We have looked at how strongholds develop in our culture when ideas which are untrue and opposed to God’s Truth are embraced by society and accepted. We have looked at the way strongholds develop over our lives as individuals as a result of untruth and lies which have been spoken to us or over us and we have accepted to one degree or another as being true of us. Now I would like to investigate the strongholds which can take hold from the evil world.
God tells us in His Word not to have anything to do with: fortune tellers, spiritualists, necromancers, shamans, mediums, spirit guides, familiar spirits, those who consult the dark world in any way seeking to find answers or direction for themselves in any way at all apart from the God who made us. Yes, that also includes tarot cards, tea leaves, crystals, stones, ouija boards, seances, divining truth from body parts (chicken hearts or livers) and even horoscopes God did not give us the stars to predict our future. He set them in place and named them to make His plan clear to all mankind.. The above list is not meant to be exhaustive. There are many other things which could be added to the list.
Someone may say to you, “Let’s ask the mediums and those who consult the spirits of the dead. With their whisperings and mutterings, they will tell us what to do.” But shouldn’t people ask God for guidance? Should the living seek guidance from the dead? Look to God’s instructions and teachings! People who contradict his word are completely in the dark. [NLT]
When people tell you, “Try out the fortune tellers. Consult the spiritualists. Why not tap into the spirit-world, get in touch with the dead. Tell them, “No, we’re going to study the Scriptures.” People who try the other ways get nowhere—a dead end! [MSG]
Isaiah 8:19-20
I know some of you will react to what I have written above. Some might dismiss all of the above as hocus-pocus nonsense. Others embrace all or some of it as legitimate ways of seeking guidance and direction for your future. But perhaps you draw the line against necromancy or sacrificing an animal or worse yet a child. Believe me it happens in this day and age. I no longer dismiss any of the above approaches I have listed as being hocus pocus. Living among various tribal groups of people over the last forty years I have seen that there is indeed power in these things. Yet I would never embrace any of it as being something that is useful or acceptable. God has made it clear to us that we are to stay away from any and all such practices. It is not nonsense, it is true and it does work. But anything which emanates from the evil world has only one purpose – to rob, kill and destroy. It is not truth, neither is it an alternative option of seeking secret or hidden knowledge. It is evil and to be avoided. Don’t think that you can play with or experiment with those things, they will mess up your life
Permit me to tell you one story before I get on to the explanation of what Portals of Power are, which I gained from being given a video series by George Otis Jnr who wrote the book The Last of the Giants when we returned from Indonesia the first time. It was very helpful in explaining a lot of what we had witnessed there.
How did this old shaman woman gain such accurate information? By seeking the spirits of the ancestor to tell her what had happened and who was to blame. Oh indeed she gained the information she wanted but at what cost both to her and to the people in the village who had asked for her help?
The evil world has access to us when we seek help from the portals or entry points through which the enemy can enter. It can happen via:
- People who act as the intermediary for satan or any of the evil spirits or demons at his command.
- Places which have been set aside for honouring, worshipping or practising demonic rituals or ceremonies.
- Objects which have been used in such ceremonies or knowingly given to the use of satan in ritual.
- Ceremonies, Rituals or Agreements performed or made in seeking the help of the evil one.
These are what the experts call the Portals of Power in the literature.
Oh I am aware that I have written satan with a small s, whom I believe to be a real being, but I refuse to spell his name with a capital letter. It is a practice of mine.
Any encounter you have with this dark side will only end up hurting you in the long run, no matter how right or good it feels while you were doing it. The devil’s plan is always to rob, kill and destroy. I have seen all manner of things over the years which prove to me what God tells us in the Bible about the world of evil is true.
I don’t wish to sensationalize the idea. I am not telling you these things to shock you or titillate you. I am telling you to warn you as God does in the verses in Isaiah 8 and many other places in the Bible. I have encountered many people who in later life have become Christians but are plagued with oppression, evil sensations, strange haunting experience or other weirdness or phenomena from the world of the occult. Invariably it stems from contacts made through one of these Portals of Power. But this topic is dealt with in all sorts of ways now. It is a trendy topic to talk about and to dabble with but the end result is always detrimental to your well-being. Anything good that God does, the devil will try to counterfeit. I have seen such phenomena with my own eyes while ministering to people who wanted help.
