Don't Touch the Occult

Now, what I want to point out to you is that if you seek for supernatural help and counsel and power from any other being but the true God, you make that being your God. The one to whom you seek for supernatural help and revelation and power is your God.

And these words apply to every person who's involved in that list which I'm going to read to you in a moment. They have had some other god before the true God. They've allowed another god to come before the true God.

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.”

And many people are bowing down and serving alien gods today in the form of horoscopes, Ouija boards, and other such things. They're in this category. And I want us, you, to see the particular judgment that's pronounced upon them if they do not repent.

“For the Lord thy God is a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.”

This can bring a curse, not only upon you, but on the succeeding three generations in your family. It's not any form of sin, it's this particular sin of having some other god.

So, if you have in your background a Christian Science practitioner, somebody that believed in Unity, a fortune teller, a medium, or any of these things, you are quite probably, in some measure, under a curse. And in many cases, your deliverance will not come until you rebuke, in Jesus’ name, the curse that comes from your background. I have proved this conclusively to my own satisfaction in ministering to people. There are times when you cannot get the person delivered simply on the basis of what they are and have done themselves. It's their inheritance, spiritually, coming down to them from someone that crossed the wrong border and gone into the wrong realm.

God says it will be visited upon their children unto the third and fourth generation, and it is. I'm not preaching condemnation. I'm opening your eyes. First of all, if you do it, you're bringing it on your children. Secondly, if your parents or grandparents or great-grandparents did it, you may still be suffering from their judgment. And you've got to learn how to get out from under that judgment. Thank God, the curse is canceled in Christ. But you better know where the curse is, and in many cases, you have to know where it came from.

All right, Exodus 22. Exodus 22, verses 18, 19, and 20.

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Whosoever lieth with a beast sexually shall be put to death. He that sacrificeth unto any other god, save the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed.”

You'll notice the company that the witch is put in. The one that sacrifices to another god or lies sexually with an animal. Not pleasant company to be in.

Before we go any further, let's take these words that are on the blackboard. They're the ones used in the King James Version, and most of them do not have much meaning for modern America. Let's look at them. I'm trying to give you the modern English equivalent of these words so that when you read them in another moment, you'll know what you're reading about. Divination is specifically fortune telling.

Observing times is horoscopes. This is a good week to do business, or whatever it may be. This is observing times, choosing the right time by the study of the heavenly bodies for certain specific courses of action. Astrology or stargazer, that's, of course, astrology. Having a familiar spirit, that's a word for a medium. A medium has a spirit that comes regularly to him, called his guide, or some other word like that. This is old. It's not new. You find it in almost all pagan countries. But in modern America, it's normally called a medium. Necromancy is seeking to the dead for advice and counsel.

A charmer is one who uses charms for protection and so on. In Africa, we discovered, praying with the Africans for salvation, many times you would have to discern that the woman had charms around her waist and tell her to go off and take them away before you could bring her to salvation. None of these things are new. Enchanter is one who uses incantation, or, more generally, music. Music has tremendous power, and Satan often uses it to enslave people.