To The Third And Fourth Generation Of Them That Hate Me
In the examples already given, it is clear in a number of cases that charmers, spiritists, and sorcerers bring oppression on their descendants to their third and fourth generation.
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This accords with the second of the Ten Commandments, which speaks of “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate God.” I will add a few more examples to make this clearer.
Ex 302: On a missionary journey through Thailand, I was accompanied by Mr. Pretel, a missionary who was later killed in a road accident. He told me of the following incident. In a mission church, a very-gifted, young Thai was converted. The mission raised money to send him to Bible school in the USA. He became a pastor, returned home, and was given a church to look after. Soon he went off the rails to such an extent that he had to give up his office. The background of this story is that his father had been healed by a spiritist healer.
Ex 303: While I was on a speaking tour in Brazil, a minister came to me, not for counseling, but to have a discussion with me. I had spoken against using the pendulum. This minister was in the habit of using the pendulum. He admitted that the practice could exhaust a person’s nervous energy if he overdid it however. He erroneously saw it as a gift of God. The minister’s daughter is mentally deranged. He explained that his daughter’s condition was the price he had to pay for his ability to help others with the pendulum. One must always bear some cost oneself, and in this case it was the mental illness of his daughter. A strange theology; it would be better if this minister would study the Second Commandment.
Ex 304: While I was on a speaking tour in the province of Santa Catarina, Brazil, a woman Salvation Army officer came to me for counseling. She was of psychic disposition and encountered severe attacks during the night and when praying or reading her Bible. In my addresses, I mentioned some examples similar to events in her own family, and she therefore had confidence in me. As she told the story of her life, the following facts came out. Her grandmother and her mother were active spiritists. Her mother’s brother had committed suicide. Her father had been killed in an explosion. Her own husband had been killed in a road accident. Her eldest son also had a fatal accident.
This example shows us several aspects of what things are like in a spiritist’s family: accidents, suicides, mental disorders, and severe attacks from the powers of darkness. If the spiritist grandmother had known what trouble she would cause with her spirits, she would perhaps have left it alone. Frequent accidents and suicides are a familiar phenomenon in the realm of the occult. This will become even clearer in the chapters which follow.
Frequent Suicides Generally Run To The Third And Fourth Generation
Ex 305: During a series of addresses in Hamburg, a man came to me with the following story. Both his mother and sister had attempted suicide. The grandfather had been a magic charmer. He had committed suicide, as had his brother. This family’s balance sheet: 2 suicides, 2 attempted suicides.
Furthermore, the members of this family are well known for their hard, selfrighteous, and egotistical natures. They make no contact with the world around them and of course have no links with the Word of God or with Christ.
Ex 306: When I was on a speaking tour of South Africa, a woman came to me for advice. Her mother was a card-layer. Her father had taken his own life. Her brother, likewise, had committed suicide. Her sister was a missionary but was completely emotionally unhinged. She was addicted to lesbianism, suffered from depression, and was unable to read the Bible or to pray, despite her work as a missionary.
Ex 307: Many years ago, I gave two lectures at the Geesthacht High School in Schleswig-Holstein. Dr. Rieck, who was then headmaster of the school, told me that as far as suicides were concerned, that province had the highest figures in Germany. I was not surprised, for Schleswig-Holstein, along with the Lüneburg Heath, is also known to have the largest number of magic charmers in the entire Federal Republic.
Ghosts and Poltergeists Resulting From Sins of Sorcery.
Ex 308: A girl in the sixth grade at school came to faith in Christ. Her father had died as an unbeliever a year before. Several months later he reappeared in waking visions, and he spoke to his daughter. She saw him. The appearances became more and more frequent. The father’s face took on increasingly sinister-looking features. Finally, he ordered his daughter to commit suicide.
