In this episode of The Sound of Faith, Sharon Knotts delves into the intriguing yet ominous world of psychic mediums and familiar spirits. As part of the ‘Spirits, Angels, and Demons’ series, learn about the deceptive practices of those who claim to communicate with the dead and the subsequent dangers that accompany such interactions. Sharon emphasizes the importance of discerning truth from deceit through the Word of God, highlighting that these popular phenomena are far from harmless and pose serious spiritual risks.
00:00:06 Introduction and Overview of Familiar Spirits
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. 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. We have this word of God, the whole counsel of God, and I say this without hesitation, that there’s no situation that could arise in your life or my life that there’s not an answer to it in God’s word. Now, there may not be an exact scripture that says something specifically, amen, because we live in modern times, amen. You know, it may not be a scripture in here that says, thou shall not smoke cigarettes. Amen. Because that wasn’t a big problem they had then. But if I read the truth of God’s word, I know that it’s not God’s will for me to smoke cigarettes. Because he said, any man who defiles this temple, him shall the Lord judge. And it’s not a maybe anymore. Cigarettes will kill you. They defile your temple. They defile your body. He said, what, you know you not that your body is the temple of the living God, of the Holy Ghost. And if any man defile the temple, him will God destroy. So that’s all I need to know. Amen. And you know, of course, people, they’ll say, well, you know, you can also do it by eating certain things. Well, you know, if God convicts you about eating certain things, don’t eat them. Amen. And if somebody else is eating them, then let them alone and let God convict them. It’s your body and it’s your temple and you are going to pay the consequences. Amen? And so there’s an answer for everything that you need. Every question that you need is in God’s word. I don’t care how complicated a marital situation can get. It can get so complicated that you’ve got all these, this party and that party. And then now you’ve got this love triangle. Now you’ve got this situation. Oh, now we’ve got these kids. We’ve got those kids. I mean, it’s like, who’s going to figure out this mess? And it’s like it’s overwhelming. But all you have to do is go get line upon line, truth upon truth, scripture upon scripture, and in no time you unravel it all down and you come down to the basic of what God says. And a very complex, complicated situation is laid wide open. Now, people don’t always like what it tells them. I’m not saying you’re going to be happy with it. I’m not going to say that it’s going to be something you want to hear. But if you want to hear the truth, you’ll swallow it. Amen. And obey the truth so that you can do right. It reminds me about when they came back from the Babylonian captivity and they got back into the land with Nehemiah and Ezra and the exiles were coming home. And they realized that while they were in exile in Babylon, the priests, the Levites, the only ones that could serve as priests, as I’ve taught not long ago, that they had begun to marry Babylonian women against what God’s Word said. He said no Israelite was to marry anyone but an Israelite, but certainly not the priests. Amen. Certainly not the priests. And they even had children. And when they got back to Israel, here was the problem. They had these foreign wives and they had these families. And you know what they had to do? It sounds so harsh. It sounds very harsh. But they had disobeyed God’s word. And God wasn’t going to change his word because now they had made a mess by disobeying it and marrying these women and having kids. But they got kids. That doesn’t change God’s word. They had to divorce their wives. Now, I’m sure they had to support them financially. And I’m sure they had to take care of those children. And I’m sure that they would have wanted to raise those children in God’s ways. But they had, in order to serve in the office of priest, they had to obey the Lord and obey God’s word. It was not an easy thing. It was not easy. You can read it yourself. I think it’s in the book of Nehemiah. Amen? So you’ve got to obey God’s word. And the devil is always going to try to offer you a substitute. But he said, if they don’t speak according to this word, it’s because there is no truth in them. There is no light in them. And scripture is abundantly clear. In fact, while we’re not, Isaiah, flip over to chapter 5. Here’s a good verse. You probably know it. You may not know where it is. I’m going to show you where it is.
SPEAKER 1 :
520. 520.
