Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.16UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.51LIKELY
Fear
0.13UNLIKELY
Joy
0.46UNLIKELY
Sadness
0.51LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.35UNLIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.65LIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.91LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.35UNLIKELY
Extraversion
0.22UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.71LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.59LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
The Philippian Fortune-Teller
A Pocket Paper \\ from \\ The Donelson Fellowship \\ *______________*
*Robert J. Morgan \\ *March 21, 1999
----
*Today *we are coming to the last of four messages on the subject of witchcraft and the Bible.
Our first message on February 21st focused on the Person of Jesus Christ, who is before all things and by whom all things hold together.
Our second message consisted of an overview of biblical teaching about witchcraft and the occult.
Last week we investigated the story of the most famous witch in the Bible, the Witch of Endor, whom King Saul consulted in 1 Samuel.
Today in this final message, I would like to look at a New Testament witch or spiritist, a slave girl whose story is told in Acts 16.
{{{"
/Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future.
She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling.
This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, "These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved."
She kept this up for many days.
Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, "In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!" At that moment the spirit left her.
When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities.
They brought them before the magistrates and said, "These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice."
The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten.
After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully (Acts 16:16-23)./
}}}
This chapter tells the story of the Apostle Paul's first venture into Europe.
Traveling with Luke and Silas, he entered the great city of Philippi and there established a church.
His first convert was a prosperous businesswoman named Lydia.
But the second person whose story is told is a nameless slave girl who had a demon that enabled her to tell the future.
Verse 16 says: /Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit…/
*A Slave Girl*
In the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, the very same phrase is used to describe the Witch of Endor.
This slave girl was a kind of witch, and as such she would have been right at home in our culture today.
CNN recently ran an article on the increase of interest in witchcraft in the media, saying: /The number of witches invading prime time and movie theaters these days is downright scary.
In the last few years, movie audiences have been treated to witchy films like "Hocus Pocus," "The Craft," and the recent box office topper "Practical Magic," starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock.
On TV, there's "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" on ABC, and "Charmed" on WB.
So what is the attraction to witches? "I think we're in the time when the metaphysical world is so interesting," says actress Alyssa Milano, who stars as one of three sibling witches in "Charmed."
"The psychics and the psychic hotlines, people are looking for something to believe in."
Kathleen McGowen, a Wiccan priestess (a witch), says being a witch is about being a woman.
"(It) is about reclaiming the divine female's aspects, which is something that's been denied to us for a very, very long time," McGowen says.
If there's any spell to be cast by the movies and shows, it's against the negative stereotypes associated with the term "witch."
Phyllis Currot, a Wiccan high priestess currently on a book tour promoting "Book of Shadows," says the pop culture demand for witches is a good thing.
"A witch is anyone who cultivates divine and sacred gifts," she says.
"But what's important about 'Practical Magic' and all these shows is that they're showing witches are good."/
Well, the passage here in Acts 16 begs to differ.
According to Luke, this woman's powers were the result of her having "a spirit."
That is biblical terminology for being possessed by a demon.
There are over 100 references to demons in the Bible, most of them occurring in the NT.
Every writer of the NT except the author of Hebrews, mentions demons one way or the other.
I was taking to Ken Eagleton this week, a friend of mine who spent many years as a missionary in Brazil.
He told me of several encounters he had with the demon-possessed.
In one case, members of his church asked him to visit someone who was having trouble.
When he entered this woman's bedroom, he found her literally stiff as a board, lying there, he said, like a piece of lumber, unable to move anything but her eyes.
The room was very small, but Ken squeezed into a little chair near her bed and tried to talk to her.
He learned from her family that she had recently visited a famous witch in the next village who had given her some medicines to take and some rituals to perform to help her feel better.
Now she was lying there, unable to talk and unable to open her mouth.
The only sound she could make was a faint grunting sound from her throat.
As Ken tried to work with her, all at once as fast as lightening, she drew up her knees, spun around as if on a lazy susan, and slammed her feet into his stomach, pressing him against the wall.
Others in the room rushed to restrain her.
Finally Ken stopped trying to talk to the woman and he addressed instead the demons, asking them their names.
(From the New Testament we learn that demons have names, and Jesus sometimes asked them to identify themselves.)
To Ken's surprise, the demons started giving the names of people.
As he told me the story he said, "This is the only time demons ever identified themselves to me using human-like names.
Usually they called themselves things like Lust, Suicide, Nicotine, Alcohol, Immorality.
But this time, they gave personal names."
Ken worked and prayed a long time, but he was never able to get the demons to leave the woman.
I asked him why the demons would not leave, and he told me that the missionaries in Brazil never had any real success with people who didn't really want to be delivered.
I also asked Ken why we hear and read so much about demon possession overseas yet do not often seem to encounter them in our churches in the United States.
Ken's answer is that in Brazil and Haiti and nations like that, the people openly seek out evil spirits.
They overtly interact with the demonic world.
"But," Ken continued, "as witchcraft and ouiji boards and dungeon-and-dragon type games become more and more a part of our culture, we're going to see more and more cases of demon possession here in the United States."
Then Ken said something else interesting: "We'd all be terribly surprised," he told me, "if we knew just how deeply our current society is being influenced by demons."
I think he's right.
One of the magazines that I read and that I have written for is designed especially for pastors called /Leadership Journal.
/In the current issue, there is an interesting article by a Baptist pastor in Tucson.
He said that some time ago on a Sunday night during the closing moments of the evening service, an impression of impending death overwhelmed him.
He felt he had just preached his last sermon and would die before the next Sunday.
Returning home, he sat down and waited until late in the night, expecting to die.
He did the same the next night, and strange tinglings moved down his arms.
On Tuesday morning he called a cardiologist and was given a treadmill test, then a neurological examination.
"Your symptoms don't fit any of the usual neurological problems or diseases," he was told.
"Perhaps you have some exotic problem we've never encountered."
The doctors advised him to return home, resume his normal activities, and see if any other symptoms developed.
His oppression did not abate.
On Thursday, a gentleman in the church called him and said, "I really hate to bother you, but we had something happen that may interest you.
A woman struggling to get out of witchcraft just revealed that she and some of her friends had placed a curse on you.
They actually prayed for a spirit of death to destroy you.
I know this is probably nothing, so I almost did not call.
But perhaps you'll find the information useful."
The pastor immediately asked God to protect him by the blood of Jesus Christ and he rebuked the evil spirits.
Immediately the oppression lifted and the symptoms dissipated.
*A Fortune-Telling Spirit*
So here we have a woman, a slave girl, who had a spirit.
What kind of spirit did she have?
Verse 16 continues: /…we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future.
She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling./
This brings up an interesting question.
How can a demon foretell the future?
I want to tell you something about the devil.
He is not the opposite of God.
God is omnipotent--all powerful.
The devil isn't.
God is omnipresent--always present in every location.
The devil isn't.
God is omniscient--all knowing.
The devil isn't.
If anything, Satan is the opposite of Michael or Gabriel or one of the archangels of heaven; but he is not the opposite of God.
He does not possess all knowledge, and he cannot with assurance foretell the future.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9