Rob Morgan:The Philippian Fortune-Teller
The Philippian Fortune-Teller
A Pocket Paper
from
The Donelson Fellowship
______________
Robert J. Morgan
March 21, 1999
Today we are coming to the last of four messages on the subject of witchcraft and the Bible. Our first message on February 21st focused on the Person of Jesus Christ, who is before all things and by whom all things hold together. Our second message consisted of an overview of biblical teaching about witchcraft and the occult. Last week we investigated the story of the most famous witch in the Bible, the Witch of Endor, whom King Saul consulted in 1 Samuel. Today in this final message, I would like to look at a New Testament witch or spiritist, a slave girl whose story is told in Acts 16.
Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, "These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved." She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, "In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!" At that moment the spirit left her. When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, "These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice." The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully (Acts 16:16-23).
This chapter tells the story of the Apostle Paul's first venture into Europe. Traveling with Luke and Silas, he entered the great city of Philippi and there established a church. His first convert was a prosperous businesswoman named Lydia. But the second person whose story is told is a nameless slave girl who had a demon that enabled her to tell the future. Verse 16 says: Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit…
A Slave Girl
In the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, the very same phrase is used to describe the Witch of Endor. This slave girl was a kind of witch, and as such she would have been right at home in our culture today. CNN recently ran an article on the increase of interest in witchcraft in the media, saying: The number of witches invading prime time and movie theaters these days is downright scary. In the last few years, movie audiences have been treated to witchy films like "Hocus Pocus," "The Craft," and the recent box office topper "Practical Magic," starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock. On TV, there's "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" on ABC, and "Charmed" on WB. So what is the attraction to witches? "I think we're in the time when the metaphysical world is so interesting," says actress Alyssa Milano, who stars as one of three sibling witches in "Charmed." "The psychics and the psychic hotlines, people are looking for something to believe in." Kathleen McGowen, a Wiccan priestess (a witch), says being a witch is about being a woman. "(It) is about reclaiming the divine female's aspects, which is something that's been denied to us for a very, very long time," McGowen says. If there's any spell to be cast by the movies and shows, it's against the negative stereotypes associated with the term "witch." Phyllis Currot, a Wiccan high priestess currently on a book tour promoting "Book of Shadows," says the pop culture demand for witches is a good thing. "A witch is anyone who cultivates divine and sacred gifts," she says. "But what's important about 'Practical Magic' and all these shows is that they're showing witches are good."
Well, the passage here in Acts 16 begs to differ. According to Luke, this woman's powers were the result of her having "a spirit." That is biblical terminology for being possessed by a demon. There are over 100 references to demons in the Bible, most of them occurring in the NT. Every writer of the NT except the author of Hebrews, mentions demons one way or the other.
I was taking to Ken Eagleton this week, a friend of mine who spent many years as a missionary in Brazil. He told me of several encounters he had with the demon-possessed. In one case, members of his church asked him to visit someone who was having trouble. When he entered this woman's bedroom, he found her literally stiff as a board, lying there, he said, like a piece of lumber, unable to move anything but her eyes. The room was very small, but Ken squeezed into a little chair near her bed and tried to talk to her. He learned from her family that she had recently visited a famous witch in the next village who had given her some medicines to take and some rituals to perform to help her feel better. Now she was lying there, unable to talk and unable to open her mouth. The only sound she could make was a faint grunting sound from her throat. As Ken tried to work with her, all at once as fast as lightening, she drew up her knees, spun around as if on a lazy susan, and slammed her feet into his stomach, pressing him against the wall. Others in the room rushed to restrain her.
Finally Ken stopped trying to talk to the woman and he addressed instead the demons, asking them their names. (From the New Testament we learn that demons have names, and Jesus sometimes asked them to identify themselves.) To Ken's surprise, the demons started giving the names of people. As he told me the story he said, "This is the only time demons ever identified themselves to me using human-like names. Usually they called themselves things like Lust, Suicide, Nicotine, Alcohol, Immorality. But this time, they gave personal names." Ken worked and prayed a long time, but he was never able to get the demons to leave the woman.
