Most of my adult life, God has been taking me where I haven’t wanted to go, to show me what he wanted me to see. Time and again, I’ve realized: What he’s showing me isn’t just for me. It’s for us.

The Lord wants us, who are known by his name, to know HIM. He wants us to know who we are in him. He wants us to know when we’re loving and honoring him, and when we’re missing and misrepresenting him. He wants us to know when we’re abandoning and betraying him.

He wants us to love and trust him enough to face into all of that, and to cry out to him for all the forgiveness and grace we need, to turn from what is not him, to go joyfully with him.

But we’re God’s people, we may think. Jesus is our Savior. We wouldn’t abandon or betray him. And if we even started in that direction, we would know it, and stop it, right away.

Cooperation with Satan

Yet consider Peter, who loved Jesus and followed him faithfully. On occasion, even Peter treated Jesus terribly.

Sometimes, Peter knew it. The night before the crucifixion, Peter denied Jesus. He knew how wrong that was. He had just said he would never do such a thing. But that night, he let fear drive him, once, twice, three times, to abandon his Lord and friend.

Sometimes, Peter didn’t know it. When Jesus first began to tell his disciples about his upcoming suffering and death,

Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. “Heaven forbid, Lord,” he said. “This will never happen to you!”

That’s understandable, we might think. But the Lord didn’t think that at all.

Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.” (Matt. 16:22-23 NLT)

Peter loved Jesus. He wanted Jesus to take up his kingdom – but not to have to pay such a terrible price.

Propelled by fear, and distress, and a belief that he knew best and that heaven was on his side, Peter decided to take things in hand.

So when Peter spoke up, did Jesus confuse him with Satan? Did Jesus accuse him of being Satan? No, and no.

At the start of his ministry, Jesus had faced the oh-so-deceptive, oh-so-appealing, temptation of Satan:

If you worship me, it will all be yours. [You’ll have all authority and splendor over all the nations – without any pain, without any cross.] (Luke 4:7; see also vv. 5-6.)

Now, when Peter stepped in – to try to avert a situation he did not want to happen, to try to control the person he did not want to suffer – Peter was not cooperating with heaven, but with Satan.

In that moment, he was engaging in witchcraft.

Attempt to control

Thanksgiving week, 2020, I asked God a personal question that turned out to be a much bigger question. Deeply disturbed by the ways certain people were behaving, I cried out to the Lord, “What is this?”

In answer, I heard one word. Witchcraft.

Taken aback, I began to pray, “Lord, what does that mean? What do you want me to see?” Ultimately, I knew, finding the answer would hinge on searching the Scripture, with my eyes and heart open to what the Spirit of God wanted to show me.

But what God brought to mind first was a short excerpt from a book that I’d read several years earlier. It mentioned witchcraft briefly, and spoke of it in a way I hadn’t previously heard.

I found that excerpt, read it – and realized it described the behavior I was finding so distressing.

The book is titled, Blessing or Curse: You Can Choose. The author, Derek Prince, was a prolific Bible teacher who taught on the reality of the spiritual realm.¹

This is the paragraph that impacted me most:

There are three key words that expose the activity of witchcraft: manipulate, intimidate, dominate. Domination is its ultimate purpose. Manipulation and intimidation are alternative ways of achieving this purpose. Wherever people use verbal or nonverbal tactics to manipulate, intimidate and dominate those around them, witchcraft is at work.²

Intrigued, I explored a few more of Derek Prince’s teachings. Watching one sermon online, I learned that he, too, had not known what to do with this subject when God first brought it to his attention. So he had asked the Lord, “Please, would you tell me what is witchcraft?”

“I believe this is the answer he gave me,” Prince said.

Witchcraft is the attempt to control people and make them do what you want by the use of any spirit which is not the Holy Spirit.

If any person has a spirit which he or she uses, it is not the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit is God. And no one uses God.³

Oh my. Oh my. Oh my.

Craving forbidden things

In both the Old Testament and the New, I found numerous mentions of practices commonly associated with witchcraft and the occult. Deuteronomy 18:10-11 includes several of these practices in one list.

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.

I saw: People use every one of these practices to call on spirits that are not God. And people use every one of these practices to gain knowledge or power, or both, for the purpose of control.

I also discovered that the Word of God stresses:

• the link between witchcraft and rebelling against HIM;
• the link between witchcraft and having other gods besides HIM.

The acts of the flesh are obvious: [they include:] idolatry and witchcraft. (Gal. 5:19, 20)

Here, the flesh is that part of us that wants our own way, and rebels against God to get it.

For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.
And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. (1 Sam. 15:23 NKJV)

Typically in Scripture, when the Lord mentions occult practices, he gives almost no details as to how they were carried out. Strenuously, he forbids them all.

It is important not to be ignorant about spiritual things, both good and evil.⁴ It is important to know what God has revealed, by the Spirit and the Word.

But we do not need to learn the dark details of evil in order to recognize and reject it. Indeed, seeking such knowledge will lead us into a dangerous trap.

