendency towards suicide, the demonic tendency towards suicide, the depression which first came, came many and many a time right after they started playing with horoscopes, or going to a fortune teller, or seeking help from a medium.

I was in New Zealand a few months ago and talking to a young minister who was a chaplain in a hospital in New Zealand. And he had talked to and witnessed two in one, a woman who was in there for an attempt to commit suicide. She'd slashed her wrist. And he gained her confidence through the days of counseling and witnessed her about Jesus Christ, led her to the Lord, and then proceeded to try to minister deliverance to her.

And he asked her if she'd ever been involved in any of this kind of thing, because he knew enough about deliverance to know the dangers. And she said, yes, I... About a year and a half ago, I started going to the fortune teller to get help. And then the minister asked her very gently, Sister, when did the depression and the suicidal tendencies first appear in your life?

And she thought for a minute, and then her mouth fell open. She said, Why? Right after, I started going to the medium. And after, I started going to the fortune teller. And the minister was able to counsel with her that there was where she picked up her spirit of suicide, and she was delivered.

But what exposed her to it? Psychic phenomenon, seeking help from the wrong source.

Isaiah chapter 47, verses 9 through 14, God pronouncing judgment upon the children of Israel for their disobedience, and what that judgment's going to be and why it's come upon them. But these two things shall come to thee in a moment, in one day, the loss of children and widowhood.

They shall come upon thee in their perfection. Now, this is the reason for the judgment of God upon the children of Israel. They shall come upon thee in their perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries and for the great abundance of thine enchantments. For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness, thou hast said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee.

What wisdom and what knowledge? That they picked up from supernatural psychic sources. And what did it do to the children of Israel? Put them into a spirit of perversion.

And then God goes on to taunt through the prophet Isaiah to taunt the children of Israel and to show them how they will not be able to escape this. He says, Stand now with thine enchantments and with the multitude of thy sorceries in which thou hast labored from thy youth. If so be, thou shalt be able to profit. If so, 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 from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be like stubble, the fire shall burn them, and they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame.

So once again, God is unremitting in his judgment against these things and against people who practice them, and also states the inability of any person who's delving in this really to stave off the judgment of God.

There are many in the New Testament, too. We'll only mention one or two. Mark 13, Jesus warning against the very kind of things that are happening in our day, in the end times. This is a part of his description of things that are going to be happening in the last days.

Mark 13, 21 to 23, And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ. or lo, he is there, believe him not. For false Christ and false prophet shall arise and shall show signs and wonders to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect. But take heed, behold, I have foretold you all these things.

And so Jesus, out of his own mouth, prophesied the day in which we live, in which there would be such a great abundance of this kind of phenomena taking place.

All right, another example of God's dominion over this thing is found in the 16th chapter of Acts, verses 16 and 18, the story of Paul casting the spirit of divination out of a slave girl. And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, A certain maid, possessed with the spirit of divination, met us, who brought her masters much gain by soothsaying.

The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are servants of the Most High God, who show unto us the way of salvation. And this she did many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee, in the name of Jesus Christ, to come out of her.

And he came out the same hour. All right, you know what this woman had? A fortune-telling spirit, the spirit of divination, it's the same spirit that the Washington Sears, Gene Dixon, operate by. The spirit of divination.

And people all over the country admire that woman for her predictive ability. Now understand, I'm going to talk about her for a couple of minutes now, and I want this understood clearly. I do not criticize that woman for her character or for her conscious religious beliefs. That's not my place to judge.

All I'm saying is that the spirit that operates out of her in terms of revelation is not the Holy Spirit. For a number of reasons, one is those of you who have read the book "A Gift of Prophecy" about her ministry will recall that this ability that she has was discovered when her mother took her to a gypsy fortune teller and had her palm read as a child.

And the gypsy fortune teller said she'd be a great fortune teller and gave her a crystal ball to operate through, and Gene Dixon can see things in that crystal ball, and the one she's had in the years that followed. And yet Mrs. Dixon believes that the power she's operating by is the Holy Spirit, that it is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

That's why the book is called "The Gift of Prophecy." That's a travesty upon the spiritual gifts in the New Testament, to consider that, that kind of gift. It is not. Spiritual gifts that are talked about in the New Testament, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, are gifts given to those whose lives have been submitted to Jesus Christ and who've entered into the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

And they are gifts that have nothing to do with one's natural ability. You are not born with them, neither are they revealed by gypsy fortune tellers who read poems. And neither is it required that you have a crystal ball to make it work. And neither is it required to consult the strong astrological charts and to cast horoscopes in order to make the abilities work.

