In this sermon, the speaker shares their personal experience of being unable to read or remember due to spiritual interference. They express their frustration and discouragement in trying to overcome this struggle through prayer. The speaker then discusses the concept of the Deliverance Ministry and the significance of the word "python" in Greek, which represents a constricting spirit. They highlight the dangers of seeking supernatural abilities without acknowledging Jesus Christ and warn against being deceived by seducing spirits and doctrines of demons. The sermon emphasizes the importance of staying away from psychic phenomena and remaining faithful to the teachings of the Bible.

Neither will you see any warning against the kind of things we're talking about, the dangers of the occult, the dangers of psychic phenomena, or any of the prohibitions of God against these things. Indeed, just the opposite is done. All kinds of quotes are given to great seers and hypnotists and spiritualists in the past who had these supernatural abilities, and these men and these situations are quoted and illustrated in order to sport Gene Dixon's own ministry. All right, now if that's not enough, we'll give this one other proof, and then we'll go on. Those of you who may have read that book will recall that one of her great revelations about the end time and the end of the age came as a result of a vision she had in which a great snake got in bed with her and wrapped itself around her body, and she sat and looked up into her eyes, and she saw all the wisdom of the ages in those eyes, and the snake turned and looked out toward the east. And Gene Dixon says in that book, I realized then that the answers to the world's problems were going to come from the east. And then she had subsequent dreams or revelations about a new Savior who's going to be born in the east. He's already been born over there, he's growing up now, and eventually he's going to become a great world religious leader and unite all of the religions of the world into a new brand of Christianity, and then peace is going to come to earth. All right, any of us who know anything ought to be aware, or know anything about the scriptures, ought to be aware about the significance of the snake or the serpent. The serpent or the snake is never any place used as the purveyor of divine wisdom. It always represents the enemy. And to really couch this right down in critical terms, let me point this out. The word divination in the New Testament, in the Greek, the word that's translated in English, divination in the Greek, is the Greek word pi-eupsilon-theta-omikron-nu, p-u-t-h-o-n. That's the Greek word, peuthon. When Greek words are transliterated into English, the equivalent of the Greek letter eupsilon in the English alphabet is the American letter, the English letter y. And the Greek word peuthon becomes the English word python, which is the word python. And a python is a great constrictor snake that wraps its body around its victims, exactly the instrument of revelation which Jean Dixon had in her vision. The thing didn't even pretend to be anything else than it was, a revelation direct from the pit. So, we were talking about this verse in Scripture where Paul casts out this spirit of divination. You see, in the minds of people today in our country, many people think, oh, wouldn't it be wonderful to have a gift like Jean Dixon had? Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to foretell the future and to predict fortunes? And many people actually consider that this would be a blessing. Let me tell you something, the Bible considers it a birth defect, and it considers that ability to tell fortunes of that slave girl was in the same category as if that girl had been born with crossed eyes or club feet or been born with a spirit of insanity. It's from the evil one. It's from Satan. It's not from God. Otherwise, Paul would not have rebuked that girl. He would not have taken authority over that spirit, bearing mind that what she was doing was all right. She joined herself to Paul and Silas and was going ahead as a kind of advanced press agent, saying, these are servants of the Most High God who will show you the way of salvation. And the scripture says, this she did for many days. Well, Paul couldn't find fault with that. What he found fault with was the source of the revelation she had. He recognized that that girl was under some kind of torment. So rather than complimenting her upon her ability to tell fortunes and make her owner's money, he took authority over the spirit, rebuked it in the name of Jesus, and commanded it to come out, and instantly the girl was delivered of her ability to predict the future. And the same thing could happen to Jean Dixon if she'd submit herself to Jesus Christ. I've had the privilege of ministering to people who were directly in connection with her, in close fellowship with her, who themselves came for and received deliverance from evil spirits. Again, let me say, I do not criticize that woman personally. As far as I know, she has a fine Christian character. She does many fine works. People say, well, how can you find fault with what she's doing? She predicted Kennedy's death, and she's done all these other wonderful things that