In this episode of The Sound of Faith, Sharon Knotts delves into the world of familiar spirits and psychic mediums. She explores the historical and biblical warnings against these seemingly innocent practices, highlighting their potential to connect individuals to the demonic realm. Through references to both Old Testament scripture and present-day occurrences, Sharon outlines the dangers that stem from engaging with mediums and psychic practices.
Greetings, friends and new listeners, and welcome to The Sound of Faith. I’m Sharon Knotts, thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Today’s message, Familiar Spirits and Psychic Mediums, is the second in the five-part series, Spirits, Angels, and Demons. The phenomena of psychic mediums, fortune tellers, and witchcraft has become popular in America, presenting itself as harmless, even helpful and entertaining. But the Bible contains strong warnings against these. Far from harmless, they are demonic spirits that open the door to evil and danger to those who seek them out. Become informed in familiar spirits and psychic mediums. Last week we ministered on the subject of… Ministering spirits versus hindering spirits. Amen? And so this morning we’re going to minister on familiar spirits. If you’d like to turn with me in the scriptures, we’re going to begin in the book of Leviticus, the 19th chapter. Leviticus 19, and looking at verse 31. regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God. And in this particular chapter, I find it so interesting that every time that God issues a prohibition of some kind, he always answers and ends it by saying, I am the Lord your God. He’ll go on and say, the next thing thou shall not do. And he always says, I am the Lord your God. So having the correct perspective and understanding who God is, Amen? The song that we just sang, I want to add a verse to it. You are the only God. Amen? You’re not only mighty and awesome and holy, you’re the only God. So having that right perspective that he is the Lord God, when he commands us something, then we need to obey it. Amen? So he said, don’t regard them that have familiar spirits and don’t seek after wizards. Look at chapter 20, verse 6. And the soul that turns after such as have familiar spirits and after wizards to go a-whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul and will cut him off from among his people. Look at verse 27, chapter 20, verse 27. So we see here that God clearly prohibits going to those who have a familiar spirit or to wizards. Now, the familiar spirit… refers to those who pretend to be in contact with the spirits of the dead. And I say pretend because they are not in contact with the dead. Amen? Amen. whether they died in Christ or didn’t die in Christ, whether they died a believer or an unbeliever, they are not contacting the dead. Amen? And so the word wizard means knowing one. God said the soul are the persons that go and seek after such as have a familiar spirit. He says, I will cut them off. And you’ve got to understand that this terminology in the Old Testament meant to execute them. It meant to kill them. It’s pretty serious, isn’t it? And he says, in fact, he gave the style, the mode of execution. Stone them with stones. Amen? If someone is a wizard or is someone who works with a familiar spirit. All right, let’s turn to Deuteronomy 18. Deuteronomy 18 and read a couple verses there. Verse 10 says, There shall not be found among you anyone that makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire. I taught this when we spoke on the subject of abortion. We told you how that this meant to sacrifice their children on that brass god, Moloch, who had the fire in his belly. Okay, let’s read on then. or that uses divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee.” So let’s look at what’s going on here. What are we talking about familiar spirits and enchanters, etc.? Well, first of all, those who are called observer of times are those who use astrology, those who use horoscopes. And fortune tellers. You know, people may think it’s just a cute little harmless thing that they have to look in the newspaper every day or now online people do it. See what their horoscope says. And you may think, well, you know, I just do it. I know it’s not true, but I just… If it’s not true, why do you look at it? If it’s not true, why do you bother with it? There’s something in you that wants to seek that out. Amen? And what can seem to start at such a harmless little thing, you don’t know the doors that it can open up to, to the demonic world, and can put you in contact with spirits. The very least of could be a spirit of fear. At the very least. Amen? And it can go on much more serious than that. Amen? You know, you don’t see it that much anymore because of the Internet, but I can remember back, I think it was like in the 70s and 80s, you know, the commercials were always these hotlines for a psychic. Call 1-800-PSYCHIC, you know? And, you know, people were doing it like