I asked him why the demons would not leave, and he told me that the missionaries in Brazil never had any real success with people who didn't really want to be delivered.
I also asked Ken why we hear and read so much about demon possession overseas yet do not often seem to encounter them in our churches in the United States. Ken's answer is that in Brazil and Haiti and nations like that, the people openly seek out evil spirits. They overtly interact with the demonic world. "But," Ken continued, "as witchcraft and ouiji boards and dungeon-and-dragon type games become more and more a part of our culture, we're going to see more and more cases of demon possession here in the United States."
Then Ken said something else interesting: "We'd all be terribly surprised," he told me, "if we knew just how deeply our current society is being influenced by demons."
I think he's right.
One of the magazines that I read and that I have written for is designed especially for pastors called Leadership Journal. In the current issue, there is an interesting article by a Baptist pastor in Tucson. He said that some time ago on a Sunday night during the closing moments of the evening service, an impression of impending death overwhelmed him. He felt he had just preached his last sermon and would die before the next Sunday. Returning home, he sat down and waited until late in the night, expecting to die. He did the same the next night, and strange tinglings moved down his arms. On Tuesday morning he called a cardiologist and was given a treadmill test, then a neurological examination. "Your symptoms don't fit any of the usual neurological problems or diseases," he was told. "Perhaps you have some exotic problem we've never encountered." The doctors advised him to return home, resume his normal activities, and see if any other symptoms developed.
His oppression did not abate. On Thursday, a gentleman in the church called him and said, "I really hate to bother you, but we had something happen that may interest you. A woman struggling to get out of witchcraft just revealed that she and some of her friends had placed a curse on you. They actually prayed for a spirit of death to destroy you. I know this is probably nothing, so I almost did not call. But perhaps you'll find the information useful."
The pastor immediately asked God to protect him by the blood of Jesus Christ and he rebuked the evil spirits. Immediately the oppression lifted and the symptoms dissipated.
A Fortune-Telling Spirit
So here we have a woman, a slave girl, who had a spirit. What kind of spirit did she have? Verse 16 continues: …we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling.
This brings up an interesting question. How can a demon foretell the future? I want to tell you something about the devil. He is not the opposite of God. God is omnipotent--all powerful. The devil isn't. God is omnipresent--always present in every location. The devil isn't. God is omniscient--all knowing. The devil isn't. If anything, Satan is the opposite of Michael or Gabriel or one of the archangels of heaven; but he is not the opposite of God. He does not possess all knowledge, and he cannot with assurance foretell the future. How, then, could this demon give someone a spirit of fortune-telling?
Well, it seems quite simple to me. The devil may not know what God is going to do tomorrow, but he does have a pretty good idea of what he himself is planning unless God intervenes and hinders him.
I can illustrate it like this. I cannot predict the future, and I do not know for sure what I will be doing three or four hours from now. I may have a heart attack and be with the Lord this afternoon. I may be called to the hospital to be with a dear family this afternoon. I don't know for sure. But I can tell you what I am planning to do mid-afternoon. I am planning to be in my office, working on tonight's Bible study for the six o'clock service. I'm reasonably sure that's where I'll be and what I'll be doing. So I can make a prediction about it.
The devil is a master-planner who devises his schemes with shrewdness and foresight. So we shouldn't be surprised if some of his demons can make predictions with a better-than-average rate of accuracy. Perhaps the most famous psychic of the Twentieth Century was Jean Dixon. I have read that during World War II, she was regularly consulted by President Roosevelt on how best to carry out his tasks. According to published reports, a few years later, in the fall of 1952, as she entered St. Matthew's Church in Washington, she had a vision in which she saw the White House with the figure 1960 on the rooftop and a young man standing in front of the building. A voice told her that he would be assassinated in office. Eleven years later, John F. Kennedy's funeral was held in the very church were Jean Dixon reportedly received her prophetic vision.