During these visitations, the daughter felt as if she were paralyzed. She could neither pray nor move nor even think about Jesus. A woman minister took the girl to a critical psychiatrist, whom I know very well. Before he spoke to the girl, he said, “These are hallucinations and delusions.” When he had spoken to her he said, “She has no medical disorder, she must go to a Christian counselor.” To guard against any mistake, the minister took the girl to Dr. Lechler, then the most well-known psychiatrist in Germany. Dr. Lechler was a believing Christian. He, too, diagnosed no mental illness, but said that the girl was actually being plagued by spiritistic phenomena. He offered the girl some pastoral help. Dr. Lechler was not only a psychiatrist, but also a spiritual father and pastor.
Ex 309: During a speaking tour in Western Canada, a twenty-three-year-old girl came to me for counseling. She said that at night the doors in her house would open and shut without any visible cause. The radio also turned on. She heard footsteps and scratching noises, and saw glimmers of light and faces. She heard voices and hangings, although the doors were all locked securely. She was not suffering from a mental disorder. I asked her if spiritism had ever been practiced in the house or in her family. She admitted that her grandmother had been a spiritist and a magic charmer and had died in a terrible way. It is usual for spiritists’ houses to be haunted by poltergeists, if spiritism has been practiced in them for years on end.
Ex 310: I received a call from a deaconesses’ home, asking me for help. A young deaconess could not sleep at night. The furniture, especially the table, danced around the room. My answer was, “If it is not a case of hallucinations, then it is possibly the result of spiritism.” The deaconesses confirmed that the girl’s father had practiced spiritist table-tapping for many years. As a result, the daughter was psychic and was used by these dark powers as a medium.
The parapsychologists would again say that this was an example of poltergeists appearing in the presence of an adolescent. As if that solved the problem! The sisters in this home did the right thing. They formed a prayer group which met and prayed in the young novice’s room. Both the girl and the room were freed from the poltergeists.
Frequent Diseases.
People who come under the curse of sins of sorcery are frequently plagued with illness of every sort. Here, too, one must be on guard against over-hasty conclusions and avoid ascribing all unaccountable diseases to occult causes. It is necessary, in every case, for a qualified doctor to be asked to make his diagnosis and prescribe treatment. One must not, under any circumstances, allow himself to fall victim to an occult or hysterical maladie imaginaire. When the doctor’s work is done, there remains a great deal of ground for the counselor to cover.
Ex 311: Brazil is the country in which I have had the greatest number of sessions with people oppressed through spiritism. This is because Brazil is one of the world’s strongholds of spiritism. In the region of Ponta Grossa, a woman came to me for counseling. She had been a member of a spiritist group for eighteen years. Then she left it, because she had a complete lack of peace and wanted to find Christ. Since making this decision, she had suffered from disturbed sleep and depression, and still could find no peace.
One thing she confessed was that she possessed a “letter from heaven,” and that she had been charmed against an illness as a child. In addition to all her emotional disorders, she had an inexplicable skin disease, which no skin specialist had been able to cure. It may frequently be observed that people under occult influence suffer from skin disorders. An example follows.
Ex 312: In a city in Santa Catarina, Brazil, a couple brought their son to me. He was suffering from sclerodactylia. His fingers were stiff like claws. The skin of his hand was rough and hard and was gradually peeling off. The muscles were also affected. Even the bones were atrophying. The parents had heard my addresses and thought that I might be able to give some advice. I asked about the family history and was told that both grandmothers had been charmers. Doctors who know nothing of spiritual processes will laugh at the suggestion that these facts are connected. And yet one frequently finds that incurable skin diseases appear in families whose forebears have practiced sorcery.
Ex 313: Another example shows the nature of an hysterical, or psychically caused disease. A woman came to me for an interview. She had had one disease after another. First it was a lung infection, then an inflammation around the kidneys, then a compulsive neurosis. Finally it continued so far that she practically went through the whole medical textbook, one disease following another. Her medical history was a typical pattern of hysterical illness, or of illness resulting from psychic associations. Her family history revealed that her grandmother had been a card-layer who had also had her children and grandchildren charmed. In a case of this sort, medicine can offer no deliverance. It is a spiritual problem.