crazy. And, of course, it wasn’t cheap either because they charged you by the minute. That’s right. And once you get hooked, you’re going to keep calling back. Amen? And so God, he absolutely forbids this. He says, no, you don’t consult astrology. You know, a lot of people say, what’s your sign? What sign are you? Are you a Leo? Are you a Capricorn or whatever? I see Christians posting what sign they are. I’m under the sign of the cross. Amen? Amen. That’s my sign. This is my sign, the sign of the cross. And you might say, and I see Christians even post and say, you know, this is, if you’re under this sign, this is what your personality is going to be like. And people say, that’s true. That’s true. Oh, that’s me. That’s me. It’s absolutely ridiculous. You could see yourself in all 12 signs if you want to be, you know, tell the truth. You know, there’s a little bit of you in all of those things. What does that mean? It says we’re all human beings and we share like things. And the stars and the planets have nothing to do with it. Amen. Amen? Nothing whatsoever to do with it. And so God absolutely forbid it. Now, an enchanter. How many saw the word enchanter there? This is very serious. Enchanter means to divine by means of a serpent. In Hebrew, the word for serpent is nakash. And it has a… Now, nakash is a noun. Obviously, snake is a noun. Serpent is a noun. But it has a verb form. And the verb form means to practice enchantments. And it’s linked to the idea of to whisper. Many pagan cultures have, as part of their worship, they have snakes and serpents. Many do. Amen? Amen. You know ancient Egypt, what was their emblem? Their emblem was a cobra. Amen? You saw on their crowns they would have the head of the cobra. Amen? And even looking around the world in Australia, the Aborigines, which were the native people of that country before the English and such got there. Amen? They had snakes in their worship. In South America, in our hemisphere, there are many myths and many things that deal with snakes as part of their worship. The Aztecs, which are some of the original native people of South America, they had a god that was a feathered serpent. India, who has millions of gods, millions of gods, and of their top three gods out of millions, one of them is the cobra. And the Hindi word for serpent is nag. And when India became an independent nation, part of what their meeting place was for their government officials, they called the nagor, the meeting place, but it had the name of the serpent because they believed that they got power and wisdom and understanding from the serpent. Amen? Amen. And we can see how it goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Witch, what is a witch? Now in the Bible times, a witch could be male or female, but today we basically understand a witch as being a female, amen? But it’s someone who casts spells. And the word charmer specifically means to cast spells, listen to this, by taking different colors of thread and tying them in knots. Now I don’t understand, I didn’t bother to get into the details because frankly I really don’t care. But suffice it to say they divine by taking brightly colored threads and tying them in knots. Hence came the word to be spellbound. That’s the origin of that word, to be spellbound with the knots, tying the knots, binding the knots and tying them. Amen? And then what is a necromancer? That means, necros means death. How many know that’s a medical term we see in medicine? You know, if you have necrosis, if you had a surgery of some kind, and they say, uh-oh, necrosis is setting in, that means the flesh and the tissue are dying. You know that one horrible disease that we hear about, necrophagitis? We know it as the flesh-eating disease. But hear the word necro in there. So it has to do with death. Amen? So a necromancer is someone who claims to communicate with the dead. which we already know is not possible. It’s impossible to communicate with a dead person. God does not allow it. Amen? He does not allow it whatsoever. Even when the rich man died and went to hell and saw Abraham and the beggar Lazarus afar off, he wanted to be able to get in touch with them and They said, no, there’s a great gulf between the two of you. Amen? And there’s no way. You can’t communicate. You cannot communicate. He said, well, send somebody. Send somebody to tell my brothers so they won’t come here. Amen? Send somebody to tell them about this terrible place. And it would be great if God would let people come out of hell and come tell people about it. In that case, I think it would be a great idea to let somebody come back from the dead who’s in hell. but God does not allow it. And so anyone that claims to be talking to a dead person is a liar. They’re either pretending or they are deceived because they’re working with a demon. And that brings us to familiar spirits. Amen? Familiar spirits. Now look at how the way familiar is spelled. F-A-M-I-L-I-A-R. It sounds friendly, familiar. It comes from the word