The most convincing psychic or medium may still leave one critical question unanswered: who is really speaking?
Psychics Talk to Spirits on Mainstream TV
Once kept to small shops in eclectic parts of town, psychics and mediums are now everywhere from television and social media to private readings and mainstream entertainment. You may see them on TV shows like Long Island Medium or Psychic Intervention. You may know someone who has met with one. Perhaps you have even met with one yourself.
If so, what did you think? Did the experience leave you wondering whether something supernatural was really happening?
Even if the psychic did not get everything right, you or the person you know probably heard enough things that sounded right; things that were intriguing or difficult to explain that make you wonder whether the psychic really was communicating with spirits.
In many cases, they are.
Many psychics really are communicating with spirits and receiving information from them. But that raises a far more important question: Can you trust the identity of the spirits providing that information?
Truth vs. Deception
When it comes to the spirit world, most of us are pretty limited in what we can perceive. Even those who dabble in the supernatural may only hear a voice, have an intuitive thought, or see a vision. For us living in the physical world, we cannot see the whole picture of the spirit world.
Because we see only in part, we are easily manipulated and can quickly be deceived.
And that deception can come from more than one source.
There are some psychics who are skilled at leading people through a series of statements and questions to make it appear that they have supernatural knowledge, but they are frauds. Skeptics are right to point this out.
However, fraud does not explain every psychic experience. Many psychics really do appear to communicate with spirits and pass along information they could not otherwise know.
That is where the real danger begins.
The “Truth” Behind Psychics and Mediums
People who are genuine psychics may learn true facts through communicating with spirits.
For a short period of my life, I explored New Age beliefs and practiced communicating with the spirit world. In one exercise, I would look at a picture of someone whose identity I did not know and ask the spirits for information about them. I would then read about the person and see what I got right.
In one example, I looked at a picture of a man and felt something wrapped around my neck, choking me. I got the sense that this person had been hanged, and later found out that he had indeed been executed by hanging.
In another example, I looked at a picture of a man and saw a vision of him in formal dress, dancing with a woman. At first, when I researched him, I only found mention of his business achievements. But after searching further, I found an article stating he had a passion for ballroom dancing with his wife.
To me, experiences like these affirmed that I was communicating with the spirit world. But they also left me with a question I had not seriously considered at the time: Who, exactly, was I communicating with?
Knowing the Spirits Psychics Use
Finding true facts through the spirit world can be exhilarating because it seems to confirm that the spirit world really does exist.
But that very excitement can cause us to skip the most important question of all: Who is giving us the information?
Even if a spirit tells you its identity, how do you know it is truthful?
What is the motivation of the spirit for communicating with you through the psychic?
Do you know if the spirit the psychic is communicating with is good?
Those questions sound obvious when we apply them to the physical world. Yet somehow we often stop asking them when we enter the spiritual one.
If you meet a stranger on the street and they tell you something about yourself, you would certainly ask who they are, what they want, and why you should trust them. But in New Age practices, many overlook these questions in their zeal to interact with spirits and quickly trust the information they receive.
I know, because I did exactly that.
I Admit, I Was Deceived through a Psychic
One experience in particular taught me how dangerous that assumption can be.
During a period of my life, I decided to consult a psychic about a number of questions I was struggling with. Without me having to say a word, the psychic told me many things she could not have known about me and things that were happening in my life. I soon believed she was a real psychic.
She told me true facts.
Because I heard the truth, I trusted the source.
That was my mistake.
Once I trusted the source, I was in a position to be influenced by whatever that spirit wanted me to believe, and whatever path it wanted me to take.
She told me that the things that were keeping me in bondage were actually okay. That a deceased relative was telling her everything would be alright.
This conversation completely stalled my progress out of bondage and kept me in darkness.
The psychic had first given me enough truth to earn my trust. Then, once I trusted her source, came the deception.
Clearly, this was a deceiving spirit (read my post Spirit Guides: Can I Trust Them?). One that I blindly trusted because of a few statements of fact.
And eventually I realized that this pattern, truth first, deception second, was not unique to my experience at all.
The Pattern Spirits Use to Deceive You through Psychics
What type of spirit would do this?
I eventually discovered a pattern for exactly this kind of deception: tell enough truth to establish credibility, then use that credibility to introduce the lie.
That pattern appears at the very beginning of the Bible, in the Garden of Eden.
Whether you believe this story or not, there is something remarkably revealing in this account. This particular dialogue is a simple conversation of only a few words, but it establishes a model for the greatest deceiver, known as the “father of lies.”
In the story, the serpent, who is Satan, says to Eve, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from a tree of the garden’?”
