Common ones are pendulum swinging, Ouija boards, just putting the Ouija board out. When a person puts the board out, and puts the letters down there, and starts to move the glass, they actually connect with a spirit, and it's the spirit gives the thing power. Now they're communicating with an evil spirit. God says this is detestable to Him, because He's made us for intimacy with Himself. It's like someone that you love going off and having another lover, and God grieves in His heart over this, and there are very serious consequences for occult involvement. So let's read in Deuteronomy 18, Verse 9; When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, don't learn the abominations of the nations. Then He lists them: there'll be not found among you who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire. The modern equivalent of that, passing a child through the fire was offering your children up to Molech, God of brass that was - they filled it up with fire and they put their children, living children, into this idol to kill them. The modern equivalent of that would be abortion.
There will not be found any among you who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire, anyone who practices witchcraft, a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, one who conjures spells, a medium, a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead, holds a séance, calls up the spirits of the dead, acts as a medium or a channel for the dead. We would call them today psychics, and you find again very commonly psychic hotlines and so on, so all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord. Nothing could be clearer. This is evil to do these things, and when you do it, you end up engaging evil spirits. Now when you get into different nations you'll find the further you get away from civilisation, the more occultism becomes very powerful. So in the areas of Indonesia we've come across major stuff with people who practice this demonic realm, and their power is very real, for example in the Bible the sorcerers in Egypt could change a stick into a snake, just like Moses did. Now that's scary. Have a think about that - someone throws a stick down, it turns into a snake. That's a major power dimension.
One of the challenges the church is facing, is the ability to arise without fear in the face of all of this, and learn how to move in the spirit, and bring heaven to earth, and confront the demonic realm. See, people are drawn there, because they see the church has no power. No matter how you dress it up, no matter how well it looks, or how well it's managed, people need the substance of God. They need to experience God's power in their life, and in the absence of that, they turn and turn into all these kinds of things, so there are whole ranges of aspects to this of course. All forms of fortune-telling bring people into connection with demons. Divination is seeking for hidden knowledge, hidden information, secret information. All forms of sorcery - sorcery's trying to gain power over people, cursing them, doing spells, magic, those kinds of things.
Idolatry is a significant part of this. Idolatry is the bowing down, and coming into, yielding into, spirits that lie behind the idol. In 1 Corinthians it tells us, the idol is nothing, but when you bow down and make offerings to it, you are coming into agreement to an evil spirit occupying the idol, and so wherever there is idolatry openly practised, you'll notice one, they bow down, a sign of reverence and yielding to the demon that's in that place, in that idol; secondly, they make an offering, which is a form of trading, I give you this offering in return for protection, or power, or provision of some kind. So always there's a form of trading goes on; I give you this, you give me something back, but when you deal with the devil, you always end up the loser. You always end up the loser. I remember a person that we ministered to up in Malaysia, and she'd got involved with demonic spirits to bless her business, and for a season her business prospered and she became immensely wealthy.
Then one day the demon manifested to her, and said it's time to pay. She said what do you want? He said I want your eldest son, and she could not believe - I mean she was just grief stricken. She tried every way that she could bargain, but she'd already received - she'd traded. She'd received the benefits, financially, of trading with the demon, and now she had to pay the price, so there was a tragic car accident. Her son was lost, and this happened to both her sons, so she was devastated and you can imagine that all the financial gain, through trading with the demon, was overtaken completely by the shock and the grief that she had lost her children, because she'd given her life into trading with a spirit. So there's always a price to pay, always a price to pay, and it's more than you think, always more than you think. Yeah, okay? So idolatry opens the doorway for demons. In the west of course, freemasonry's a big problem in that area, so when you look in the New Testament, you'll find there were encounters with people with sorcery and divination recorded in the Bible.