family. Amen? See there? All you do is take that second I. It was a Y. You change the Y into an I. You want to make it an adjective. So you go from noun family. And to make it an adjective, you put the AR on. And you have familiar spirits. Really sounds friendly. You know what the definition of familiar is? to have intimate knowledge, to be well acquainted with someone, or specifically to pertain to family, someone in the family. That means someone who’s close to you, someone that you know very well, someone you’re well acquainted with and they’re well acquainted with you. Amen? That’s what it means to be familiar. And even outside of your family, you have close friends that you pretty much know everything about them and they know everything about you. You are very familiar with them. Amen? And that’s what it means that these are spirits that are familiar with a person’s family. Amen? They know a person’s family. They tend to attach themselves to families, which we’ll talk about in a moment. And in America today, there is so much psychic spiritualism. And it’s gaining popularity all the time. And at this time of year, these things are very highlighted. There are so many movies that are out that we’ll be playing. You almost can’t find anything on television to watch on the cable stations because it’s all going to be all of these movies that are tied to the occult. Amen? And so in America today, there is a plethora of movies and TV shows about angels and ghosts and witches and wizards and fortune tellers and psychics and mediums. And they’re all presented in a very family-friendly, familiar, harmless way. And that’s exactly how Satan wants them to be presented. Think of all the children’s movies. Think about the most popular children’s movies and books. Harry Potter movies and books. Billions of dollars that writer made from writing all those books and all of those movies that were made from them. Amen? And even Christian families allowed their children a lot of times to read them. And here was their reasoning. My kid never liked to read. I could never get him to read a book until I got him Harry Potter books. And now they love to read, and they won’t put them down, and they can’t wait for the next one to come out. How smart the devil is. How clever he is. Of course we want our children to read and want to read. If you want to raise an intelligent child, a lot of it has to do with their IQ, but so a lot more has to do with their reading comprehension and ability. Amen? A child who loves to read and will read will be far ahead of its peers. Because reading opens you up to a world and takes you places you could never go on your own. You can go around the world by reading books. You can learn so many things, amen, by being able to read. And when you have a kid who doesn’t like to read, it’s a concern. It is a concern. You want to do something to trigger in that kid the desire to read. Amen? Amen. I mean, look at Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon. This brilliant man who’s got a genius mind. He was doing terrible in school. He was failing. He was the butt of the jokes in his class. And, you know, because he read so poorly and couldn’t do anything, you know, he would even make fun of his own self. You know, if you don’t want people to make fun of you, you make fun of yourself. And then that way it looks like it’s all right. But, you know, his mother, who only went to the third grade, his mother only went to the third grade, and I think she got married, Lord, I think like at 13 years old or something. And she made him and his brother, because all they would do was sit and watch television. When they’d get home from school, this mother worked several jobs. And she’d come home, and they would be in front of the TV, in front of the TV. And one day, she turned that television off. She said, that’s it. From now on, you have to read two books a week, and you’ve got to do two book reports. Well, they thought the world had ended. And him and his brother, they were so upset, but she put her foot down, and they had to listen. So you know what they had to do after school? They had to go to the library. And they had to get these books, and they had to write book reports, and they didn’t even realize their mother could not read the book reports. Well, you know what happened, don’t you? a whole world opened up to those two boys, a world they had never, ever thought of, and they became, you know, just voracious readers. And Ben Carson says he began to read all kinds of things. He began to read about geology. He began to read about science. And then when he got to school, it started happening that he knew the answers to questions that nobody else knew. And he went from being the class clown to being the brightest, smartest boy in the class. Amen? All because he learned how to read. And you know, his brother also grew up, I believe, to be an engineer. Both of these boys succeeded very well because their mother insisted that they read. So we want our