Tricky Familiar Spirits
Remember
we talked about being able to identify a person who is
working for Satan and has evil angels controlling or helping him? We
learned that unless a person has TOTALLY given ALL their heart over to
Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is living in their heart and they are
seeking to do God’s will and obey Him always, that Satan can work
through them even if they don’t realize it.
Ellen
White tells us in the Spirit of Prophecy writings that many careless
words that we may blurt out, silly talk or foolish joking is used by
Satan to cause people to turn away from wanting to follow Jesus all
the way. Each of us needs to pray that God will be with our mouths and
guard us against unwise talking. (Exodus 4:12)
Today
I want to tell you about a very strange thing that Satan does. You
know that some people who work for Satan and serve him, have evil
angels that tell them secrets so they can tell others. The Bible calls
these angels ‘familiar spirits’. These people are called psychics
or fortune-tellers. In the Bible they were called ‘soothsayers’.
Satan
does this to people sometimes just to make them think they have
special powers or are smarter than others. They may hear a voice in
their mind telling them, or they may see a quick picture flash into
their mind’s eye, that shows them something they did not know about.
Then when they tell a person what they saw, they think the
‘psychic’ has special powers.
We
have to watch out for Satan will try and get a Christian to make close
friends or fall in love with one of his people. He will often give
that person words to speak that causes the Christian to think this
person knows a lot about the Bible and is really interested in the
truth.
They
may show an interest in the Sabbath and admit it is the right day to
keep. They may say things out of the prophecies and talk about the
last day events, and do it in such a way as to make you think they
know all about them.
You
see Satan knows just what kind of talk will cause an Adventist to feel
comfortable and start thinking, “I am sure this person will soon
become an Adventist Christian and it is OK for me to be friends with
them”. Then as the friendship grows, bit-by-bit, the Christian is
led into doing things or taking part in things that he or she knows is
not right. Just ‘little things’ at first, like eating foods they
know the Lord does not want us to eat, or watching or listening to
worldly music or movies.
Often
it will be something that cuts into the hours of the Holy Sabbath.
Your friend announces they want to take you somewhere on the hours of
the Sabbath, and you start thinking you should refuse to go. But then
you feel afraid that this person might not be your friend any more.
Already Satan is weaving his hypnotic net around you and you feel you
must be with this ‘friend’.
Maybe
you do say you don’t want to go with them or have them come to visit
on Sabbath, but the person says, “Well that is the only time I can
come. Don’t you want to be my friend?” And you make a
‘compromise’, something you feel is maybe a bit wrong but mostly
OK. Then you start thinking of reasons why it is really OK. (Satan
helps you think up these reasons!)
Finally you think, “Well, I will do it just this once, but
then I will get a chance and explain to them about the Sabbath and I
won’t do it again.”
But
once you ‘compromise’, you do it more and more until you are doing
things for this person that you would never have done if they had
asked you to at first. If you do try and tell them you want to stop,
they often turn around and say, “Well, if it was all that bad, why
did you come with me the first time?” You can’t answer that and
you feel ashamed.
By
now Satan has caused you to care more about what this ‘friend’
wants and thinks then about what Jesus wants and thinks. One thing
these decoy ‘friends’ always do is flatter you and say things that
make you feel they really admire you and think you are very special.
Sometimes they even say they like you because of your religion, of
course you feel so reassured when they say things like that!
Also
Satan weaves a sort of hypnotic spell around you and makes you more
and more dependent on this person’s companionship and without
noticing it, you drift farther away from Jesus and the Bible. If a
Christian friend or relative tries to warn you of your danger at this
point, you will feel angry and tell them to mind their own business.
Once
Satan gets you compromising on even a ‘little’ thing, he really
has you, as God’s angels have to back off a bit and can’t fully
protect anyone who is disobeying God, especially when they know
better.
I
want to tell you a strange happening I know about. A Christian lady
met a man who was not a Christian. But as she talked to him he seemed
to be really interested in prophetic history and also in health. This
lady was having a hard life and this man seemed to be interested in
helping her financially as well as interested in health and prophecy
too.
It
was so interesting to her to talk with him. Then he offered to show
her reflexology and do treatments on her feet to help her health
condition. They seemed to help and then more and more spiritualistic
practices came into their relationship.
Now
the interesting thing is that later on, when she had become much more
involved with this man than she ever should have been, and she had
compromised on just about everything, she asked him one day where and
when he had learned the reflexology. He just looked at her and
shrugged his shoulders as if he had no idea what she was talking
about. He had NOT ever studied and learned it! Obviously it was
something that the evil angels that controlled this man just gave to
him at the time. You would have thought he was an expert!