have helped people. What's the matter with it? The matter with it is this. She says, in essence, in her theology, that you can fulfill God's plan for your life by discovering your talents and serving your fellow men. That sounds good, humanitarianly speaking. There's only one thing wrong with it. It ignores Jesus Christ. What she's saying is that you can fulfill God's plan for your life while you ignore the Son of Almighty God. And that's why the devil can play such havoc in that kind of otherwise good or helpful kind of ministry. The devil nestles very comfortably in every kind of creed, in every kind of philosophy, in every kind of theology that denies the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. He hates that. He hates the cross, and he hates the shed blood because that's the source of his defeat. And all of these things in the psychic realm we discover in the deliverance ministry of Demonic. And this is what happened when we read the text about Paul's miracles out there in Asia, when the deliverance ministry you see appeared on the scene. These seven Jewish priests tried to cast out demons, not by their authority but in the name of the authority of Jesus, that Paul preached. And the demon piped up and said, I know Jesus and I know Paul, but who do you think you are? And the man that was demon-possessed went berserk, beat up these seven brothers and chased them out of the house. And it was this comparison between the failure of the Jewish priests at deliverance and Paul's success at deliverance in the name of Jesus that struck fear into the hearts of the people in that part of Asia. And they came and confessed all that they'd been involved in. And what was it that brought forth the confession, the deliverance ministry? And that's what's bringing it forth in the Church, the body of Christ today. That's why the devil's getting all stirred up, because people who have been involved in all of these filthy practices, filthy in the mind of God, are now being shown by the authority in the name of Jesus Christ the dangerous things they've been involved in. I tell you, I've talked to many of these demons face to face in the ministry. That'll make a believer out of you when you start talking to a demon face to face. I've had them boast that they were taking people straight to hell. I've had one say to me, I'm not coming out, I'm taking this girl straight to hell. Hell, hell, hell. Isn't that a pretty word? And then laugh a real wild laugh. An occult spirit. Out in California one time we were ministering on this realm and people were being stirred up, the demons were, we were in the time of ministry, and I stopped to say something to people as I was ministering to one girl. I said, this was an occult spirit of some kind, and I just said to the group, this is an occult spirit, and I want to remind you that anything supernatural that denies Jesus isn't of God. And that includes all sorts of things like Christian science and divine science and science of mind. When I said science of mind, it was a demon in this girl. It let out a wretched scream. The girl fell off on the floor and began to thrash around, and we took authority over it and commanded it to come out. A spirit of religious science, of science of mind. Now there are many people involved in all this sort of thing. They think it's good. Why? Because it seems to release power in their lives. Don't you forget for a minute that any time you get anything from Satan, he's going to get his pound of flesh. Corrie Ten Boom's little booklet, Defeated Enemies, which deals with this, tells about a woman who came to a pastor friend of hers with their child for help. This pastor knew about the deliverance ministry, and the girl was wearing a charm around her neck, a clay-glazed charm, and the minister noticed it looked kind of strange. He said, where did your daughter get that? And the woman said, oh, the spiritualist healer gave it to the girl when we went to her for help. She said it would ward off the diseases. And sure enough, the girl had had some sort of physical problem. I don't remember what it was, but this healer, this psychic healer, had prayed for her and the disease had left. And then she put this charm around her neck. But then the girl had become subject to fits of depression, and it was because of the depression that the girl, the mother, brought the girl to the preacher. And the preacher said, take that charm off her neck. So the woman took it off with a chain and handed it to the preacher, and the preacher struck it sharply against the desk and broke it. It was a clay-glazed thing. And the woman remonstrated, and said, what did you do that for? And inside there was a little slip of paper rolled up, and that paper was a prayer addressed to Satan. And the prayer said this, Satan, keep this girl's body well till her soul burns in hell. Now, what had happened was, she went to the spiritualist medium and got delivered from the physical illness. People say, oh, these psychic healers, they can heal disease. Sure they can. Devil puts a disease on, he can take it off. But he'll hit you with something else. And that's what happened with this girl. They prayed then for the girl to be delivered from her demonic oppression. She was set free from