children to read. But the enemy is going to try… to offer something to them that seems very harmless, enjoyable, entertainment. But it is not just entertainment. Amen? It’s opening the door into the occultic world and the psychic world. Currently, one of the most popular cable TV reality shows It’ll probably, you know, how they have their seasons when they’re off and then they come on with new shows and they do reruns. They probably do to come back on. But one of the most popular ones is of a ordinary housewife in New York who is a medium, a psychic. And she says that she can contact your dead loved ones. Now, she does it in a way to… try to comfort people, make them feel good. And people will come to her who are grieving over their loved one, and they can’t get past that terrible grief. They’re like stuck in that place, and they can’t get over it, and they’re just daily in grief. And so she contacts their loved one for them. she says. And here’s the thing about it. She is so credible. And everybody just like their jaw drops because she can tell them things that the loved one said. That nobody could know. And so that points to, well, she must be talking to them. You know, if she says to you, you know Aunt Lucy? She told me she used to have a cat named Shakespeare. And you’re like, oh my God. She couldn’t possibly know that Aunt Lucy had a cat named Shakespeare. She’s talking to Aunt Lucy. No, she’s not. She’s not talking to that dead person’s spirit. You say, well, then how does she know something? How does she know? She may be talking to a spirit. She is talking to a spirit, but it’s not Aunt Lucy. She’s talking to a familiar spirit. A spirit who is familiar with Aunt Lucy. And familiar with a family. Amen? Demonic powers, they’ve been around before time as we know it written in the Bible. Amen? And these spirits have been around. They observe history. And they attend… they usually will attach themselves to a family from one generation to another generation. Amen? And so she relates these messages, and these people are crying their eyes out, and they’re like, thank you so much. I feel so much better now because your mother said this or your daddy said that. Amen? And so it seems so comforting and soothing to them because now they feel like that their grief has been eased because they had a message from their loved one. This woman is not scary. She’s not weird. She doesn’t say off-the-wall things. She just seems like, you know, your friendly neighbor. She’s got great big blue eyes. And she just seems so normal, amen? And she can give you all these very personal and private details about your loved one. And it seems so innocent. It seems good. It seems like a good thing. She’s comforting people who were stuck in grief. But make no mistake about it. It’s a deadly manifestation of evil that we read the Bible denounces and forbids it and warns of its consequences. It’s just an open door to get someone interested. How many people do you think across this nation that have sat in their living room and watched this take place week after week after week and think to themselves, you know what, I’m going to go find me a medium. I want to talk to my dead loved one. I’m going to find a medium. If she did that for these people, I want to find one. In fact, they have contests on this show. And you can write in or you can go online, I should say. And if you do, you might win the contest, which would mean you would get a private time with this medium. So it gets people wanting to do these things. Amen? Now turn with me in your Bible to Isaiah, the eighth chapter. Isaiah 8. And let’s hear what the prophet spoke under the power and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Isaiah 8, 19. And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards, that peep and that mutter, should not a people seek unto their God for the living to the dead, to the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. This verse here, verse 19, when they go to familiar spirits and wizards that peep and mutter, Peep and mutter. That’s how God describes these demons. That’s how God describes these familiar spirits. Amen? Now, the term peep is not visual. It doesn’t mean to peep. It’s vocal. It means to chirp. So it’s a sound that’s made. And to mutter, the word mutter, what does that mean? It refers to the incantations of the Babylonian and Egyptian rituals to speak magical words, to speak incantations, to speak spells. Amen? And I don’t mean abracadabra either. Amen? I’m not talking about abracadabra. I mean communicating with these spirits. Amen? And so… If you flip over to 29, you’ll get an idea of what I’m trying to say. Chapter 29 and verse 4. Real quick, we’ll read one verse there. Give you an idea of what I’m trying to tell you by peep and mutter. 