According to a 2005 Gallup poll, more than 1 in 3 Americans believe houses can be haunted. More than 20 percent believe in witches and people’s ability to communicate with the dead.

"We're talking about a large fraction of the public that believes in subjects that scientists believe are out of the question," said Costas Efthimiou, a professor at the University of Central Florida, in an AP article posted on Yahoo about the Gallup findings.

Just before I moved from Manhattan this past September, I came across an eye-opening article in the New York Times about a highly regarded fortuneteller and psychic in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Ms. Son Sam-Ath.

If you ask me, she lends real insight into the true evil nature of the tongue-talking Pentecostals regularly engage in.

“I am nothing,” Sam-Ath is quoted saying in the article written by Seth Mydans of the International Herald Tribune. “I am like the gateway to a temple. I am empty. But when I open my heart, the spirits can pass through me.”

Mydans writes, “Most of the fortunetellers rely on the cards, charts, intuition and balderdash that are the basic tools of their trade. Only a few have Ms. Son Sam-Ath’s powers of trance and tongue, and they are highly prized. . .

“Summoning the spirits, Ms. Son Sam-Ath lights sticks of incense and the sweet smoke curls in front of her face. She chants quietly in an unknown tongue. Her eyes roll up. Her soul flies away, and she is empty.

“Then, as if through the hum of a long-distance cable, the voices come to her and she begins to speak. The timbre is not her own and the words are foreign to her—perhaps Thai or Arabic or Pali, she says, or perhaps words with no earthly meaning at all.

“If a client needs urgent help or if, for example, he is visiting from the United States or Australia, she can also work her magic over the telephone, passing on the words of the spirits as if forwarding a call. The cost is $2.50, the same as for a personal visit.

“‘It’s as if someone has opened a book in front of my eyes,’ she said, describing a sort of dizziness that seizes her, ‘and I just read them out, whatever language they are in.’

“That is all the more mysterious, she said, because she cannot read or write, even in her native language, Khmer.”

I find it interesting to note that from the Bible, we know angels can speak every language that’s available to be spoken!!!

Here’s a fantastic passage from Bible scholar Keith Blades’ 1994 book, “Satan and His Plan of Evil,” that absolutely nails all the millions of Christians worldwide who now either think they themselves have a supernatural gift from God or that their pastor, priest, favorite televangelist, etc., does:

“Through ones ‘vainly puffed up’ in their fleshly minds, who promote themselves as messengers of God bearing messages for God’s people, Satan works some of his most beguiling wiles and successful attacks upon the message of God for today. . .

“By this particular device the impression is given that God is communicating to Christians today in a further sense than what He has already set forth in His written word. . .

“Through their ministries God is said to communicate by means of visions, dreams, angelic visitations, and by His Spirit. Through them prophesies are given, revelations are made, doctrines are taught, and the like.

“Moreover, they are all set forth with the ‘ring of genuineness’ because they are done with that masterstroke of Satan’s beguiling genius—the counterfeiting of God.

“No such beguiling of Christians would ever take place in anything Satan engaged in if he gave the impression he was behind it. Therefore, for the purpose of deception, the impression is given that God is working, and this is accomplished by counterfeiting something God has done. The ‘ring of genuineness’ is provided by having the supposed- communication-from-God come forth in a way in which God Himself has communicated before.

God has used angels before to give messages, so counterfeiting angelic visitations will carry the ‘ring of genuineness’ to it. God has given visions before, so giving counterfeit visions will likewise be effective. God, by His Spirit, has given direct utterances in the past, and has supernaturally empowered people in the past, so the counterfeiting of those phenomenons will also give the impression that such an individual and his ministry and message is from God.

It has already been noted at the beginning of this chapter that ‘transforming himself into an angel of light’ is Satan’s own method of operation in this dispensation. This being so, his ministers ‘are transformed into apostles of Christ’ and will carry with them the signs of their professed ministries. . .