that, and immediately the physical problem came back. And then later on she was prayed for in the name of Jesus for healing, and God healed her body. So it isn't a question of it being real, it's a question about the source. And time and again we've discovered that the problems come as a result of people getting involved in these things. And yet all over America people say, I just play with a Ouija board for fun. I just had my fortune told for fun. I just had my palm read for fun. I just read the horoscopes for fun. As Brother Dennis Bennett says, you might as well tell me you just climbed into a tiger's cage to count his teeth for fun. That's how harmless it is. The devil is out to destroy you. The thief comes but for to kill and to steal and to destroy. I understand this. God isn't picky, and he isn't arbitrary. He gives these sober warnings all through the scripture against this thing because he knows the deadly danger of this realm. And yet all these years we've said, ha, ha, let's all have a seance. When we first moved down to Florida, our teenage girl, spirit-baptized, came home from a slumber party and said, Daddy, I'll never go back there. They got together and started having a seance. And me and one other girl got outside in the other room and wouldn't go in. And the woman's mother said, Go on back in there and play with the other little girl. See, and this sort of thing goes on all over the country. I read in the paper a while back of a Baptist church down in the central part of the state of Florida was really packing them out in the young people's on Sunday night because the youth director was holding seances and people were coming in from all over the place. Why? Because clergymen have not understood the danger in these things. Let me read for you a section of an article out of a newspaper. This is out of the Miami Herald, dated November 22, 1970. There's a community down in the center of Florida that was established by spiritualists a number of years ago. People thought they were just sort of harmless, but there's all kinds of mediums and everything else down in that area around the town. It's called Casadega. But one of the things, and it's in Volusia County, one of the things that prompted this article was that there began to be all kinds of somber reports about graves being robbed and bodies being disfigured and all kinds of things about witchcraft. And I want to read just a few excerpts out of this article that was in the Miami Herald. I'll just read it. It'll take a couple of minutes, but it's worth it. DeLand, Florida. Within a couple hours' drive of the Cape Kennedy Slide Rule and Space Center, the ancient occult art of spiritualism flourishes in this cracker-flavored mid-Florida town. Many a local housewife brings home messages from the spirit world as regularly as groceries. Casadega, a tiny hamlet of pine needles and moss-bearded oak trees four miles outside DeLand, gradually grew since the early 1900s into a winter haven for members of the National Spiritualist Association Church. Perhaps one in four homes along the winding Casadega streets modestly displays a small shingle such as medium, advice, and consultation. Today these shy seers are so popular among non-members of the Spiritualist Church that most are booked with appointments a month or more in advance. Skeptical customers, including this reporter, have been stunned by the abilities of some spiritualist mediums to peer into their personal histories. But then the point of the article is about witchcraft. He says, But in the last eighteen months, a series of chilling graveyard incidents has convinced some local lawmen that some other Volusian Countians are dabbling in dark shades of the occult. In a word, Sheriff Ed Duff calls it witchcraft. It seemed insignificant at the time, but the first incident in August 1969, only vaguely remembered by those involved, a graveyard headstone was found in an otherwise deserted Daytona motel, and nobody could figure out where it came from. Then they go on to say that the next incident was the desecration of a grave in which the body of a 69-year-old woman buried the previous day was unearthed from the cemetery, and the head was severed from the body. Then the investigation continued until it was put on the shelf for a while. It says, That investigation gathered dusk until October 13, when the caretaker at a certain cemetery in Daytona called police and said six graves had been opened during the preceding weekend, and police discovered that the skulls had been taken from each body. And then also it says, A survey of Volusia County libraries revealed that roughly 90 percent of the books on witchcraft have been stolen from the shelves, and the skulls were taken from the two cemeteries during the month that ends in Halloween, a joke to most nowadays but a major religious event to practicing witches. Then he goes on to say that fascination with the occult runs deep in this town. Duffs, the sheriff's articulate and witty secretary, says she has been a student of the dark sciences for years. I'm just interested in it, that's all, she says. And the sheriff repeatedly points to a heavily underlined passage in this woman's copy of The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft that