He says He gives you authority over all the power – that’s the word ‘Dunamis’. So, ‘Dunamis’ is the same word that’s used when it says “you shall receive power”. That word means ‘supernatural ability’. I think it’s important to realise this: that you have legal right over the supernatural ability and demonstrations of the devil; and nothing shall by any means hurt you. That’s a very good scripture to memorise - if you ever get into a deliverance situation which is a little bit intimidating, always remember – nothing shall in any way harm me.
We’re going to look now at the Occult. We’re going to refer to Deuteronomy 18. The Bible is not exactly clear where demonic spirits come from. So, it’s a little bit open to ideas or opinions about this. Some people think that they may be angels who fell. I’m not so sure about that, there’s nothing quite clear on it. The Bible’s not clear where they originate. They’re called ‘evil spirits’. So they’re definitely spirit beings, and they’re definitely evil in their intention.
As an aside, the Bible does tell us, it refers that in Genesis 6, that a certain group of angels abandoned the positioning God gave them, took on a human form, had sexual relationships with women, and that there were offspring off that called Nephilim. The Nephilim were extremely wild and fierce beings. It would seem that they corrupted the Earth. You may wish to search on the internet and find more information about these. Eventually, the destruction was so great that God destroyed the Earth with the flood. If these beings were part angel and part human, it’s quite possible these are the evil spirits that are actually in the Earth now, continuing to attack humans. So, I won’t go down that, it’s a very interesting area to explore. It helps you understand the whole number of things that remain otherwise hidden. So, we won’t worry about that, we’ll just say: there are evil spirits called demons.
What happens is that people in every culture are aware of the spirit world. It appears when you read books apart from the Bible, for example the book of Enoch, that there were a group of angels called watcher-angels who were assigned to instruct men. But the whole group of them abandoned their positions, corrupted the role God gave them, had sexual relationships with women, and began to teach people about the whole occult spirit dimension.
These angels God has held in judgment until the last days. It seems that it’s from the influence of these angels, that all of this teaching around the occult came into the nations, and spread through the Earth. One particular nation that had been filled with all this Occult activity was the land of Canaan. The nations that were in the land of Canaan were deeply involved in the occult; and with it, a whole range of perverse practices.
So in Deuteronomy 18:9, it says: “When you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations.” So God is warning the people that the nation they’re about to go into, the nation of Canaan, was full of activities God calls ‘an abomination’. He’s referring to occult activities. The word occult means this: secret, covered, hidden.
So occult activity is: seeking knowledge or information from the spirit world; or seeking power from the spirit world; or protection from the spirit world. The two main streams of the occult are what’s called divination – seeking information from the spirit world; and sorcery – seeking power from the spirit world. Connected to this, of course, is idolatry. They are all integrated together, although each one is quite distinct.
The problem that people of God had was: the whole of the nations they came into were perverted by this demonic activity. In those days, there was no deliverance. So they needed to destroy the nations, because the people were demonically filled. So the word occult means to be covered or hidden; because usually, the power is secret. The source of the information or power is hidden.
People involved in the occult may be aware that they’re connecting with evil spirits. But they are deceived – they think they have power over the spirit, but the spirit has power over them. When people engage in the occult, they think the spirits are helping them; but in fact, now they’re gaining power over them. Eventually, they extract a price - all magic exacts a price - there is a price to be paid!
In the kingdom of God, the price is always upfront: pay first, benefits later. In the kingdom of darkness, it’s the other way round: benefit now, pay later - and you pay more than you think! That’s how the system works.
We see here that God lists a whole number of practices. These are associated either with idolatry or with the occult. One of the problems with the occult is that it is progressive, and it is addictive; and once people are in it, they find it extremely difficult to get out of it. It’s progressive; and it’s addictive.