So Satan starts with truth. Because there was no mention of the serpent until now, his statement shows that he had knowledge of God’s command, even if he was not there for the conversation with God.
Eve was trusting, after all, she had quite literally been “born yesterday”. So seeing that he had Eve’s trust, Satan introduced the temptation: “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Satan did not begin with an obvious lie. He first demonstrated knowledge of the truth, then promised Eve something better if she followed his suggestion.
But Satan intended to deceive her. Eve believed him and was led astray with great consequences.
Truth gained her attention. Trust opened the door. Deception led her away.
Satan repeats this same pattern of providing truth followed by temptation when he tempts Jesus.
And once I saw that pattern, I recognized what had happened to me.
This is Satan’s pattern of temptation and thus is the pattern of his minions. Without a doubt in my mind, the spirit with which the psychic was communicating was a familiar spirit, that is a demon who had been observing me and knew about my life.
How Do You Know the Identity of the Spirits?
So the question is no longer simply, “Are psychics communicating with spirits?” The much more important question is, “Which spirits are communicating with them?”
And this is where the Bible gives us an answer that New Age teachings do not.
The truth is that if you try to communicate with spirits outside of what God has made available to you, you will be vulnerable to deception and manipulation.
In the simplest of terms, there is light and dark, good and evil. On the light side there is God the Father, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and angels. (See my blog post Are Angels Real?)
On the dark side there is Satan, fallen angels of various ranks, and demons. There is no gray area, no middle ground, no neutral zone. (See my blog post Are Demons Real?)
So if you have been dabbling in New Age practices and have been in communication with spirits such as spirit guides, you need to test them, or you can easily be deceived.
The apostle John, who received amazing prophetic visions from God, knew this and instructed us to test the spirits. His writing tells us that every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh as their Lord is from God; and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus has come in the flesh as their Lord is not from God.
In other words, Scripture does not tell us to assume every supernatural experience is false. It tells us to discern the source.
Pawns in a Great Deception
We were all created with an innate curiosity about the spirit world—a curiosity that ultimately should lead us to seek our Creator.
Many psychics and mediums may have been born with a God-given sensitivity to the spiritual realm. But as with any gift, what God gives for good purposes, the enemy tries to corrupt for his own purposes.
When someone with these gifts turns to the church, they may not get the answers they seek. While some churches embrace spiritual gifts such as prophecy, many reject them or avoid discussing them altogether.
Unfortunately, many people with this natural sensitivity turn instead to New Age teachings where their experiences are embraced and explained.
Without a relationship with Jesus and a foundation in biblical truth, they can themselves be deceived—and unknowingly become pawns in the enemy’s plans to lead others astray, especially those who are desperate for answers.
And that may be the saddest part of all. Many people who turn to psychics are not searching for darkness. They are searching for comfort. For answers. For reassurance that someone they loved still exists. For proof that there really is something beyond this physical life.
Those desires are understandable. But the source we turn to matters.
Yet there is hope for all of us.
If you genuinely want to know what is true about the spirit world, you do not need to depend on a psychic, a spirit guide, or a voice whose identity you cannot verify. You can ask Jesus Himself to reveal the truth to you.
The spirits I encountered gave me enough truth to gain my trust. Jesus offers something entirely different. He does not use truth as bait for deception. He is the Truth.
If you sincerely seek Him, ask Him to show you who He is. You may be surprised by what happens when you begin looking for answers in the Light instead of the darkness.
And once you begin to understand who Jesus really is, the spirit world starts to look very different.
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Resources:
For an amazing testimony of a woman who spoke regularly with spirit guides until they turned on her, see this video Robin Harfouche on an episode of It’s Supernatural on YouTube.
Relevant Scripture:
Acts 16:16-18 – …a slave-girl having a spirit of divination met us, who was bringing her masters much profit by fortune-telling. Following after Paul and us, she kept crying out, saying, “These men are bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.” She continued doing this for many days. But Paul was greatly annoyed, and turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” And it came out at that very moment.
Matthew 4:5-9 – …Then the devil… said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command His angels concerning You’; and ‘On their hands they will bear You up, So that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.’”… Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and he said to Him, “All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.”
Ephesians 4:11-12 – …And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;
Jeremiah 29:13 – You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
2 Kings 21:6 – He made his son pass through the fire, practiced witchcraft and used divination, and dealt with mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord provoking Him to anger.
Ezekiel 13:6 – They see falsehood and lying divination who are saying, ‘The Lord declares,’ when the Lord has not sent them; yet they hope for the fulfillment of their word.
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