describes all hallows even, or Halloween, as a black mass. But the significant thing to me was, the article's quite lengthy, was two paragraphs in there about the attitude of local clergymen. The Reverend Minister of the First Church in Deland recently talked about the distinct possibility that some people who turn beaming smiles up on him at Sunday morning seek out a medium in times of dark personal distress. None of his parishioners have ever asked his advice about spiritualists, he said, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if some consult mediums regularly. I don't think it's a sin, he said, there are a lot more certain ways to go to hell than seeing a medium in Casadega. The growing popularity of mysticism among ordinary people may mean that organized religion is not meeting the deep emotional needs of people. The Reverend blank-blank of the Church in Deland finds no clear biblical order against the practice of communicating with spirits of the dead. My word, no wonder Christian people get involved in things when they have that kind of spiritual leadership, or lack of it, you see. And all of these things, as I say, are thoroughly forbidden by God. And I could keep you here all afternoon giving you incident after incident where we've seen people set free from the dark throes of depression and suicide and all of these other things that come as a result of getting involved in the occult. I have personally talked with the spirit of witchcraft and have watched it distort the face of a lovely young girl, her body twist over and hunch, her hands and arms become like claws, her face twist and contort, and she let out a cackle like a witch that sounds like a soundtrack right off a horror movie. And when that demon comes out, it comes out screaming like a witch. And this business isn't funny. I mean, God knows what he's doing when he's setting people free, and the devil knows what he's doing when he's putting people in bondage. And many an innocent person has gotten involved in this through simply unwittingly dabbling in the psychic phenomenon, you see. I want to read a letter. Some of you have heard this before, but it's good to get it on the tape. I want to read a letter by the wife of a practicing surgeon down in Georgia. She and her husband are both baptized in the Spirit, fine Christians who are now engaged in the deliverance ministry. They have both themselves been delivered. The husband, Dr. Bob Shoemade, who is an eye surgeon, was delivered at a retreat where Derrick Prince was ministering, and they both got the baptism in the Holy Spirit at that retreat. And Bob had been suffering from two allergies, one hay fever and the other wheat allergy. He couldn't eat any kind of cake or bread that had wheat in it, and he'd been suffering from those for years. He had sought all kinds of medical help as a doctor. He had prayed as a Christian for healing, and he had not been relieved until under the teaching of Derrick Prince he heard that allergies are many times caused by demons. And he submitted himself to that ministry and was immediately set free, both from hay fever and from wheat allergy, and has had no trace of the hay fever since, and can eat any kind of bread or cake or anything that has wheat in it that he wants to. His wife, who was also baptized in the Spirit, was not delivered at that time, but she was subsequently through a retreat, and partially when I was present, and then in a subsequent experience down in Florida. I went to their town ostensibly to set up a retreat that was going to be held later, and a few months came back through to hold a retreat and conference in Columbus, Georgia. We got into the deliverance ministry. Bob and Jean came in ostensibly to help out in the deliverance ministry, and Jean began to suffer some kind of torment. It was obvious. Her eyes grew glazed, she began to shake with fear, and it was obvious she was under distress, but she refused ministry at that time until we got to her home that night. Then we got to minister to her after it was quite late, and several spirits were identified, including hate and fear and some other things. Then the Lord showed her in the middle of her deliverance that she had gotten in trouble because her father had been dabbling in the occult and had dragged his little daughter around when she was a small child, all sorts of things, and the father had given her a Ouija board to play with, among other things. She was not completely set free because she was having difficulty reading the Bible, and this will be apparent in the letter in a moment. So she later came down to Florida where we were in a meeting like this, and we were having a session in the afternoon about the occult, and suddenly she jumps up and rushes out of the room, and a few minutes later when the meeting was over she came to me, rady, and said, I've been delivered. I'll write and tell you about it. She was having to leave her home. A few days later she wrote me this letter, which I want to share with you now. I have her permission to share it, and it's been a blessing to many people. She says, Dear Donna and Alice, several days have gone by since we talked by telephone, and I intended to sit down and write the next day but just didn't get to it. Perhaps