Consider Deuteronomy 29:29. It’s the last verse in a chapter in which Moses called God’s people to renew their covenant with the Lord. Strenuously, he reminded them: No idols. No false gods.

Then Moses said:

The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.

The things the Lord reveals to his own – and the One who reveals them – are enough to guide us in the paths of abundant life.

Yet people all through time have had a strong desire for knowledge the Lord has not revealed and power he has not given.

This craving for forbidden things that promise control can lure us to do an end run around God. It can entice us to look to, experiment with, trust in and yield to whatever promises to help us get our way.

When not faced, confessed and turned from, this desire sets us up for a fall. For from Eden till now, the serpent has spotted it and exploited it.

“Go for it,” he hisses, with or without words. “You will not die,” he promises. “Instead, your eyes will be opened. And you will be like God.”

Like God. In the deceiver’s mouth, that suggests, “You’ll know what you need to know, to control what you want to control.”

Deceived by darkness

Like everything related to the domain of darkness, witchcraft deceives. Even when it is blatant, it may seem harmless. It may seem helpful. It may intrigue us. It may even mesmerize us.

When witchcraft is disguised, we may look right at it and not know what we’re seeing. We may cooperate with it, and not know what we’re doing. We may be targeted by it, and not know what is happening.

In the church, manipulation, intimidation and domination can pose as serving God. And we can be very fooled for a very long time – especially when the church culture itself has taught us to see things “merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.”

In Paul’s day, witchcraft began creeping into the church in Galatia. Paul cried out to turn God’s people back:

You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? (Gal. 3:1, 3)

In the past, when you did not know God, you served as slaves beings which in reality are non-gods. But now you do know God, and, more than that, you are known by God. So how is it that you turn back again to those weak and miserable elemental spirits? Do you want to enslave yourselves to them once more? (Gal. 4:8-9 CJB)

In Ezekiel’s day, witchcraft among God’s people had become deeply entrenched and full-blown. Ezekiel saw it, because God exposed it: Influential men and women. Worshiping idols. Participating in occult rituals. Under cover of darkness. Inside the temple of the Lord. (See Ezekiel 8.)

While the leaders betrayed God in secret, the people abandoned him in public:

The sin of the people … is exceedingly great; the land is full of bloodshed and the city is full of injustice. (Ezek. 9:9)

Yet not everyone was corrupted. The Lord searched out those who grieved and lamented over the abominations being done. He marked them as his own, and he proved himself strong in their behalf.

Ezekiel was among them. When God showed him terrible things that he did not want to see, he looked, believed and grieved. And like Paul, Ezekiel cried out to God’s people to turn back.

Using God

In our day, this same Lord has been exposing ways our church systems do not reflect him, but instead coerce his people to miss and misrepresent him. Our Lord has been outing:

• Shunning in the church
• Bullying in the church
• Cliques in the church
• Racism and sexism in the church
• Celebrity culture in the church
• Denying adulthood, and even full personhood, to the bulk of the church
• All forms of oppression and abuse in the church

Today, I sit in silence, staring at that list. For there, I see the bigger question God was answering when I cried out to him nearly two years ago, “What is this?”

All those practices – all of them – hinge on people trying to control people, to make others bow to the dictates of a system or the will of someone within it.

All those practices hinge on people using manipulation and intimidation to gain domination. In Jesus’ name.

“You need to obey the Lord,” they say – when they mean, “You are not doing what we want.”

“Thank you, God, that – unlike them – we are doing your will,” they pray.

“That person over there is not submissive to God,” they hiss.

Invoking God’s name, they use him to mislead and mistreat people. They use him to recruit other people to mistreat people. They profane the Name that we are only, ever, to hallow.

That is witchcraft in the church.

For the Lord, who is holy, will not be party to profaning his own name. The Lord, who is Spirit, will not be used.

When people invoke his name to try to get their own way, they are rebelling against HIM. They are calling on spirits that oppose him. They are cooperating with evil’s dark work.

Beloved of the Lord, I urge you:

Be willing to see what God wants to show you.

Refuse to pursue what he forbids.

Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.⁵

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See also

• Dear weary one, can we talk about the spirit realm?
• Illusionists! The abusers we have not seen
• Checklists, idols and loving God
• When Christian leaders reject God
• When evil seems invincible: Two surprising sources of hope
• Journey to a divided heart
• One who stands in the gap
• The truth will set you free

Footnotes

1. I do not agree with the hierarchical view of the church, and the demeaning view of women, that mark some of Derek Prince’s teachings. But I like very much that he loved and studied Scripture and did not shy away from trying to teach truth about the spiritual realm anchored in the Word. See my post, The people I quote. ↩︎
2. Derek Prince, Blessing or Curse: You Can Choose, ebook edition (Bloomington, MN: Chosen Books, © 1990, 2000, 2006. ↩︎
3. Derek Prince sermon, The Enemies We Face Part 2: The Nature of Witchcraft, posted Aug 15, 2014. ↩︎
4. See 1 Corinthians 12:1; 2 Corinthians 2:11; 11:3-4, 13-14. ↩︎
5. Romans 12:9. ↩︎