Over the past forty years, our nation has normalized witchcraft, magic, spiritism, and incantations. Our modern-day stories, told through movies, recording artists, Disney, home decorations, literature, and children’s games, range from the fanciful and whimsical to the grotesque and horrific. With Halloween only five days away, occult activity is at high octane. While I do believe that some people innocently participate in costumes and fall festivities, there is also a roiling river of demonic spiritual activity occurring underneath the surface of the Halloween fiesta. Read our article The Occult This Halloween. It’s foolish not to be aware of the increased spiritual warfare in our communities. Here are a few things you should be discerning of and practical steps to stand in God’s authority.
1. Witchcraft is Rebellion
Witchcraft is turning to alternative spiritual sources to get what God wants you to receive from him: power, knowledge, provision, protection, or anything else. God wants to be your good Father who provides what you need. Witchcraft is a substitute. Turning to a fortune teller, zodiac, Ouija board, or spiritist is the opposite of trusting in God, gaining wisdom from his Word, or receiving prophetic guidance from the Holy Spirit. Using forms of Yoga or Eastern Meditation to provide spiritual peace that only Christ promises through his sabbath rest may seem like an innocent substitute. Such choices create spiritual attachments to spiritual entities.
Witchcraft is strictly prohibited in the Scriptures. The word appears seventeen times, always in the strongest language of condemnation.
As an example, Deuteronomy 18:10 says, when you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist, or who consults the dead.
Don’t look to other gods or make compacts with demons when God (YHVH) is the one who provides for you. To read a beautiful list of the ways God provides for you, pray through Psalm 103.
Practical Step: If you’ve participated in things that seem witchcraft-lite, then repent. Ask God to forgive you for idolatry. Break your agreement with lies and lying spirits and surrender your life to God’s provisions and commands. Turn to the Lord’s love, protection, and wisdom.
2. Rebellion is Witchcraft (Especially Sexual Liberation)
The prophet Samuel warned King Saul, “Rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry” (1 Samuel 15:23). Rebellion, pride, and witchcraft draw from the same river: The river of independence and insurrection. The Satanic Bible, written by Anton LaVey in 1969, is not so much a book about worshipping Satan. It’s a book that encourages self-empowerment, individualism, and rebellion against any external moral authority. Listen to a few of his statements: “Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence,” and “Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!” The Satanic agenda is to encourage you to indulge in yourself. Rav Slavic agrees when he writes that man’s greatest temptation is to attempt to dethrone God and enthrone himself as the ultimate arbiter of meaning and value. Balaam knew that cultic spells could not destroy God’s children, but lawlessness and sexual promiscuity could. So he counseled the Moabite King to lead Israel away from exclusive worship of God through the unfettering of their sexual desires. There was a direct correlation between the worship of Baal and liberal, perverse sexual activity.
Be on your guard against anything that causes you to give in to your impulses or relax on God’s moral boundaries. The occult weaponizes the temptations of sexuality against you and diminishes the exclusivity of the family institution. Wicca practices boundaryless sexuality with anything and anyone, which leads to moral confusion. Gratifying carnal desires sounds appealing at first, but it’s a trap; it will enslave you, destroy you, and leave you broken. Peter writes, “abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). And James also warns more broadly, “Each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed” (James 1:14).
Practical Step: Living a disciplined life of fasting, prayer, and surrender is essential to starving our sinful desires and feeding our spiritual appetites in the midst of a culture of rampant self-gratification.
3. Fruit of Witchcraft is Confusion
As we’ve mentioned in our article, Is Spiritual Warfare a Thing?, human disobedience energizes the demonic kingdom. Sin gives the kingdom of rebellion legal permission to operate in our lives and community. The more it operates, the more confused we become. We begin to rationalize or justify our sinful choices with the stamp of human reason. Abortion and “transgender-affirming” care are two examples of how destructive to human life human reasoning can be when detached from God’s guidance. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel” (2 Corinthians 4:4). The further our nation slides into godless rationalism, the more hardened people become to blatantly demonic and destructive evil. Listen to what happened to the Israelites in 2 Kings 17:17, “And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire (that’s a way of saying they burned them alive to a demon-god), and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.” The ultimate fruit of departing from God’s light is that we walk in darkness.
Believers with spiritual discernment will often recognize when there are spiritual curses or cultic covens targeting pastors, churches, or families in the area. Mental and spiritual confusion, as well as division, are often the fruit of demonic activity. You’ll notice your mind being unusually cluttered, or communication with other people getting scrambled or divisive. You can take authority over this confusion by asking for God’s rulership, wisdom, and revelation to shine out of the darkness.
Practical Step: Fill your life with the wisdom from God’s Word (the Bible) by reading regularly. Ask God to thwart the plans of the enemy and provide the clarity of his Spirit that leads us to unity and truth.
4. Spells and Word Curses
Spells and word curses are real. “The tongue has the power of life and death” (Proverbs 18:21). Not only can we destroy people with our words, but our words can partner with rebellious evil spirits. In the same way that we can bless people in Jesus’ name, others can curse people through the power of demons. The occult revels in the power to instigate calamity, control, and fear; it gives them a sense of potency. The fruit of this ministry is destruction, death, calamity, suffering, and pain. If you notice the strange fruit of calamity and destruction suddenly appearing in your life, it may be demonic in origin, and you can take authority over it.
We don’t fear the kingdom of rebellion. First of all, we can claim scriptures like Proverbs 26:2: “Like a fluttering sparrow or a darting swallow, an undeserved curse does not come to rest.” But secondly, we have spiritual authority over the demonic kingdom. We can resist the lawless activity of devils. Colossians 2:15 says that Christ has already “disarmed the powers and authorities.” We can “bind and loose” spiritual activities based on the authority Christ gave us, read Matthew 16:13-18.
5. Pray Over Your House and Kids
As followers of Jesus Christ, we have been purchased with his blood (Revelation 5:9; 1 Peter 1:18-19). Don’t invite darkness into your home by naively participating with evil spirits. Be on your guard against horror, spiritism, and witchcraft.
We don’t have to live in fear of the powers of darkness. Christ’s perfect blood-sacrifice breaks the legal claims that sin, death, and the devil try to assert through their own forms of animal or human sacrifices. The Apostle James wrote, “Resist the devil and he will flee” (James 4:7), and Jesus taught us to pray, “Deliver us from evil.” Demon spirits don’t hold the keys of authority to your life; Jesus Christ does! In Ephesians, it says God has seated us “with (Christ) in the heavenly realms” (2:6), “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion” (1:21). If you are a disciple of Jesus and are living a surrendered life to him, you have the authority to command evil spirits to leave. You have authority over your house and family. You can “bind” evil powers and command spirits to “go” (Luke 9:1). You are God’s deputy enforcer. It’s exactly because the devil fears the power of Christ in you that he’s trying to harass you or lead you astray.
Practical Step: Pray regularly over your house, your family, and yourself. Like the Israelites smearing the Passover Lamb’s blood over the doorposts of their houses, pray that the Blood of Jesus Christ would cover your family and break every curse. Ask for his good Lordship to be enthroned over you and to lead you in the way of salvation. In Jesus’ name!
Tags: truth, wisdom, power, evil, sacrifice, darkness, authority, demons, death, rebellion, blood, obedience, light, devil, temptation, surrender, spiritual warfare, witchcraft, self-gratification, spells