it's a good thing because there is so much more to write now than there would have been then. First of all, though, I want to take time to share a bit of my experience of the past few weeks with you. For the first time in my life, at least for the first time in my remembrance, I am able to pray and know that God hears me. I suppose that sounds foolish to you folks who pray regularly and effectively, but I prayed desperately for so long hoping God would hear me, but always coming away empty. I knew something wasn't right, and had tried everything I had ever heard any minister say a Christian should do, yet I just couldn't seem to contact the Lord the way I wanted to. Frankly, I had decided that everyone else was in the same boat I was, but just wouldn't admit it since we all knew what we were supposed to be. You know, everyone pretending to have something he didn't. I admonished my Sunday school class to be faithful in reading the Bible, but I never did myself. She and her husband were both teaching in the Southern Baptist Sunday School at that time. I never did myself, not because I didn't think it was important, but because I couldn't. If I began to read, my eyes saw every word, but when I finished a chapter I couldn't tell you one word that was on it, and it mystified me because I could read anything else with no difficulty at all. Let me say parenthetically here I ministered to a number of people who were so bound by this kind of problem that the very moment they picked up the Bible they fell asleep. I ministered to a woman not too far from here who was so bad about this that she'd fall asleep, she'd give the Bible to her husband to read, and when he'd start to read she'd fall asleep. Because Satan hates the Word of God. It's the source of his defeat. You may, liberal Christians may not think the Bible's the inspired Word of God, but I'll tell you who knows it is, and that's Satan and all the evil spirits that are connected with him. They hate the Word of God. I've had them cry out to me when we would plead the blood or pronounce the Word of God against them. They'd cry out and say, I can't stand to hear about the blood, I can't stand to hear about the Word of God. Be quiet. All right? She couldn't read because these spirits were keeping her from reading or remembering. Sometimes by sheer force of will I would keep my mind on what I was reading, but the struggle became so intense I just had to give up. And this happened time after time after time, and I prayed about it, but nothing ever happened, and it was mighty discouraging. A couple of years ago people used to commend me on my patience with the children, just two lovely little boys, but I'd reached the point where I was impatient with them continually and for no good reason. I cried many times over the way I acted with them in the past year, actually hated myself for it, but I did it anyway. I heard something about the deliverance ministry at the conference last March when Bob and I were there. That's where they got the baptism, under Derek's ministry, and I decided this might be my problem, but I didn't know what to do about it. Then when your family came that night in August and we talked about it here at the house, I knew I needed deliverance, but frankly I was aghast at the possibility of having to admit it to anyone. By the end of September, however, I was ready to get help, for in that one month things got as bad as I believe they ever were. Well, then she says, I received some deliverance while you were here at the seminar in October, as you know, but I still wasn't free because I still couldn't read my Bible. Then when you were talking in Florida that afternoon, the word Ouija board began to blink off and on in my mind like a neon sign. I recognized it was a spirit churning inside of me, and I thought I would choke to death before I could get out of the room. I coughed like I had never coughed before, not because I was trying to help the spirit out, but because I couldn't stop it. Finally a blob of clear, thick fluid was expelled, and I knew immediately I was free. This was the key to my difficulty with reading and praying, and I just can't tell you the feeling of real thankfulness and gratitude to the Lord I have every time I pick up the Bible and begin to read. Honestly, I never knew half those things were in the Scriptures before. Oh, praise the Lord! And suddenly I enjoy being with the children again, and being a wife to Bob is a joy again instead of a drudgery. I used to call myself every name in the book for being such a slouchy wife, but call myself what I would, I still felt the same. Poor Bob, how he put up with me the last year, I'll never know. But I'll let you in on a secret. He really loves me, and I know it now. He used to put his arms around me, and I would cringe inwardly. Then he'd say, Do you know I love you? And I used to make some sort of noise to put him off. But sometimes he'd ask again, and then I would really be hard put to come up with an honest answer. And if I said, Well, I don't really know whether you do or not, I could see how it hurt him. So mostly I tried to avoid answering him. But now I know he loves me, and I love him more than I knew it was possible to love him. Pardon me while I leap for joy. Isn't