Now, if that is true how do you explain it? Well, who is behind murder and violence and assassination in the world today? If the devil was plotting to commit murder, perhaps using one contingent of demons, don't you think he might announce it in advance through another contingent of demons? He wants to imitate God. He tries to duplicate God's power and God's miracles? He wants to counterfeit God's ability to give prophecy. And so his demons evidently give some people the ability to be fortune-tellers. In Philippi, there was such a woman and her services were being marketed by her owners, making them a great deal of money.
"Servants of the Most High God"
But now we come to verse 17: This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, "These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved."
Does it seem odd to you that a demon-possessed girl would go around announcing the arrival of missionaries? How do you explain her words? To be honest, I don't know why a demonized girl would continually shout, These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved. I have three ideas about it.
- Maybe the demons were so mesmerized by the presence of the Gospel and the Gospel-preachers that they couldn't help but shout it. We know that during Jesus' ministry, demons shouted similar things: What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are--the Holy One of God (Mark 1:24).
- Maybe the demons were mocking the preachers. If we could hear the tone of voice and the voice inflections, perhaps we would realize immediately that the demons were saying these words sarcastically and in derision.
- Perhaps it wasn't the demons at all speaking these words, but the slave girl herself. Perhaps she was crying out for liberation and for help.
Whatever the reason, her continually shouting and shrieking was a vexation for Paul and he finally turned around and addressed the evil spirit, saying: In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her! And the Bible says, "At that moment, the spirit left her."
There is freedom and power and liberation in the name and by the power of Jesus Christ. As Martin Luther said:
The prince of darkness grim
We tremble not for him.
His rage we can endure
For lo, his doom is sure.
One little word shall fell him.
Charles Wesley put it likewise:
Jesus! The name high over all,
In hell, or earth, or sky;
Angels and men before it fall,
And devils fear and fly.
Notice how the Lord turned the tables on Satan and used all of this for the furtherance of the Gospel. I once heard a very wise woman say that Satan often overreaches. He attacks us so fiercely that he unwittingly drives us straight to God. It happened in this case. The slave owners were so upset at having lost the girl's clairvoyant abilities that they dragged Paul and Silas before the magistrates, had them flogged and fastened in the innermost cells of the prison. But at midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening. A terrific earthquake rocked the prison, and the doors flew open. The prisoner's chains fell off. The chief jailer cried out in alarm, but Paul reassured him that everyone was safe and still in place.
"What Must I Do?"
Calling for lights, the jailer fell trembling before the preachers and asked one of the most famous questions in New Testament history: Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And Paul said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved and your household.
The simplicity of his answer reflects the simplicity of the Gospel. We come to Jesus Christ in simple faith and pray something like this: Dear Father, I believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose again to give me forgiveness of sins and eternal life. In that he gave himself for me, I am now giving myself to him. Be my Savior and Lord from this moment forth.
Paul Harvey once told about a little boy who caught birds and kept them in a sack. One day an old man met him along the pathway. The man heard pitiful sound of wings slapping the inside of the sack and a hopeless, pathetic sort of chirping coming from within. "Whatcha got in the sack?" asked the old man. "I've got a sack full of sparrows!" said the little boy. "What are you going to do with them?" asked the man. "I'm going to take them out of the sack one by one and tease them, pull a feather out now and then, and then I'll feed them to the cat."
"How much do you want for the whole sack?" asked the man. The boy thought about it and finally told the man, "Two dollars."
"Done," said the old man. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the two dollars, and gave them to the boy. Taking the sack, he opened it, suddenly exposing it to the rich sunlight. One by one, the birds struggled toward the opening and jumped out, free, liberated, flying into the sky.
And so it happened one day that God met Lucifer with a huge bag. Inside the bag were the most helpless sounds of life struggling to be free. "What have you got in the bag?" asked God. "People," said Lucifer with a smirk.
"And what will you do with them?"
"I will torment and oppress them one by one, and when they are all worn out with trials, I will throw them into hell."
"And what will you take for all of them?"
"Your only Beloved."
"Done!" said the Father. And he reached down to earth and gave us the gift of his Son. Have you trusted him? Have you given him your life?
Sir, what must I do to be saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved and your household.