Something which Jean Dixon does. Now, again, let me say, I do not criticize that woman personally. As far as I know, she has a fine Christian character. She does many fine works. People say, well, how can you find fault with what she's doing? She predicted Kennedy's death, and she's done all these other wonderful things that have helped people.

What's the matter with it? The matter with it is this. She says, in essence, in her theology, that you can fulfill God's plan for your life by discovering your talents and serving your fellow men. That sounds good, humanitarily speaking. There's only one thing wrong with it. It ignores Jesus Christ.

What she's saying is that you can fulfill God's plan for your life while you ignore the Son of Almighty God. And that's why the devil can play such havoc in that kind of otherwise good or helpful kind of ministry. The devil nestles very comfortably in every kind of creed, in every kind of philosophy, in every kind of theology that denies the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He hates that. He hates the cross and he hates the shed blood because that's the source of his defeat. And all of these things in this psychic realm we discover in the deliverance ministry of demonic.

And this is what happened when we read the text about Paul's miracles there in Asia when it was the deliverance ministry you see appeared on the scene. These seven Jewish priests tried to cast out demons, not by their authority, but in the name of the authority of Jesus that Paul preached.

And the demon piped up and said, I know Jesus and I know Paul, but who do you think you are? And the man that was demon-possessed went berserk, beat up these seven brothers, and chased him out of the house.

And it was this comparison between the failure of the Jewish priests at deliverance and Paul's success at deliverance in the name of Jesus that struck fear into the hearts of the people in that part of Asia.

And they came and confessed all that they'd been involved in. And what was it that brought forth? The confession, the deliverance.

Now, let me tell you something about Jean Dixon. I've had the privilege of ministering to people who were directly in connection with her, in close fellowship with her, who themselves came for and received deliverance from evil spirits.

Alright? Again, let me say, I do not criticize that woman personally. As far as I know, she has a fine Christian character. She does many fine works. People say, well, how can you find fault with what she's doing?

She predicted Kennedy's death, and she's done all these other wonderful things that have helped people. What's the matter with it? The matter with it is this. She says, in essence, in her theology, that you can fulfill God's plan for your life by discovering your talents and serving your fellow men.

That sounds good, humanitarily speaking. There's only one thing wrong with it. It ignores Jesus Christ. What she's saying is that you can fulfill God's plan for your life while you ignore the Son of Almighty God.

And that's why the devil can play such havoc in that kind of otherwise good or helpful kind of ministry. The devil nestles very comfortably in every kind of creed, in every kind of philosophy, in every kind of theology that denies the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And they came and confessed all that they'd been involved in. And what was it that brought forth? The confession, the deliverance.

Ministry. And that's what's bringing it forth in the church, the body of Christ today. That's why the devil's getting all stirred up. People who have been involved in all of these filthy practices, filthy in the mind of God, are now being shown by the authority in the name of Jesus Christ the dangerous things they've been involved in.

I tell you, I've talked to many of these demons face to face in the ministry. That'll make a believer out of you when you start talking to a demon face to face. I've had them boast that they were taking people straight to hell. I've had one say to me, "I'm not coming out. I'm taking this girl straight to hell." Hell, hell, hell. Isn't that a pretty word? And then laugh, a real wild laugh, an occult spirit.

Out in California one time we were ministering on this realm and people were being stirred up. The demons were. We were in the time of ministry. And I stopped to say something to people as I was ministering to one girl. I said, "This is an occult spirit of some kind." And I just said to the group, "This is an occult spirit, and I want to remind you that anything supernatural that denies Jesus isn't of God, and that includes all sorts of things like Christian science and divine science and science of mind."

When I said science of mind, it was a demon in this girl. It let out a wretched scream. The girl fell off on the floor and began to thrash around, and we took authority of it and commanded it to come out. A spirit of religious science, a science of mind.

Now, there are many people involved in all this sort of thing. They think it's good. Why? Because it seems to release power in their lives. Don't you forget for a minute that any time you get anything from Satan, he's going to get his pound of flesh.

Corrie ten Boom's little booklet, "Defeated Enemies," which deals with this, tells about a woman who came to a pastor friend of hers with her child for help. And this pastor knew about the deliverance ministry. And the girl was wearing a charm around her neck, a clay-glazed charm. And the minister noticed it looked kind of strange. He said, "Where did your daughter get that?" And the woman said, "Oh, the spiritualist healer gave it to the girl when we went to her for help." She said it would ward off the diseases.

