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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 47. The Evil Purpose Underneath
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The Evil Purpose Underneath
Here then is the plain teaching of God's Word. Nothing could be plainer nor more explicit. Attempted communication with the dead is allied directly with the worst black art. It is grouped with devilcraft. It is really dealing with demons.
It is a distinctly forbidden realm, marked sharply off. The prohibition could not be more explicit and express. The prohibition is put in strongest language. Such practices are characterized as defiling, befouling, abominable. They were to be visited with the extreme penalty.
But, there's even more than this to be most carefully noted. That is the utter incompetence of such attempts to give what we desire. There simply is not, and cannot be, any such communication with our loved ones who have gone. So that pretensions of this sort area deliberate deception.
The fact that there are such pretensions, made so positively and aggressively, at once becomes significant. There is clearly a purpose back of this. It is a purpose of evil. Indeed it is a purpose of the Evil One himself. He is clearly the one behind all this sort of thing.
And his purpose is as plain as it is brazen and startling. He wants to get control of men. He can get control only through their consent; extracted under deception when not openly given. Demoniacs are extreme instances of such control. They are human beings possessed and con-trolled to such an extent as to have lost self-control completely.
They really are too much under demon control to be serviceable to the devil. It's a case where the demons are not kept in hand by their chief. They get out of his control. Demoniacs in the Gospel are instances of this sort of thing. They can be found in heathen lands today, though their families are commonly ashamed to have the fact known.
In the western world the uncontrollable cases of demon possession are mostly in the insane asylum. But these likewise are too far gone to be serviceable to the Evil One. He prefers simply enough control of a man so he can have use of him in the usual avenues of life, mingling among his fellows.
The danger of tampering with this sort of thing is terribly real. I remember a small book that came into my hands years ago in London. It was devoted to the discussion of the serious dangers attending practices of this sort. It was not written at all from a Christian stand-point; indeed just the opposite.
That makes its warnings more pointed. The writer was not concerned apparently with the question of right or wrong, but only with the danger to one's mental powers and self-control. In speaking of those who attempt communication with the spirit world, he said, quoting freely, "They open a door that by and by they cannot shut, when they earnestly want to shut it." And he went on to instance cases he knew of the deplorable disastrous results that had followed, including his own experiences. Even our well-known English author and lecturer, already referred to, warns his readers against the dangers attending spiritistic experiments. This is very significant.
I recall a man I came in touch with in North-ern Germany some years ago. He was an honest, earnest, simple-hearted peasant. He had been eager for certain experiences that others of his acquaintance had. He was plainly demon-possessed, and yet against his will. The evidence was unmistakeable to me. Happily through prayer and instruction he was set free.
But I was struck at the time with the unusually clear statement he made to me of how his trouble came. He said, "I was ignorant of the danger; I opened the door; the evil spirit came in; and I couldn't free myself of his presence." These illustrate the terrible dangers of tampering with such things.