Above all don’t rubbish the notion or assign it to the world of wackyness. It is real but the kind of stronghold you definitely don’t want to get caught up in.
Don’t ridicule something you know nothing about or have not experienced to date.
And don’t play with this stuff thinking it’s harmless fun. It is not! Satan will have you in his grip and weave his evil intent around your life without you realising it.
I utterly agree with this… my very first scripture I read as a brand new believer was Isaiah 8v19 and it was such a shock I closed my bible. This was pre-internet days so I needed to find this again and it took about 6 months to find it. I read a lot of other warnings too in my search and I was too new to Christianity to know what a concordance was.
I had been really searching for the truth, not really comprehending where to look or how to look. This had taken years, and in the department of strongholds, I definitely had a few!
Be grateful if you have had the blessing of a Christian heritage and don’t take this blessing lightly.
My biggest annoyance was the treatment of my ceasing to help in a local hospital chapel as a teenager because I was now going to work in that hospital 6 full days a week. The barrage of negative discourse from the chaplain turned me completely away from church and from seeking.
Years later and with a strong scientific background, a friend wanted to introduce me to a spiritual healer, which I dismissed instantly as ‘unprovable rubbish’ and only finally went, to prove it was rubbish and to stop her ‘evangelical ranting’.
What I discovered was actually that the spiritual world was REAL. And this was my portal into evil practices. Except it was all presented as light, good and beneficial. I fell hook, line and sinker because my physical body was healed where I had physical problems. People were nice, kind and caring. In fact the only people who were not, were the Christians I knew who smugly told me I was dealing with the devil, that I was wrong and they were right! They were completely unable to offer me a rational reason for why their way was better than what I was doing. Also, no mention of scripture or invitation to discuss or come to a church service was ever offered to me. This drove me deeper in the opposite direction.
Eventually, I realised by my own searching that this New Age stuff was like a soup of choice ingredients from various religions, because I did recognise a few lines I’ve since realised was scripture. The whole thing is so twisted, so deceptive, so dark.
When finally, an opportunity to ask questions about Christianity came in the form of a bible study in the home of another seeking friend, I grabbed it… mainly to slam questions at them.
Humbled by the first response where I was told, ‘I will not tell you what I think about your question but I will use this book to show you what this book, the Bible, says about your question and then you can decide what to think’ and from then on, my heart burned whenever I read the scripture and it was 5 weeks later that the scales fell off my eyes and the stronghold was broken and I was truly born again.
Funny how the people I then came into contact with for several years were just like me in their attitudes of being sincere to their understanding but SINCERELY DECEIVED. And hence why, I think I am a passionate one-on-one evangelist!
Thankyou Ian for helping us understand how these deceptions can hold people captive, sadly sometimes, for their entire lives.
Thanks Barbara for taking the time to tell me your story. it made me sad to read along the way through your story that you were genuinely seeking to know the truth but it was the Christians who put you off. I love it that someone finally pointed you to the Scriptures to encourage you and others to use the Bible to explain the Bible. That is what I am all about as you know. Berean Insights is built on Acts 17:11 to encourage us to be like the Berean who didn’t take what Paul told at face value but checked it out against the Word of God. What does God say about “the matter”.
It saddens me greatly when Christians and even pastors are the ones who put seekers off because of the things they teach and say. I have just written about this in the latest two Nuggets of A Puzzling Paradox Series #14 and #15 about another heresy that concerns me greatly and lays a burden on people at the wrong time of their lives. There are many paradoxes in the Bible that we have to come to understand. As God tells us His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways. We will look at Paradoxes of the Bible in DB 701 but I will open up the the most amazing paradox in the Bible in the Puzzling Paradox Series and not make you wait for 701.
Thanks for you comments.