And sure enough, the girl had had some sort of physical problem. I don't remember what it was, but this healer, this psychic healer had prayed for her and the disease had left. But, and then she put this charm around her neck. But then the girl had become subject to fits of depression. And it was because of the depression that the girl, the mother, brought the girl to the preacher.

And the preacher said, "Take that charm off her neck." So the woman took it off with a chain and handed it to the preacher. And the preacher struck it sharply against the desk and broke it. It was a clay-glazed thing. And the woman remonstrated, said, "What did you do that for?" And inside there was a little slip of paper.

Rolled up, and that paper was a prayer addressed to Satan. And the prayer said this: "Satan, keep this girl's body well till her soul burns in hell." Now, what had happened was she went to the spiritualist medium and got delivered from the physical illness. People say, "Oh, these psychic healers, they can heal disease." Sure they can. Devil puts a disease on, he can take it off, but he'll hit you with something else.

And that's what happened with this girl. They prayed then for the girl to be delivered from her demonic oppression. She was set free from that and immediately the physical problem came back. And then later on, she was prayed for in the name of Jesus for healing, and God healed her body. So it isn't a question of it being real. It's a question about the source.

And time and again, we've discovered that the problems come as a result of people getting involved in these things. And yet all over America, people say, "I just play with a Ouija board for fun." I just had my fortune told for fun. I just had my palm read for fun. I just read the horoscopes for fun.

As Brother Dennis Bennett says, you might as well tell me you just climbed into a tiger's cage to count his teeth for fun. That's how harmless it is. The devil is out to destroy you. The thief comes but for to kill and to steal and to destroy. I understand this. God isn't picky and he isn't arbitrary.

He gives these sober warnings all through the scripture against this thing because he knows the deadly danger of this realm. And yet all these years we said, "Ha ha, let's all have a seance." When we first moved down to Florida, our teenage girl, Spirit Baptized, came home from a slumber party and said, "Daddy, I'll never go back there."

They got together and started having a see-on. And me and one other girl got outside in the other room and wouldn't go in. And the woman's mother said, "Go on back in there and play with the other little girl." See, and this sort of thing goes on all over the country.

I read in the paper here a while back of a Baptist church down in the central part of the state of Florida was really packing them out in the young people's on Sunday night because the youth director was holding seances and people were coming in from all over the place. Why? Because clergymen have not understood the danger in these things.

Let me read for you a section of an article out of a newspaper. This is out of the Miami Herald, dated November 22, 1970. There's a community down in the center of Florida that was established by spiritualists a number of years ago. People thought they were just sort of harmless, but there's all kinds of mediums and everything else down in that area around the town.

It's called Casadega. But one of the things, and it's in Belusia County, one of the things that prompted this article was that there began to be all kinds of somber reports about graves being robbed and bodies being disfigured and all kinds of things about witchcraft.

And I want to read just a few excerpts out of this article that was in the Miami Herald. It talked about, well, I'll just read it. It'll take a couple of minutes, but it's worth it.

Deland, Florida. Within a couple hours' drive of the Cape Kennedy Slide Rule and Space Center, the ancient occult art of spiritualism flourishes in this cracker-flavored mid-Florida town. Many a local housewife brings home messages from the spirit world as regularly as groceries.

Casadega, a tiny hamlet of pine needles and moss-bearded oak trees four miles outside Deland, gradually grew since the early 1900s into a winter haven for members of the National Spiritualist Association Church.

Perhaps one in four homes along the winding Casadega streets modestly displays a small shingle such as medium, advice, and consultation. Today, these shy seers are so popular among non-members of the spiritualist church that most are booked with appointments a month or more in advance.

Skeptical customers, including this reporter, have been stunned by the abilities of some spiritualist mediums to peer into their personal histories.

But then the point of the article is about witchcraft. He says, but in the last 18 months, a series of chilling graveyard incidents has convinced some local lawmen that some other Volusian Countians are dabbling in dark shades of the occult.

In a word, Sheriff Ed Duff calls it witchcraft. It seemed insignificant at the time, but the first incident in August 1969, only vaguely remembered by those involved, a graveyard headstone was found in an otherwise deserted Daytona motel.