They will possess and manifest signs to signify that God is working through them, just as they did in Paul’s day. However, they will not be genuine at all. Rather, they will be counterfeit apostles, prophets, and ministers of Christ in the employ of Satan’s policy of evil, who beguile Christians through their counterfeit signs. The ‘sign and wonder’ phenomenon will be real, but it will be not be God, or the Spirit of God, who is behind it. . .

When a Christian can be convinced through the personal experience of some phenomenon that God is communicating to him, then that personal experience will become for that Christian the criterion for judging what is truth. As such, the written word of God will no longer be the final absolute authority in that Christian’s life.

Instead, what the Bible says from now on will be evaluated on the basis of the personal experience. Therefore, the policy of evil has not only successfully deceived the Christian with the extra-Biblical communication, but it has also effectively produced within the Christian a strong resistance to the written word of God ever changing his mind! He, or she, has had an experience and that’s that. Once again, the experience itself was real without a doubt. But it wasn’t God who gave it or produced it.

(Editor’s note: Paul makes clear in his epistles that God awaited the completion of the revelation of truth for the newly instituted Body of Christ before eliminating the sign gifts.

Here’s a great passage from Bible scholar Charles F. Baker’s 1989 book, “Studies in Dispensational Relationships,” explaining the gradual phase-out of tongue-talking and other supernatural gifts in the early days of Paul’s ministry:

“If signs were given for the sake of the Jews, why should we find them in manifestation in the church which Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, founded? And if they were in Paul’s churches, should they not be in our churches today, if we are supposed to follow Paul?

“We believe the reason signs continue even after the new church, the Body of Christ, began under Paul’s ministry is this: God did not in one stroke cut off and cast away His people Israel. That is not His way of doing things. Paul quotes Isaiah to the effect that ‘all day long’ God had stretched forth His hands unto this disobedient and gainsaying people of Israel (Romans 10:21).

“It was not that God was offering the establishment of the Millennium to Israel after Paul came on the scene, but as Paul says, God was trying to provoke Israel to jealousy by beginning a new dispensation with Paul and by sending salvation to the Gentiles (Romans 10:19, 11:11).

“Remember that the Body of Christ is a joint body of Jews and Gentiles. Even though God had cast aside the national kingdom promises to Israel for the duration of this dispensation, He still had a purpose in saving some of them before the final blow of judgment would be struck in the desolation of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.”

Here’s what Baker himself has to say about Satan’s counterfeit “sign and wonder” campaign aimed at duping uninformed, gullible Christians:

“What answer shall we give to those who claim they have the sign gifts today? Are there not thousands who claim to speak with tongues and claim to perform miraculous healings? Yes, and doubtless this movement is spreading like wildfire. This does not prove, however, that these manifestations are actually the working of the Spirit of God.

“There are several ways of explaining these phenomena. In the first place, the Scripture reveals that Satan has power to work lying signs (II Thess. 2:9; Rev. 13:14). Since Roman Catholics, Spiritists, Christian Scientists, and others all claim authenticated cases of so-called faith healing, it is evident not all healing miracles are from God.

“If Satan is energizing in these false cults, may he not also deceive even Christians to get them on the wrong track and away from God’s purpose in this dispensation? Then, of course, there is no doubt many supposedly miraculous healings are of a psychosomatic nature. Finally, the majority of cases of supposed healings, when investigated, are proven to be exaggerated or even fraudulent.

“While the gift of healing has passed away, as Paul said it would, we do have today what we might call elective healing. God is the sustainer and upholder of all life. We have full confidence in the efficacy of prayer, and we are sure God restores people to health when it is His will.

“Practically all so-called ‘divine healers’ begin with the false premise that sickness is the result of unfaithfulness or sin, and that it is not the will of God that many of His people should be sick.

“There are many scriptural proofs to the contrary. Paul’s thorn in the flesh, which is called an infirmity, apparently plagued his body to the end (II Cor. 12:5-10). Timothy was Paul’s most faithful co-worker, yet he was often sick (I Tim. 5:23). Trophimus, another faithful servant, had to be left behind sick (II Tim. 4:20). Epaphroditus became deadly sick because he labored so fervently for the Lord (Phil. 2:25-27).”