SPEAKER 01 :
520, woe unto them that call evil good and good evil, that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. He said, woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes and prudence in their own sight. Amen? He goes on to give a lot more woes. But let’s look at this. Who call good evil and evil good. I mean, is that happening today? Amen. How many know that that’s exactly what we see today? They call good evil, amen, and evil good. It’s bad enough. It’s bad enough that they call evil good. It’s bad enough that they say, oh, it’s okay to do such and such. It’s okay to do that and make evil okay. But it’s even to me worse when they call good evil. Amen. with the same-sex marriage controversy that we see. Now they’re saying what God calls an abomination, they call it good. They say it’s good for mankind, it’s good for humans, it’s good for everyone. And so do they stop there? That’s what they want to believe, but do they stop there? No! They are not happy that now they have the freedom and the liberty and the legality to have same-sex marriage. They’re not happy with that. Now they want to turn on those… On the good, the people that say, I cannot believe that. I don’t accept that. Amen? And call us haters. And call us evil. And a lot of other things that aren’t very nice. Amen? And so you see, that’s exactly what is happening, what this scripture says. And he says, woe unto them, because God said, what communication has light with darkness? What communion, we read this not long ago, 1 Corinthians 6, 14. What communion has light with darkness? Amen. And you know that light always stands for the truth. And darkness always stands for Satan and the lie. Amen. 1 John 1, 5 says God is light. And in him there is no darkness at all. At all. There’s no mixture. Amen? This Word is truth, and you cannot mix it with something else. Amen? It is the Word of God. This Word is truth, and this Word will bring you into light. It will expose darkness in our lives. It will expose the darkness around us so that we, seeing the darkness, we can repent of the darkness. Amen? Be cleansed from darkness and be filled with light. Amen? But so many people are fooled. They’re fooled because it’s supernatural. They’re fooled because it’s a familiar spirit. Amen? And because it seems nice and pleasant and kind. But that is just the lure on the hook. Amen? They had been around before. since the beginning of time and before. And their master, Satan, he knows history. Amen? We talked last week about the fact that God created them to be ministering spirits, to minister to the heirs of salvation. But those who fell with Satan have now become hindering spirits. Amen? And some have become familiar spirits. They attach themselves to families. They know the family history very well. So they’re able to easily impersonate the dead person. They’re easily able to impersonate what knowledge that they have because of having observed that family. Amen? And let me say this. When that host dies, that spirit doesn’t die. Amen? The demon doesn’t die. When the host dies, the demon just attaches itself to another person. Amen? And very often within the same family. You know, we see it. We see it in families. We see a lot of times, we see a tendency to alcoholism. And you know, of course, they say it’s a sickness and it may have physiological factors. I’m not denying that it does or doesn’t. But the fact is, is there’s also a spirit. There’s a spirit, amen. There’s a spirit that goes along with alcoholism. There’s a spirit that goes along with drug addiction. In addition to the fact that your body can actually crave the drug. Your brain once needs the drug because it’s gotten it so long, amen. But it opens the door for demonic spirits. We see spirits of lust that tend to be in families. We see someone who was lustful and maybe had problems with lust or maybe even was a pedophile or an abuser. And then you see the kids grow up and fall into the same promiscuity. Amen? These are spirits that attach themselves to families. Amen? Now, some of the psychics and some of them, they’re phonies, as I said a moment ago. They speak in generalities. They’re able to judge people by human behavior. Pick up on people’s traits. Pick up on people’s weaknesses. Amen? You know, there are some smart people in the world. They can do that, especially if they know a little bit of psychology. If you talk to a person long enough, you’ll get to figure them out. After a while, they give themselves away. You can pick up when somebody’s got a spirit of fear very easily. You can pick it up. The conversation goes on not too long, and you can pick it up right away. And so… There are some of these that are phonies, but they can do that. You can pick up when somebody’s got a spirit of racism in a very short time. Amen? You can pick up when somebody’s got a spirit of lust in a very short time. They will give themselves away. Amen? You can pick it up. Isn’t that right? And so they’re able to do that. Body language tells them things. Facial expressions. After a while, you know, when you see a certain expression on somebody’s face, you know what it means. You know if it’s a pleasant look. You know if they’re being sneery and snide. You know if they’re saying it in fun. And you know if they’re saying it with a little dig attached to it. You tell that by the facial expression, amen, and the body language. And so they’re able to pick up on this and they’re able to make good assumptions. Not only that, they will let somebody talk. Well, just tell me, tell me about your situation. And they’ll just let them talk and talk. And while they’re talking, that psychic is, oh, okay, I see this situation here. Okay, I got, all right, I see that’s going on right here. Okay, the person tells them all their business, pretty much everything. And so it’s not hard for the psychic to come back and say, okay, this is what I see, what I’m hearing out there. This is what the crystal ball is telling me. When the fact is the person just told him half of it. And they picked up the other half by their facial expressions and by human tendencies and human