that beautiful? The torment that came as a result of this child being dragged into occult and psychic practices, and the major one was the demon of a Ouija board that came because she played with that thing when she was a child. One other scripture I want to call your attention in 1 Timothy, the fourth chapter of the first verse. Paul says, The Spirit expressly says that in the latter days, the last times, some shall depart the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons. This is what we're living in now. This is the age where millions of Christians have been deceived and have been drawn away after these enticing practices and these enticing rituals that seem so fascinating. People sometimes say, How can a Christian have an evil spirit? How can Christians ever get involved in anything like that? This is one of the ways. By earnest, born-again Christians getting involved in psychic phenomena. People, I've had them tell me, Oh, I just went out of curiosity. I was a Christian, and I prayed, and I knew God would protect me. Oh, no, he won't. You may as well tell me, I'm a Christian, and I prayed, and then I went and had an affair with my neighbor's wife. I know it's all right. God protected me. Oh, no, he didn't. You're guilty of adultery, and he didn't protect you when you went seeking after supernatural experience from some other source, because the devil has hit you with something, and he'll make you pay the price sooner or later. Practically every person in America has been touched in some way by these psychic things. Eighty-five percent of the daily newspapers in America today carry a daily horoscope, and that's enough in itself to do the job. You start reading the horoscopes, you'll get hit with something. Out in California, a woman came to me for help. She said, I have a spirit of gluttony, and I know just when it came in. I said, How did it happen? She said, It came in because I got hooked on horoscopes. She said, I didn't believe in them until my friends began to encourage me to read, and then I found out they worked. I got so down that I wouldn't even go to work in the morning if my daily horoscope looked bad. I had my daily horoscope cast, and if it looked bad for the day, or if I read it in the Book of Forecasts and my daily chart looked bad, she said, I'd call in sick. I'd stay home. One morning when that happened, I was home all blue and was fixing myself breakfast, and going over in my mind about these horoscopes, she said, suddenly a compulsion came over me, and I reached out and grabbed a piece of toast with one hand, and I reached out and grabbed another piece with the other hand, and I began to stuff it into my mouth just as fast as I could cram it. I couldn't help myself. And she said, I know it's a spirit of gluttony, and I know it came in when I got hooked on those horoscopes. I said, Are you willing to renounce astrology as well as the gluttony? She said yes, and she broke down and began to weep. She said, I'll do anything to get free. So she renounced the occult realm, and she renounced the gluttony. We commanded the spirits to come out. I thought she was going to choke to death before she got free, but praise God, she was free. She wrote me weeks later, still free and rejoicing in the Lord. And how did it happen? Because she started seeking supernatural help from some other source than Almighty God. So there are those of you here whose lives have been touched by what I'm talking about, and you can be set free today if you want to be, but it means you're going to have to be willing to forsake all these things. Now, I'm not asking that you just take my word for it. I'm asking you to check it out in Scriptures for yourself, and see that everything that I've shared with you in terms of what God says about it, how unrelenting in His judgment He is. And it's because He loves us that He's this way, and it's because He loves us that He's pouring out the deliverance ministry again, and people are coming to see the reality between the good and the evil. As Brother Derrick Prince says, in the last analysis there's only going to be two groups, the true Church and the false Church, the bride and the harlot. The bride is going to be comprised of those Christians who move on into all the things of God and the Holy Ghost, including deliverance. The harlot's going to be those members who deny the move of the Holy Spirit. The churchmen who deny the true charismatic move of the Holy Spirit, they're going to get hooked on the phony, on the counterfeit. This is why to reject the real is to get hooked on the counterfeit. Bishop Pike out in California was a good example of this. A man who denied the reality of the charismatic ended up in psychic phenomena and died a tragic death on the deserts of Israel. Why? Because he became involved with the psychic stuff. So God is here by His Spirit to set you free from these things, providing you're willing to renounce all involvement with those things, because Jesus Christ came to set the captives free. And the way many of us get bound is by our involvement with occult and psychic phenomena. So if you want to be free, renounce every kind of supernatural experience except that which you know through the Lord Jesus Christ and the blood of the cross. Amen.