Nobody could figure out where it came from. And then they go on to say that the next incident was the desecration of a grave in which the body of a 69-year-old woman, buried the previous day, was unearthed from the cemetery, and the head was severed from the body.

The investigation continued until or was put on the shelf for a while. It says that investigation gathered dusk until October 13th when the caretaker at a certain cemetery in Daytona called police and said six graves had been opened during the preceding weekend and police discovered that the skulls had been taken from each body.

And then also it says a survey of Volusia County libraries revealed that roughly 90% of the books on witchcraft have been stolen from the shelves. And the skulls were taken from the two cemeteries during the month that ends in Halloween, a joke to most nowadays, but a major religious event to practicing witches.

Then he goes on to say that fascination with the occult runs deep in this town. Dupst, the sheriff's articulate and witty secretary, says she has been a student of the dark sciences for years. I'm just interested in it, that's all she says.

And the sheriff repeatedly points to a heavenly underlying passage in this woman's copy of the complete book of magic and witchcraft that describes all Hallows even, or Halloween, as a black mass.

But the significant thing to me was, the article's quite lengthy, was two paragraphs in there about the attitude of local clergymen. The Reverend... Minister of the First Church in Deland, recently talked about the distinct possibility that some people who turn beaming smiles up on him at Sunday morning seek out a medium in times of dark personal distress.

None of his parishioners have ever asked his advice about spiritualists, he said, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if some consult mediums regularly. I don't think it's a sin, he said. There are a lot more certain ways to go to hell than seeing a medium in Casadega.

The growing popularity of mysticism among ordinary people may mean that organized religion is not meeting the deep emotional needs of people. The Reverend blank blank of the church in the land finds no clear biblical order against the practice of communicating with spirits of the dead.

My word, no wonder Christian people get involved in things when they have that kind of spiritual leadership or lack of it, you see. And all of these things, as I say, are thoroughly forbidden by God.

And I could keep you here all afternoon giving you incident after incident where we've seen people set free from the dark throes of depression and suicide and all of these other things that come as a result of getting involved in the occult.

I have personally talked with the spirit of witchcraft and have watched it distort the face of a lovely young girl, her body twist over and hunch, her hands and arms become like claws, her face twists and contort and she let out a cackle like a witch that sounds like a soundtrack right off a horror movie.

And when that demon comes out, it comes out screaming like a witch. And this business isn't funny. I mean, God knows what he's doing when he's setting people free, and the devil knows what he's doing when he's putting people in bondage.

And many an innocent person has gotten involved in this through simply unwittingly dabbling in the psychic phenomenon, you see? I want to read a letter.

Some of you have heard this before, but it's good to get it on the tape. I want to read a letter by the wife of a practicing surgeon down in Georgia. She and her husband are both baptized in the Spirit, fine Christians who are now engaged in the deliverance ministry.

They have both themselves been delivered. The husband, Dr. Bob Shumate, who is an eye surgeon, was delivered at a retreat where Derek Prince was ministering. They both got the baptism in the Holy Spirit at that retreat.

And Bob had been suffering from two allergies. Hay fever and the other wheat allergy he couldn't eat any kind of cake or bread had wheat in it and he'd been suffering from those for years and he had sought all kinds of medical help as a doctor he'd prayed as a Christian for healing and he'd not been relieved until under the teaching of Derek Prince he heard that demons that allergies are many times caused by demons and he submitted himself to that ministry was immediately set free both from hay fever and from wheat allergy and has had no trace of the hay fever since and can eat any kind of bread or cake or anything that has sweet in it that he wants to.

His wife, who was also baptized in the Spirit, was not delivered at that time, but she was subsequently through a retreat and partially when I was present and then in a subsequent experience down in Florida.

I went to their town ostensibly to set up a retreat that was going to be held later, and a few months came back through to hold a retreat and conference in Columbus, Georgia. We got into the deliverance ministry. Bob and Jean came in ostensibly to help out in the deliverance ministry, and Jean began to suffer some kind of torment.

It was obvious. Her eyes grew glazed. She began to shake with fear, and it was obvious she was under distress, but she refused ministry at that time.

Until we got to her home that night. And then we got to minister to her after it was quite late, and several spirits were identified, including hate and fear and some other things.

And then the Lord showed her in the middle of her deliverance that she'd gotten in trouble because her father had been dabbling in the occult and had dragged his little daughter around when she was a small child, all sorts of things.

And the father had given her a Ouija board to play with, among other things. She was not completely set free.