behavior. Amen. They are adept at leading people on suggestively. If you suggest something to somebody, you can get them to tell you something they weren’t planning on telling you. Amen. And they’re able to do that. And so then they act like they’re so wise and all-knowing, and now they have your answer. And this may be innocent because they are phony, but it can open the door to the demonic. Because there are many that are not phony, and they’re working with familiar spirits. And here’s the thing. They can give a person a negative prediction, right? And you know what that can do to a person? Cause a spirit of fear to jump on them. And because that spirit of fear jumps on them, they begin to think on that thing and think on that thing and dread that thing and worry about that thing. And then that opens the door for the devil to come in and it can be fulfilled. Amen? So when someone tells you something, you know, you might pass them by. It used to be when I would go down here to the flea market, they always have the palm readers and the tarot card readers sitting there, you know. And they’ll kind of give you that look like, come over and I’ll tell you your fortune. I say, I already know my fortune. I already know it. And you know, I noticed this was several years back when we would go down to that flea market. That one woman, she was always set up back in a corner, you know. But when I would go by there, I would look her straight in her eyes. I never dropped my eye like I don’t want to look at you. I’d look her right in her face. And you know, I could see that spirit in her squirm. I could see it squirming. Amen. She didn’t ask me to come. She didn’t point anything to me. Amen. Because the spirit of the evil one knows when he comes up against the Holy Ghost. Amen. But if he comes up against a true child of God who’s full of fear, he can use that to his advantage. He can capitalize on that fear and try to bring you under that fear and tell you some awful thing. Amen. And the devil is a liar. Amen. You shouldn’t even hear it in the first place. But if for some reason you heard it because of the circumstances, you need to say the devil is a liar. The devil is a liar. Amen. because let me tell you something they can hook a person and just give them enough information to want them to come back and get more just give them a little bit so they’ll come back and then they’ll come back because of course every time they come back they’re going to have to get their wallet out so in the natural part of it that person wants to make money But the scary thing is in the spirit, the devil wants to hook somebody and drag them to hell. Amen? I know personally what I’m talking about. My next door neighbors, they don’t live there anymore. Right now the house is, no one’s living in the house. But… His wife lost her mother, and she was so distraught over her mother’s death, she was so grieved that she just seemed like she couldn’t get over it. After a normal time of grieving, she was still stuck there. And so she decided to go to one of these mediums and ask the medium to get in touch with her mother. So the medium… Said she did. And told her things that convinced the woman that it had to be her mother because there’s no way this medium could know this thing. So my neighbor, the husband, was talking to me about it because he was very skeptical about it because he’s skeptical of all things supernatural. even the Bible, even God. He’s just like one of those scoffers. He don’t believe anything supernatural. But he couldn’t figure out how it was that this psychic was able to tell his wife things that this psychic could not possibly know. So as much as he was a skeptic and as much as he didn’t believe in stuff like that, he was starting to be kind of won over because he thought it has to be real in order for her to tell her these things. And so I took the opportunity to put him straight and tell him what a familiar spirit is. Tell him what the Bible says. Tell him how that they work, how that it’s a demonic power. It’s not the spirit of the dead person. It is not your mother-in-law. It’s a demon spirit that knows the history of the family. And so, you know, he said, well, I’m going to tell her that. I’m going to tell her. Well, it wasn’t too long after that, the next thing I heard, he told me, this woman’s going, now his wife had been going somewhere. I don’t know where, going somewhere. But now they were going to have a seance in their family, in their house. Amen. and her other sister was going to come, and cousins and things were all going to come, and right in their house. And let me tell you something. Their house is so close to mine that I can look out the bedroom on the first floor, look out the bedroom window into her dining room window and see what’s on their table, what they’re going to eat. That’s how close it is. And where do you think they were having the seance? at the dining room table. And I thought, oh my, this is getting way too close to my territory. Way too close to my territory. So the day that it was on a Saturday, and sure enough, when I saw that the street was loaded with cars and wasn’t nowhere to park anymore, and people were parking all over the place, I thought, uh-oh, must be the day of the seance. because they were all piling into their house next door. So I went to that window of my bedroom there on the first floor, and I put the shade up, and I looked in there. Now, they had their shades down, of course. Usually the shades would be up, but they had them down. But I knew what was going on in there, and I stood at that window, and I bound the devil, and I prayed against the spirits of darkness, and I rebuked those things. Amen? Amen. Well, I don’t know if she continued to have communication, but she didn’t have any more seances at her house. That much I do know. But you know what? I tried in vain to convince the husband so he would convince the wife how dangerous this was, how risky it was. But they went forward with it anyway. And let me tell you this. Sadly, all kinds of tragedies begin to happen in that family today. unexpected deaths of people that died way too young. Her