Counter and Cancel Evil Incantations: How to Stop Witchcraft Targeted Attacks
With the promise of God to pour out His Spirit on His sons and daughters, clearly a generation marked for spiritual greatness is a threat to the kingdom of darkness.
Once children and youth are set on the paths of righteousness, satan’s army is reduced and God’s Kingdom is advanced.
I was 22 years old when I preached a five-week revival at a church in southwestern Virginia. So many young people from the local high school and community college were receiving Christ that the drug dealers were having difficulty finding young people to sell drugs to their friends. The demonic world went into high alert and set a strategy to stop the momentum and shut down a revival that was impacting several counties. Ten years later, a young man who had attended that revival asked to speak with me. He had become upset with the way Christians were gossiping and treating each other following the shutdown of the revival, and his disappointment pushed him away from church. He eventually became involved in the occult and other activities involving the demonic spirit realm. Now, ten years later and from his hospital bed, he explained to me that his involvement in occult activities led him to learn that drug dealers had met to plot a way to stop that revival ten years ago or run me out of town. This plot was directed by a man who was overseeing a satanic cult at a nearby college.
This young man explained an incident that happened that I had never publicly spoken about and only a few people knew. During the revival, the church housed me in the evangelist’s apartment located in the church, and about halfway into the revival, I was awakened in the middle of the night to someone entering the church and slamming doors. Then the door to the apartment opened. The shortened version of the story is that I watched an evil spirit that I describe as looking like a gray Egyptian mummy walk through the door of my bedroom, give me a side eye, and walk throughout the apartment before going to another room in the church. My hearing was sensitive to where this creature was walking and the noise it was creating. Ten years later, this young man described the demonic spirit exactly the way I had seen it. He told me that this very spirit had been assigned by members of the occult in that area to hinder the revival.
The intent of this spirit went undetected and unrestrained. I saw it, but as a young evangelist with no experience in this kind of thing, I didn’t know why it showed up or how I should have handled it. I should have told the pastor, but I didn’t. The spirit created confusion in the congregation. People were pitted against each other. Some were for the revival and others against it. Some supported the pastor and others did not. Families split over their opinions, while bizarre and unfounded rumors swirled like a tornado outbreak.
The point of telling this story is to show what happens when plots of the enemy go undetected. That chaos was caused by a demonic spirit that was under a satanic assignment. Paul wrote that, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood…” (Ephesians 6:12), yet most church challenges and splits happen after people disagree with each other and flesh fights flesh. While people freely run their mouths and spit out fiery words, the spirits of darkness laugh in glee because they have succeeded in disrupting and sowing discord, yet they have gone undetected and unchallenged.
When Jesus dealt with a spirit possessing a person, He immediately discerned the demon involved and knew its assignment. It might have been a spirit of deafness (Mark 9:25), a mute spirit (Luke 11:14), a foul spirit (Mark 9:25), an unclean spirit (Mark 1:23), a spirit of infirmity (Luke 13:11), and so forth. Some individuals needed healing, while other times someone needed a miracle, and still others needed deliverance from demons.
Exposing the Spirit of Sorcery
Lindell Cooley, the former music director at Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola, Florida during the great Brownsville revival, is a friend who often leads worship at one of our conferences. He shared a story with me about witches who were sent to the Brownsville revival by their leaders. Lindell knew nothing about their agenda, but during a service he walked to the back of the sanctuary where the Holy Spirit led him to call out a woman and rebuke her. She confessed that she was a witch who had been sent with an assignment to disrupt the revival. Lindell’s internal enemy detector went off, and the Spirit of God exposed the plot and the works of darkness.
When a minister uses the words occult, satanist, or witch, some believers become fearful and avoid any conversation that would expose or stir up these workers of darkness. However, the work of Christ through His atoning blood has forever crushed the power of the enemy (Luke 10:19; 1 John 3:8). Paul wrote that Christ “spoiled principalities and powers and made of show of them openly, triumphing over them” (Colossians 2:15 KJV). In the book of Acts, the apostles were confronted with well-known sorcerers and occult influencers in the Greek and Roman cities where they ministered. Not once were Christians in the early church fearful or intimidated, nor did they flee from face-to-face confrontations.