Because she was having difficulty reading the Bible. And this will be apparent in the letter in a moment.

So she later came down to Florida, where we were in a meeting like this, and we were having a session in the afternoon about the occult, and suddenly she jumps up and rushes out of the room.

And a few minutes later, when the meeting was over, she came to me, radiant, and said, "I've been delivered. I'll write and tell you about it."

She was having to leave for home. A few days later, she wrote me this letter, which I want to share with you now.

And it's been a blessing to many people. She says:

Dear Don and Alice,

Several days have gone by since we talked by telephone, and I intended to sit down and write the next day, but just didn't get to it. Perhaps it's a good thing because there is so much more to write now than there would have been then.

First of all, though, I want to take time to share a bit of my experience of the past few weeks with you.

For the first time in my life, at least for the first time in my remembrance, I'm able to pray and know that God hears me.

I suppose that sounds foolish to you folks who pray regularly and effectively, but I prayed desperately for so long, hoping God would hear me, but always coming away empty.

I knew something wasn't right, and I tried everything I'd ever heard any minister say a Christian should do, yet I just couldn't seem to contact the Lord the way I wanted to.

Frankly, I had decided that everyone else was in the same boat I was, but just wouldn't admit it, since we all knew what we were supposed to be.

You know, everyone pretending to have something he didn't. I admonished my Sunday school class to be faithful in reading the Bible, but I never did myself.

She and her husband were both teaching in the Southern Baptist Sunday School at that time.

I never did myself, not because I didn't think it was important, but because I couldn't. If I began to read, my eyes saw every word, but when I finished the chapter, I couldn't tell you one word that was on it, and it mystified me because I could read anything else with no difficulty at all.

Let me say parenthetically here, I've ministered to a number of people who were so bound by this kind of problem that the very moment they picked up the Bible, they fell asleep.

I minister to a woman not too far from here who was so bad about this that she'd fall asleep. She'd give the Bible to her husband to read. And when he'd start to read, she'd fall asleep because Satan hates the word of God.

It's the source of his defeat. You may, liberal Christians may not think the Bible is the inspired word of God, but I'll tell you who knows it is. And that's Satan and all the evil spirits that are connected with him.

They hate the word of God. I've had them cry out to me when we would plead the blood or pronounce the word of God against them. They'd cry out and say, "I can't stand to hear about the blood. I can't stand to hear about the word of God. Be quiet."

All right.

She couldn't read because these spirits were keeping her from reading. Or remembering. Sometimes by sheer force of will, I would keep my mind on what I was reading, but the struggle became so intense I just had to give up.

And this happened time after time after time, and I prayed about it, but nothing ever happened, ever happened, and it was mighty discouraging.

A couple of years ago, people used to commend me on my patience with the children, just two lovely little boys.

But I had reached the point where I was impatient with them continually and for no good reason. I cried many times over the way I acted with them in the past year. I actually hated myself for it, but I did it anyway.

I heard something about the deliverance ministry at the conference last March when Bob and I were there. That's where they got the baptism, under Derek Prince's ministry.

And I decided this might be my problem, but I didn't know what to do about it. Then when your family came that night in August and we talked about it here at the house, I knew I needed deliverance, but frankly, I was aghast at the possibility of having to admit it to anyone.

By the end of September, however, I was ready to get help for in that one month.

Things got as bad as I believe they ever were.

Here is the cleaned-up sermon transcription:

And I thought I would choke to death before I could get out of the room. And I coughed like I had never coughed before, not because I was trying to help the spirit out, but because I couldn't stop it. And finally, a blob of clear thick fluid was expelled, and I knew immediately I was free.

This was the key to my difficulty with reading and praying, and I just can't tell you the feeling of real thankfulness and gratitude to the Lord I have every time I pick up the Bible and begin to read. Honestly, I never knew half those things were in the scriptures before. Oh, praise the Lord.

And suddenly I enjoy being with the children again. And being a wife to Bob is a joy again instead of a drudgery. I used to call myself every name in the book for being such a slouchy wife. But call myself what I would, I still felt the same. Poor Bob, how he put up with me the last year, I'll never know.

But I'll let you in on a secret. He really loves me, and I know it now. He used to put his arms around me, and I would cringe inwardly. Then he'd say, "Do you know I love you?" And I used to make some sort of noise to put him off. But sometimes he'd ask again, and then I would really be hard put to come up with an honest answer.