own sister, her own sister and niece were in a terrible car accident, and the sister was, I would say, almost decapitated. Of course, she died. The girl survived. Her sister wasn’t that old, probably only in her 40s. Amen? And one bad thing after happened, that family, and then finally the husband, the neighbor that I spoke to, He died, and I went to see him, Benny and I went to see him in the hospital up at St. Agnes, and we knew that he was, they knew there was nothing they could do for him. He had had, you know, like his heart was failing, and there was nothing they could do. We went to see him, and it was like the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever gone through as far as visiting people in the hospital. It was so uncomfortable. He was alert. He was wide awake. His eyes were open. He was talking. He was conversing, but he would just jerk. and jerk, and jerk, and get this horrible look on his face. And it just went on and on, and it was, oh, it was awful to stand there and watch it. His whole body, and he would just do this, and he just had this really, the look on his face was very unpleasant. And I was trying to talk to him to, you know, to get him to pray with me, but he was so hard. He was so hard. He was like, ah, I don’t want to hear it. And so I thought, well, you know, I’m going to pray and leave the rest with God. But you know how hard it is when you’re praying and it’s not being received and you’re coming up against demonic power. You feel like you’re smacking yourself back in the face. Amen. So basically it was one of those prayers just to pray and to get out of there. And I thought, what a terrible way. And he died the next day. The next day he died. What a terrible way to go. What a terrible way. Amen? You can’t mess around with the demonic world. Amen? You’re going to pay a terrible consequence. Let’s look right in our own Bibles. Turn to 1 Samuel 28. And we’ll look in our own Bible and see the consequences. Amen? Of fooling around with a familiar spirit. 1 Samuel 28. Let’s look at verse 3. And the Philistines gathered themselves together. Actually, let’s go to verse 3. Now Samuel was dead, that’s the prophet, and all Israel had lamented him and buried him in Ramah, even in his own city. And Saul, now Saul is the first king of Israel, and Saul had put away those that had familiar spirits and wizards out of the land. So when Saul became king, immediately he was on the right foot. He got rid of the wizards and the familiar spirits and the witches. He got rid of them because now up until this time they had been governed by judges. And in the book of Judges, the Bible says every man did what was right in his own eyes. And it was a terrible time of sin and evil and iniquity. So now Saul’s made king and he cleaned house right away. And he got rid of these witches and all these wizards and those who had familiar spirits. Verse 4. And the Philistines gathered themselves together and came and pitched in Shunem. And Saul gathered all Israel together and they pitched in Gilboa. And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines… he was afraid and his heart greatly trembled. And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams nor by Urim nor by prophets. Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that hath the familiar spirit, that I may go to her and inquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath the familiar spirit at Endor. So let’s stop here for a moment. In the beginning of his reign, he got rid of the witches, wizards, and those who had familiar spirits. But now this is near the latter part of his life. And without going into a lot of detail, we know that he disobeyed God because when Samuel told him to wait till he got there and they would offer the Lord a sacrifice, Saul got antsy and he did it without Samuel. Therefore, he overstepped his authority as king and he stepped into the prophet’s office, which he was not to do. Amen. Not only that, God had said through Samuel, tell him when you go up against the enemy, do not spare anyone. Don’t spare any. And he spared Agag the king. And I preached on this in detail in the Amalekites Among Us and showed you how by making that mistake of not getting rid of that king… Before he had a chance to have sexual relations with a maid, a child was conceived. And later, that all was the problem behind the Esther and Mordecai story, amen, when Haman wanted to kill the Jews. So because of this, God no longer was communicating to Saul. Amen? There was no longer any communication. He had disobeyed. Amen? And not done what the Lord had told him to do. And the scripture actually goes on to say that Samuel no longer came to counsel Saul and Saul lost all contact with God and he was tormented daily by demonic spirits that vexed him. You can just look that on your own later in 1 Samuel 16. Now, Samuel’s dead. The prophet’s gone. But even before he died, he did not any longer come and give Saul any more words from God. But now Samuel’s dead. I’m going to assume that as long as Samuel was living, Saul held on to the hope that maybe at one point he could get back into favor with God and Samuel and him could get back together again. But when Samuel was dead, then Saul, he spiraled downward terrible. And now it’s two years later. Amen? And he needs guidance. And God is not giving him any dreams. And God is not allowing him to have a word through Urim and Thummim without going into detail. They would come into the house of the Lord. The priest had these stones. And God would give them messages by that. None of this was available now to him anymore. He had lost all contact with God. And this man… who had gotten rid of the wizards, the witches, and those who had familiar spirits, sent his men out and said, find somebody that has a familiar spirit. 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 SK 185. Amen. Amen. It is thorough but simple and scripturally sound. You will learn much. So order today. Send $25 to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Request SK185 for spirits, angels, and demons. Till next time, this is Sharon Ott saying, Maranatha.