In the city of Samaria lived a man named Simon who bewitched the city’s population with his sorcery. When the Samaritans converted to Christ and received the infilling of the Holy Spirit, Simon offered to pay the apostle Peter for the supernatural ability to lay his hands on people to receive the Holy Spirit. Peter publicly rebuked Simon, telling him, “Your money perish with you, because you thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money!” (Acts 8:20 NKJV). Peter told Simon to repent (Acts 8:9-22).
In Acts 16, Paul encountered a woman with a spirit of divination, which in Greek is a spirit of python, whose job was fortune telling. This woman ran throughout the town square yelling, “These men are servants of the Most High God…!” Paul was grieved, and he openly rebuked her. After the familiar spirit departed from her, she lost her ability to divine the future.
In Acts 13, Paul encountered Elymas the sorcerer, who was hindering the Gospel from being proclaimed. Paul withstood him, calling him a “child of the devil” and an “enemy of righteousness,” then pronounced a curse of blindness upon him. After the sorcerer went blind, the Gospel light opened the eyes and hearts of the people.
A witch’s incantation has no impact on Spirit-filled believers who are protected by Christ’s blood covenant, having had their sins forgiven and erased. All power and authority has been given to Christ in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18). Christ legally transferred that authority to those in covenant with Him. He said, “I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all of the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you” (Luke 10:19 NKJV).
The ancient Greeks believed in numerous gods and goddesses and were steeped in mythology and idolatry. The Greeks believed in demons (daimon in Classical Greek) but taught that these entities were supernatural spirits and a type of “lesser god.” In Greek the word theos is god, and some early Greek writers believed that spirits of deceased people from the first era of human existence became demons. Hesiod, however, taught that they were good and protective spirits. Of course, that is not biblical.
In biblical theology, demons are spirit entities whose doom is already set for the future abyss (bottomless pit). These malicious spirits try to cause mental, physical, and spiritual harm to humans. Since they are invisible and operate in a supernatural realm, some people think there is a mystique surrounding them, while others fear being exposed to this realm of satan’s kingdom. Anybody who has truly received Christ as Savior and Lord has been delivered out of darkness into light, transferred from spiritual captivity to freedom, and protected by the blood of Christ. John noted that we overcome satan by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony (Revelation 12:11). One who is in right standing with Christ should never fear anyone who claims to be part of witchcraft or the occult.
The Believers’ Spiritual Weapons
When Balaam was instructed to curse the Israelites, a nation of people under covenant with the Almighty, he discovered that it was impossible to curse whom the Lord has blessed (Numbers 23:8). The book of Numbers confirms this is the power of God’s blessing.
The Israelites had departed from Egypt, and more than 600,000 men, plus women and children, were camping in a valley near Jordan. Balak, the king of Moab, feared that their flocks would eat all the grass in his region. He hired a seer named Balaam to pronounce a curse on the people. However, only words of blessings flowed from his mouth, which angered Balak, who demanded that Balaam speak curses. Finally, Balaam admitted, “How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I defy, whom the Lord hath not defied?” (Numbers 23:8 KJV). Even God Himself told Balaam to leave the Israelites alone because they were a blessed people (Numbers 22:12).
There has been much teaching within the body of Christ on generational and other forms of curses, with debate about whether a believer can carry a curse. There can be generational patterns, cycles, and familiar spirits. However, we are told that Christ has “redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13 NKJV). Curses are made null and void when a person enters a redemptive covenant through a relationship with Jesus Christ. Sometimes what we battle is a habit, wrong thinking, or a wrong attitude that can create self-invited trouble.
We have been given weapons for our warfare that include:
The Bible, God’s written Word (Hebrews 4:12)
The protective and forgiving power of the blood of Christ (Revelation 12:11)
The authority of the name of Jesus over all the powers of the enemy (Mark 16:17-18)
The infilling of the Holy Spirit and the prayer language of the Spirit (Jude 20)
The power of agreement in prayer, when two or three agree concerning anything they ask (Matthew 18:19)
The weapon of worship (Psalm 149:6-7)
The Bible assures us that “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 54:17 KJV).
Weapons are formed, but they won’t succeed. Every word that rises in judgment will be condemned. In both Testaments, those in covenant with God were never defeated by any sorcerer or familiar spirit. This is because “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4 NKJV).
