A few years ago, I had the strangest dream. In this dream, I walked into a room that reminded me of a room you would see at a hospital. It had sterile, white walls and a single bed for patients to lay on. When I walked into the room, I noticed a woman strapped to the bed with others surrounding her. My mentor at the time was also in the room, and she glanced at the woman, and then at me, and asked “Tell me what’s wrong with her.” It felt like I walked into a test where I was about to learn an important lesson. I looked at the woman strapped to the bed. Physically, nothing appeared to be wrong with her. Then, she began to speak to me. She started speaking words of knowledge and prophesying over me. Everything she said was correct, but something still felt off. I looked into her eyes intently, but I wasn’t looking at her. I was looking through her at something else. Sternly, I said “I know you who you are.” As soon as those words left my mouth, she began to screech and writhe within the bed straps. Everything she had spoken was correct. It sounded like typical Christian-sounding prophecy talk, yet all the while, she had a demon that needed to be cast out that didn’t think anyone would notice until I confronted it directly.
I woke up very much confused. There was something my spirit had learned that night, and my head needed to catch up to speed. I thought to myself “How can a demon sound like a Christian and speak things that are true? How is that possible?” If I hadn’t been discerning in the dream, this demon would have gone unnoticed and that woman would have kept on prophesying to other people with no issues. Naturally, it caused me to wonder how such an event could play out in real life, and if the Bible had anything to say about this topic that at the time. I didn’t have the language for it because what I saw seemed so oxymoronic. It was only recently that I realized the term that encompasses the theme of that dream:
Divination.
How is this possible? How is it that something that sounds so right be so wrong? How is it that demons can look and sound like the things of God, but in fact be an assignment from hell itself? As I pondered this dream again, I heard the Holy Spirit begin to invade my thoughts and answer those questions. A flood of scriptures began to come to mind, and what started as a mere dream several years ago became a crucial lesson in discernment that I now get to teach and share with my readers.
The Battle of the Gods
One of the first examples of this can be found in the story of the Exodus. Since birth, Moses was destined to endure the arduous task of delivering God’s chosen nation out of the hands of the Egyptians, leading them through the wilderness, becoming a mediator of the old covenant through the Ten Commandments, and bringing them to the edge of the promised land. However, after God’s people had been enslaved by the Egyptians for 400 years, they couldn’t simply walk away from slavery. They had to be radically delivered by supernatural acts of God and through the mouth of His prophet at the time, Moses.
Armed with detailed instructions from the Lord, Moses and his brother Aaron came to Pharaoh’s court to command him to let Israel go, and as a sign to them, it says “… Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent” (Exodus 7:10). For most, seeing a rod turn into a slithering serpent would be ample proof that the Lord sent them with this message. However, as we can see from the plethora of ancient Egyptian artifacts, these were a very spiritual people with many gods and goddesses. In fact, Pharaohs were seen as an embodiment of one of their many gods. Being demonically empowered, they didn’t bat an eye when this strange sign happened right before their eyes, and we know this because the next verse says “But Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers; so the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments. For every man threw down his rod, and they became serpents” (Exodus 7:11-12). Here we see that both God’s sent ones and Pharaoh’s were able to perform the exact same sign. This pattern continues as God instructs Moses to strike the river with his rod to turn it into blood, then he instructed him to stretch out his hand over the river to usher in the frog plague, and each time, it says the magicians were able to do likewise with their enchantments, until they realized their magic could only go so far and later admitted to Pharaoh “This is the finger of God” (Exodus 8:19), and so they were eventually overpowered, despite their many sorceries and enchantments.
What I want to draw attention to in this scenario is the fact that these magicians were able to perform many of the same signs that Moses and Aaron performed despite these magicians being empowered by something or someone other than the Most High God. If you were a spectator in this showdown between light and darkness, would your eyes deceive you? If after having seen Aaron’s rod turn to a snake and then the magicians’ rods also turn to snakes, would your faith be shaken? Thankfully, despite Moses’s inner struggle of feeling unworthy to complete this task, he continued to trust the Lord against all odds, and because he remained attentive to the Lord’s instructions, he eventually saw the salvation of a nation from which would later come the Messiah. Not letting himself be distracted by counterfeits, he pressed on until the point of victory that the Lord promised him in the beginning.
Paul vs The Spirit of Divination
We see another example of this clash between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light in the book of Acts. Jesus resurrected and went to be with The Father. The Holy Spirit was unleashed. Signs, wonders, and miracles began to break out with the preaching of the gospel starting in Jerusalem and spreading to surrounding regions, including the extremely pagan Rome where, similar to Egypt, many gods and goddesses were worshipped. There were even some who’s businesses revolved around the people’s religious fervor in worshipping these false gods, producing statues, altars, charms, amulets, and offering predictions of the future by means of divination.