And if I said, well, I don't really know whether you do or not, I could see how it hurt him. So mostly I tried to avoid answering him. But now I know he loves me, and I love him more than I knew it was possible to love him. Pardon me while I leap for joy. Isn't that beautiful?

The torment that came as a result of this child being dragged into occult and psychic practices. And the major one was the demon of a Ouija board that came because she played with that thing when she was a child.

One other scripture I want to call your attention to in 1 Timothy, chapter 4, verse 1. Paul says, "The Spirit expressly says that in the latter days, the last times, some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons." This is what we're living in now.

This is the age where millions of Christians have been deceived and have been drawn away after these enticing practices and these enticing rituals that seem so fascinating. People sometimes say, "How can a Christian have an evil spirit? How can Christians ever get involved in anything like that?"

This is one of the ways. By earnest, born-again Christians getting involved in psychic phenomena. People, I've had them tell me, "Oh, I just went out of curiosity." I was a Christian, and I prayed, and I knew God would protect me.

"Oh, no, he won't." You may as well tell me I'm a Christian and I prayed and then I went and had an affair with my neighbor's wife. I know it's all right. God protected me. Oh, no, he didn't. You're guilty of adultery.

And he didn't protect you when you went seeking after supernatural experience from some other source because the devil has hit you with something and he'll pay, make you pay the price sooner or later.

Practically every person in America has been touched in some way by these psychic things. Eighty-five percent of the daily newspapers in America today carry a daily horoscope. And that's enough in itself to do the job. You start reading the horoscopes, you'll get hit with something.

Out in California, a woman came to me for help. She said, "I have a spirit of gluttony, and I know just when it came in." I said, "How did it happen?" She said, "It came in because I got hooked on horoscopes."

And she said, "I didn't believe in them until my friends began to encourage me to read. And then I found out they worked." And I got so bound that I wouldn't even go to work in the morning if my daily horoscope looked bad. I had my daily horoscope cast.

And if it was looked bad for the day, or if I read it in the book of forecast and my daily chart looked bad, she said, "I'd call in sick." I'd stay home. And one morning when that happened, I was home all blue and was fixing myself breakfast.

And going over my mind about these horoscopes, she said, "Suddenly a compulsion came over me, and I reached out and grabbed a piece of toast with one hand, and I reached out and grabbed another piece with the other hand, and I began to stuff it into my mouth just as fast as I could cram it." I couldn't help myself.

And she said, "I know it's a spirit of gluttony. I know it came in when I got hooked on those horoscopes." I said, "Are you willing to renounce astrology as well as the gluttony?" She said, "Yes."

And she broke down and began to weep. She said, "I'll do anything to get free." So she renounced the occult realm and she renounced the gluttony.

We commanded the spirits to come out. I thought she was going to choke to death before she got free. But praise God, she was free.

She wrote me weeks later, still free and rejoicing in the Lord. And how did it happen? Because she started seeking supernatural help from some other source than Almighty God.

So, there are those of you here whose lives have been touched by what I'm talking about. And you can be set free today if you want to be, but it means you're going to have to be willing to forsake all these things.

Now, I'm not asking that you just take my word for it. I'm asking you to check it out in scriptures for yourself and see that everything that I've shared with you in terms of what God says about it, how unrelenting in his judgment he is.

And it's because he loves us that he's this way. And it's because he loves us that he's pouring out the deliverance ministry again. And people are coming to see the reality between the good and the evil.

As Brother Derek Prince says, "In the last analysis, there's only going to be two groups, the true church and the false church, the bride and the harlot." The bride is going to be comprised of those Christians who move on into all the things of God in the Holy Ghost, including deliverance.

The harlot is going to be those members who deny the move of the Holy Spirit. The churchmen who deny the true charismatic move of the Holy Spirit, they're going to get hooked on the phony, on the counterfeit.

This is why to reject the real is to get hooked on the counterfeit.

Bishop Pike out in California was a good example of this. A man who denied the reality of the charismatic ended up in psychic phenomena and died a tragic death on the deserts of Israel. Why? Because he became involved with the psychic stuff.

So God is here by his spirit to set you free from these things, providing you're willing to renounce all involvement with those things because Jesus Christ came to set the captives free.

And the way many of us get bound is by our involvement with occult and psychic phenomena. So if you want to be free, renounce every kind of supernatural experience except that which you know through the Lord Jesus Christ and the blood of the cross. Amen.