29 verse 4. And thou shalt be brought down and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shalt be low out of the dust. And thy voice shalt be as one that has a familiar spirit out of the ground, and thy speech shalt whisper out of the dust. Boy, if that’s not a picture of Satan, I don’t know what is. Remember in Genesis, when God cursed the serpent, what did he say? He said, from now on, you’re going to eat the dust. You’re going to crawl on your belly. Amen. From now on, you are going to eat dust. In other words, meaning you are going to crawl on your belly. Now, I don’t have time to go into what the serpent was and whatever, but it indicates that the serpent walked upright, but now you’re going to crawl on your belly. And let me tell you something. Even in the millennial reign, when the wild beast will become tame, when the wolf and the lamb and the lion and the lamb will lie down together and everybody’s going to get along, even then, the Bible says in Isaiah, the 65th chapter, even then, and the serpent shall eat the dust. Amen. Even then, he’s still under the curse because of what he did in deceiving Adam and Eve. Amen? And so what I want you to see is the kind of voice, a familiar spirit, speaks low, like it’s coming up out of the ground. That’s because it’s a demonic spirit. And so what the medium and the psychic says is, oh, they’re coming out of the grave. It’s your loved one. It’s the spirit of your dead loved one speaking to you. But it’s not the spirit of your dead loved one. It is the spirit of that demonic power. That familiar spirit. Amen? And you know, without getting too much off track here, it even became known or to be associated with ventriloquism. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not speaking against ventriloquists who do it for fun because they really can throw their voice and they have a little dummy sitting there, you know, and act like the dummy’s speaking and we all know and it’s funny and it’s cute. I’m not talking about that. What these… Psychics did, in some cases, they would throw their voice to make it seem like that they were speaking to the dead person. In these cases, these are phonies. These are ones pretending. Amen? They don’t care. They want your money. They want to get in your pocketbook. So they are pretending and they would throw their voice to make it sound like a voice was coming from somewhere out of the ground. But there are actual ones who are really working with familiar spirits. Amen? And that’s what he said. You’re going to speak low out of the ground. Now here’s the thing. He said to the law and to the testament, if they don’t speak according to this word, there is no light in them. I don’t want anything from anybody that is not in harmony with the truth of this word. Amen. I don’t care how supernatural it is because it’s supernatural does not mean it’s God. In fact, the fact that it’s supernatural really frightens me because then I know we’re not just dealing with a person who’s trying to pull my leg. We’re dealing with somebody working with demon spirits. Amen? And that is a dangerous thing. He said if they’re not speaking according to this word, and it’s a strong warning, should the living go to the dead? Isn’t that what he said? Should the living people go to dead spirits? When they have a God who is all knowing, they have a God that all you have to do is go to him. He said, if any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all men liberally and abrates not and it shall be given him. Amen. What an eye opening teaching on familiar spirits and psychic mediums. Some of the strongest warnings in scripture pertain to those who seek psychic mediums. God indicted his people. Why do you seek familiar spirits that peep and mutter who claim to speak to the dead? Should you not seek God? People are duped into believing psychics are actually talking to their dead loved ones, often convinced because psychics claim to tell them something the so-called dead person said that they could not possibly know. The truth is familiar spirits attach themselves to families passing from one generation to the next. They know such details because they have observed the families throughout their history. Far from entertaining, these encounters open the door in one’s life to the demonic, and I have personally witnessed the tragedies they have brought to the families of those who sought them. I call these demonic impersonators, as it is spelled, familiar spirits. This message is the second in my five-part series, Spirits, Angels, and Demons, which includes hindering spirits versus ministering spirits, seducing and lying spirits, man-fearing spirits, and bail busters and troublemakers. This album of five CDs can be ordered for a love gift of $25. Request SK185. Mail to Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Or go online to soundoffaith.org where you can also order on MP3s. I strongly urge you to get this powerful series the Holy Spirit has given me. It is thorough but simple and scripturally sound. You will learn much. So order today. Send $25 to P.O. Box 1744. 1-744-BALTIMORE-MARYLAND-21203 Request SK-185 for spirits, angels, and demons. Till next time, this is Sharon Ott saying, Maranatha.