Naturally, when Paul was sent by God into these regions, he began to spiritually bulldoze these idols by preaching and demonstrating the supremacy of the God of Israel. By doing so, he ruffled more than a few feathers, and even more so, sent shockwaves into the demonic realm, announcing that their time was up. In Acts 16, Luke tells the story of the time that they were being harassed by a slave girl who was “possessed with a spirit of divination” (Acts 16:16). He described how as a slave, she would make a size-able profit for her masters by fortune-telling. This means that like a modern-day psychic, palm-reader, or tarot card reader, she would tell people about their futures, and she must have been pretty good at this job, considering how much money she made her masters. Luke describes how as she followed their group for many days, she couldn’t stop saying “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim the way of salvation!” Paul eventually couldn’t take the harassment anymore and said “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her,” so the demon left, and her masters, realizing they couldn’t make a profit anymore, had Paul and the group arrested by Roman authorities and beaten (Acts 16:17-20).
What similarities do you notice between this story and the exodus story? Is it perhaps that just like the magicians could mimic certain signs from God, that the demon of the slave girl was also mimicking something from God? Notice that what this spirit of divination was proclaiming was in fact true. These were men sent by the Most High God to proclaim the way of salvation. However, instead of this truth coming from the Holy Spirit, it came from a spirit of divination. Paul knew that even though what she was saying was true, that she actually had a demon that needed to be cast out so she could be set free. I wonder how someone with less discernment would act in such a situation. Would they recognize that it was a demon to be cast out, or because the demon was speaking the truth of who these men were, would they assume that it’s from God? As believers, we have to be careful to judge the source of the things that we see with our eyes and hear with our ears, as Paul even says that “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). Regardless, we also don’t have to worry, because Jesus tells us that we have the guidance of the Holy Spirit who will guide us into all truth, and that “He does not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will tell you things to come” (John 16:13).
Christian Divination?
Today, we see many voices who try to tell us “the things to come.” There are psychics, witches, astrologers, and sorcerers who have either knowingly or unknowingly tapped into demonic wisdom to tell paying customers their futures. There are even some Christians who unfortunately operate in the same way, who take the Holy Spirit’s gift of prophecy and prophesy out of a place of bitterness, resentment, pride, manipulation, and unforgiveness and end up spewing the enemy’s words into people’s lives. While the gift of prophecy is from the Holy Spirit, we must be careful not to operate in a spirit that is contrary to His will and His ways, and in doing so, turning ourselves over to a spirit of divination who knows how to speak things that are “true” but that aren’t from the Lord.
Simon the Sorcerer
There is much we can learn and apply in the modern prophetic movement through the story of Simon the Sorcerer. What many don’t realize is that even though he’s called “Simon the Sorcerer” he actually turned from sorcery and became a baptized believer in Jesus. Before he was born again, he carried a reputation of astonishing people with his sorceries, so much so, people said “This man is the great power of God” (Acts 8:10). Because of the sorceries he performed, he deceived people into believing that he operated in the power of God before he even witnessed the true power of God that comes from the Holy Spirit. Later, it says that he became a believer when Phillip came to preach the gospel with signs and wonders. The man who was able to astonish people with counterfeit power was now himself amazed at the power the apostles carried. However, even though Simon was a baptized believer, we see that he was still operating in sorcery.
Now a believer but still power-hungry, he offered the apostles money, saying “Give me this power also, that anyone one whom I lay hands may receive the Holy Spirit” (Acts 8:19). Peter, greatly disturbed by these words, said “Your money perish with you, because you thought the gift of God could be purchased with money!” He told Simon he needed to repent because “His heart is not right in the sight of God” because he was “poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity”(Acts 8:20-21).
Many of you might be reading this story realizing that what Simon did was wrong, but you might not have the words as to why it was so wrong. Simon, though a believer in Jesus, was still operating in his old ways of sorcery because he wanted the power of the Holy Spirit, but he didn’t want to submit to the relationship of the Holy Spirit, because doing so would mean that he would not be the center of attention anymore. Also, by him wanting to pay for this power and bypassing relationship, this was reducing what could have been a beautiful friendship with God into vile prostitution, and as such, Peter immediately told Simon to repent for seeing the Holy Spirit this way—in a way that seeks the power of God in order to elevate one’s self for their own selfish gain. On the day of judgement, it will be Christian sorcerers like Simon who tell the Lord all the things they prophesied and all the demons they cast out, yet the Lord will say “I never knew you” (Matthew 7:21-23).
Conclusion
Though the enemy is good at mimicking the things of God, we ought not fear or grow in mistrust of the body of Christ around us. The goal of this post is not to leave you feeling that there is divination and sorcery lurking in every corner. Instead, see the enemy’s clever counterfeits and realize that the counterfeits only point to a greater reality that there is only one Creator. There is only one truth. There is only one Spirit who unites us all through Jesus’s death and resurrection, and there would be no counterfeit (divination) if that which is true (prophecy) didn’t exist. Even though the magicians were able to turn their rods to serpents, Aaron’s rod that turned into a serpent still ate the counterfeit serpents for lunch, and eventually, even those walking in sorcery and divination can’t help but admit that you walk with the the One True God, the Most High.
I pray that we all grow in discernment as the deception around us continues to increase. I pray that our faith remains steadfast, and that we would not despise the gift of prophecy as Paul cautioned the Thessalonians, but instead commit to growing in true prophecy so that the Church would be edified and unbelievers would admit that God is truly among us (1 Corinthians 14:15).
Lastly, I just have to give the Lord thanks for His precious Holy Spirit who helped me write this post, and who empowers us and makes us pure.
Lord, have your way in your church!
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