I
know of another case where a person who was clearly insane, began
talking about the last days prophetic events as if he were a long-time
student of Bible prophecy. Clearly it was the fallen angels speaking
through this person.
I
want you young people to know that Satan KNOWS prophecy; he KNOWS the
Bible cover to cover; he KNOWS all kinds of health tricks and the true
health stuff too. Don’t ever allow yourself to compromise even the
teensiest bit of truth to stay friends with someone, thinking you can
later teach them, and it will be OK.
IF
someone really wants to learn Bible or health truth, then get someone
to help you, and set up a plan and study with him or her, or arrange a
group meeting they can attend. If they quickly loose interest or say
something like, “Oh, I would really be happier if you would just
teach me yourself.” Tell them no, you can’t do this.
If they are really interested in the knowledge they will agree
to study with others. If not, they are interested in YOU; don’t be
flattered, Satan is moving in on you! Turn around and get out of the
situation fast and don’t even talk to them alone again.
If
you are a young lady, don’t study alone with a man; if you are a
young man, don’t study alone with a lady. Never forget that Satan
can feed these people just what he knows you want to hear. Don’t
take even one step in compromise and you will avoid being trapped by
Satan and ending up in much misery.
Continued =^..^=
COUNTERFEITS - 8
Devils go to Church
What
if we find spiritualist-type things being done in our churches, and
even our ministers are involved? Is it OK then? After all, would they
not use the ‘good’ parts of the practice and not the bad parts? Friends,
if you find this stuff in the church, then warn others and leave;
fast! You are in greater danger than if you were seeing a ‘New
Age’ show. But surely, you say, these things are not in the
church?
At
a church pot-luck, an Adventist in ‘good standing’ sits down to
his meal and pulls a ‘pendulum’ (a piece of chain with a little
weight of some kind on the end) from his pocket and holds it over the
food. By watching the movement of this pendulum, he says he can tell
if the food is nutritious or not.
Is
this from God?
A
few years ago, a General Conference officer offered an interesting
service to missions. If they needed to drill a well to find water,
they would send him a map and he would take a pendulum and hold it
over the map. Then by watching the action of the little weight, he
would make a mark on the map and send it back to the people in the
mission field. They would drill their well, and yes, they would find
water.
Was
this from God?
In
western North America an Adventist man takes a funny black box with
dials and adjusts and sets it to send healing power to a relative
hundreds of miles away. The relative claims to receive the healing
power. (but dies anyway).
Is
the ‘power’ from God?
A
leading SDA minister stands in front of a large group of ministers and
church workers and teaches them how to use transcendental meditation
and teach their church goers to ‘visualize’ Jesus and then talk to
what their mind sees AND listen to ‘his’ answers and use them to
direct their lives. When one person is concerned and asks if this is
right, he assures that God would protect them from any harm.
Will
God protect this?
Another
Adventist minister tells a grieving father to ‘visualize’ his dead
son and then talk to him and listen to what he says.
Should
we ‘talk’ to the dead?
Again
an SDA family uses the ‘pendulum’ to test their fruit and
vegetables, if the pendulum doesn’t act right they throw the food
away.
Is
God guiding that pendulum?
In
an Adventist church in the USA, a ‘pastor’ preaches to his church
on Sabbath; on Sunday the same ‘pastor’ puts on martial arts
clothing and teaches martial arts in the church.
Does
God bless heathen martial arts classes because they are in the church?
In
an Adventist hospital, a young Adventist teaches people to sit in a
‘lotus’ position and gaze at a lighted candle to ‘calm the
nerves and expand the mind’. At the same classes Yoga positions
imitating the ‘great serpent’ are taught for exercise.
Does
God bless such exercise?
At
a camp meeting, an Adventist ‘minister’ dresses up as a magician
and does ‘tricks’ in the meetings.
Is
God in ‘magic’ shows?
In
many churches people kneel in groups while a minister walks around
during the prayer session and places his hands on the heads of various
ones. Is this Biblical? When we pray, does God only send our blessing
through a ‘minister’? What if the ‘minister’ doesn’t like
us?
Friends,
I could go on and on all day; the bottom line is this: YES!
Spiritualism IS among Adventists! NO! God never uses heathen, occult
methods to do His work! You can never do good by using the devil’s
devices.
Does
God say, “Well it is only bad if heathen do it, it is OK if you
Adventists do it”? Israel was destroyed because they learned the
ways of the heathen and practiced those wicked things in their own
‘churches’.
If
God hates the ways of the heathen, He hates them many times more when
people who claim to follow Him do them! And Satan? Well he has a
carnival!!
-
RETURN TO TOC
-
TEMCAT'S
STUDY