Ex 314: When I was staying on the islands of Fiji, a woman came to me for counseling. She was a European settler. This woman had frequent attacks of complete motionlessness. I have already given one example of how a person can become as stiff as a board when he wants to pick up a Bible or to pray. This woman had been to a doctor for treatment. The doctor could find no reason for her condition. In his opinion, everything was in order organically.
I gave the woman several examples of how in East Asia and in Africa, people sometimes experience a kind of cataleptic fit if they are under influence resulting from their forefathers’ sins of sorcery. I asked the woman if her father, mother, or if she had ever practiced such things. She said they had not. On the way home, she told the woman who was my hostess that as a little girl
she had taken part in table tapping. She had not regarded this as of any significance. Yet there we may see the connection.
Ex 315: A young woman suffered from remarkable fits of epilepsy. Her family doctor was unable to get to the bottom of her trouble, so he sent her to the university clinic. In this clinic it was established that the woman had a rare form of epilepsy; what is known as myoclonic epilepsy. Since this was the only case of its type in the clinic, she was used as a guinea pig. She was asked to come at certain intervals in order to try out various medicines.
The treatment was free of charge. In her conversation with me, she told me that she had been charmed while she was still in her mother’s womb. Her mother had tried to abort her by means of a magic charm. It had not been successful. Now she was trying to find the way to Christ, since the medical treatment she had received had not helped her.
This brings us to the end of our tour of the effects of occult oppression. I do not recommend anyone to read this book through as if it were a thriller. It is only a reference book, containing information in certain areas. People who are unstable or who are unusually sensitive and easy to influence should certainly read this book only in very small quantities. My opponents will now want to ask me, “Why do you write such books at all if you know the dangers involved?” Only those who have sufficient experience are qualified to write books on this subject. Believing Christians will perhaps understand what struggles have been involved for someone who has spent forty-five years in counseling and has heard some twenty-thousand terrible cases. Normally, no one would be able to hold out so long, even with the strongest nerves. It is a miracle of the preserving grace of God that the devil has not destroyed me long ago. At this point, I would once again ask all believing Christians to pray earnestly for my family, my work, and for me. Let us conclude this chapter on the effects of occult involvement on a positive note.
Ex 316: Some years ago a young woman came to me for counseling. She was covered from head to foot with a dreadful skin disorder. I asked her how she ever got married in such a condition.
“This skin disease disappears now and then for a few months,” she replied. “Then it comes back again.” She has spent thousands of dollars going to skin specialists. None has been able to help her. I asked her if any of her forebears had practiced sorcery. She said, “Yes my grandfather produced charms for cattle and spells against disease, my father had learned these arts from the grandfather and had likewise practiced them for years.” And now she had this terrible skin disease which tormented her for years, driving her to despair. I showed the young woman the way to Jesus Christ. Her dreadful plight moved me greatly. I wondered if I ought to pray with her along the lines of James 5:14. I had some reservations about this, since her disease was a result of her father’s and grandfather’s sins of sorcery. I asked a believing pastor, a friend of mine, what he thought about it. He was ready and willing and bold enough to lay hands on the woman and pray. He did so only as far as her disease was concerned, not in connection with the occult involvement. We both put ourselves under the protection of Christ, and then we prayed with the woman, laying our hands upon her, that she might be healed of the dangerous skin disease. I then left the area. Eighteen months later, I met the pastor again and asked him how the young woman was.
He replied with a beaming smile that since our prayer for her with laying on of hands, she had been free of this terrible skin trouble. The woman had been following Jesus ever since. That is a triumph of the grace of God. Here Christ has set up a trophy of His victory. We are not simply abandoned to the power of Satan. There is a place where we can attain victory in the name of Jesus.
We shall read of further examples like this in the two following chapters, on the subject of deliverance, and in the final chapter of this book.
If you think you need prayer or help in any way, feel free to get in touch with us.
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