I’ve heard numerous accounts of demons literally scratching people – in many cases, young seers. Sometimes, people scratch themselves while fighting them off.
One day a teen in my youth ministry visited me, and I noticed a bad cut on her upper arm. It was about 3 inches long and maybe a centimeter wide, as if a fingernail had dug deeply into her flesh, breaking the skin.
This teen is a seer (and since this story, has graduated from my youth group). I asked what happened to her arm.
She looked at her cut, and chuckled. “Oh,” she said. “I did that in my sleep while tearing a demon off my arm.”
Wow. I knew this student had many nightmares and had demonic encounters when she slept. She was well versed in how to pray and make them go away. Other adults and I had prayed with her, and these nightmares would go away for a time, but always they’d come back.
It’s like she had a magnet on her for demonic attacks. You could make them leave for a time, but as a boomerang, they’d come back.
Instantly, the thought popped in my head that her obsession with Harry Potter had created a spiritual doorway which attracted these entities to attack her. When I say obsession, I’m probably being extreme. She wasn’t obsessed, but she was a very strong fan of the Harry Potter franchise. I knew in my heart that this was the doorway, but I also knew I couldn’t tell her to stop the Harry Potter stuff.
Well, I could tell her, and she might have obeyed, but doing so would be an authoritarian, legalistic move, creating resentment and confusion in her, inspiring a desire to rebel. The better advisor would be God, who would know how to bring truth to her with love.
So I leaned back in my chair, and I said, “Ok. This has to stop. You have an open doorway in your life. These things are being invited by you to attack. You need to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal what it is.” She nodded and said ok.
I didn’t see her again for several days, when she dropped by the house again. We chatted some, and she said softly, “So I found the open doorway.”
I looked at her. “Oh?”
“Harry Potter.”
Magic Harry Potter Wand
I smiled. “Tell me more.”
She said, “Specifically a magic Harry Potter wand.”
“Really!” I asked what she did.
She said she broke it and burned it in a fire in her back yard. She also got rid of all her Harry Potter books and paraphernalia, and deleted all the Harry Potter pictures off her computer. “For good measure,” she said.
And then I asked, “How have you slept since then?”
She smiled that great, wide, joyful smile of hers. “Nightmare free.”
The spiritual door was closed.
I said, “You know, of course, that I knew it was Harry Potter.”
She nodded.
Now, I’m not saying Harry Potter stuff is evil or a doorway for everyone. But it was for her.
When a spiritual leader decides to make something “wrong” or “illegal” for everyone, then it becomes legalism, a control system, and I reject that.
However, we do have an Advisor that knows the Truth for everyone, and He’s available to ask… He informed me of this open doorway in this student’s life, and when she asked Him, He informed her as well.
This student is very sensitive to the spirit world. She sees all the time. There are many avenues that enemy spirits and demons attack her. She has nightmares from time to time, related to other situations and warfare in her life. She is a scalpel in that she sees precisely into the spirit world, and the enemy hates being seen and tries to blunt her through many spiritual attacks.
But armed with the Holy Spirit and a personal walk with Jesus Christ, she is equipped to handle it.
However, this was a major doorway in her life and it was closed. It was specifically a “magic wand.” I don’t know that all the Harry Potter stuff was at fault, and she may have reintroduced some of it to her life, testing to see if it would bring harm, because she really enjoyed this fantasy series.
If you find yourself under attack in a similar way, ask the Holy Spirit, in the name of Jesus, to reveal what the doorways are.