Now remember, depend on the Holy Spirit to guide you. Don’t worry about trying to get the exact wording right, or you’ll focus on methods rather than the flow of the Spirit. So that’s one major doorway of entry, and it’s a very common one.
2.) Another common one is occult involvement. In Deuteronomy 18: 9 – 13, ““When you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the LORD, and because of these abominations, the LORD your God drives them out from before you. You shall be blameless before the LORD your God.”
People have a fascination, or a fear, of the spirit world. Today, the media are invading the generation of young people, with supernatural videos and movies and all kinds of things like that. There is a generation arising hungry for the supernatural, and there’s a generation existing, that’s afraid of the supernatural.
In every culture you go, people are aware of a hidden spirit world; and people reach out into that spirit world, hoping for usually one of three things, or more. They reach out for protection, because they’re afraid of the evil spirits; they make offerings to them, not realising that when they make the offering, they’re now submitting and trading with the demon. So when a person makes any offering to an idol, or any kind of sacrifice to an evil spirit, it is now trading with a demon, and the demon has legal access to their life. They have done a trade. Trading is an agreement. The moment a person bows to an idol, or makes an offering, it has come into agreement with an evil spirit.
Usually it’s for protection; or it can be for provision – blessing on life and finances; or it’s to get power over their enemies. It doesn’t matter what culture you go into, you will find people involved in the spirit world.
The major branches of the occult are twofold. 1) Divination. Divination is another word for fortune telling. Chinese love fortune telling, they love it! When they become Christians, they want to have a Christian fortune-teller: “Please come and prophesy for me.”
So fortune-telling is reaching to the spirit world for guidance. How accurate is that guidance? The reality is that the spirit world is very highly connected - it’s like there’s a demonic internet. They can connect and communicate. So when you reach into the spirit world, you do not connect with a ghost of an uncle, or father, or mother. The Bible says it is appointed to man once to die; after that, judgement.
So people connect with a familiar spirit -a spirit which can give information about the family which is accurate. Because spirits observe people, they’re aware of what they do; and if you consult someone who’s connected to an evil spirit, you can receive information about your family which may be quite accurate; but in doing so, you come under the influence of the spirit. You’ve invited it now to speak into your life.
Evil spirits do not know your future - it is hidden from them. Some aspects of your life are open to them, but they see things God is bringing to you, and they try to disrupt that. If a person goes to a fortune-teller, and listen to the words, literally what they’re doing is agreeing with a demon, and it then becomes empowered to manipulate their circumstances. It becomes addictive, to the point where people can’t make major decisions without consulting the fortune-teller. Today they call those people ‘psychics’, and they have these psychic hotlines, but it’s actually a familiar spirit working with the person.