Can Satan Read Our Minds?
By Eric Barger

(We receive many questions, requests for prayer and help, etc. This was a question and my response we received in December 2000.)

In a message dated 12/10/2000 1:52:18 PM EST, --------@airmail.net writes:

<< Greetings from Plano. I am wondering if you will supply some info. on something or at least your view. A question has been passed around some of the lists that I am on and I haven't found any scripture basis on an answer.

The questions are these:
(1) Can Satan read your thoughts?
(2) Is God the only one who has that ability to do so?
(3) Is there a scripture in the Word that says "Only God knows the thoughts of man"?

Thank you for your time and I have enjoyed your ministry page so far. I will continue to surf it and download for spiritual teachings, what you have so generously shared with us.

In Jesus Name and God's blessings to you and yours
Donna
>>

Hi Donna!

Your question is one that I have pondered and researched myself. In fact, in both my seminars and my book (Disarming the Powers of Darkness) I address it momentarily.

We have no Scriptural basis to believe that Satan can read our thoughts. Though there is honest disagreement by good, Godly men on the issue, I find no basis in the Bible for this idea. Satan is NOT omniscient. The only way he can tell what we are thinking or if he is having effect on us is by what we say or what we do. This is just another reason why we need to be careful - not paranoid - but careful to measure and control our words. Many Scriptures speak to this, in particular Proverbs 18:21 which says that life and death are in the power of the tongue!

II Corinthians 2:11 (NIV) states: "For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God."

This assures us that no man knows our thoughts. Guess that pretty much discounts the fortune tellers, doesn't it? The only way anyone claiming to be a psychic can tell any person anything about their life or circumstances is by natural foreknowledge or through the prompting of demons who are privy to family history, events or circumstances which make it merely appear that the fortuneteller has some sort of supernatural psychic power.

Mind reading and psychic "powers" come under the heading of occultism and are clearly forbidden by God in the strongest way. See Deuteronomy 18:9-12. (my book Entertaining Spirits Unaware has a complete treatise on this.)

More assurance on this issue is Jeremiah 17:9-10. It says: "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? "I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve."

Scripture never indicates that God shares this ability to examine the heart and mind of man with the Devil or anyone else. Satan may have a conception of what a person may be thinking. But he does have a few thousand years of experience to draw from. He knows how men usual think and react, knows their weaknesses, both corporately and personally and of course is out to exploit them.

I hope that helps you have a better understanding of this. Knowing these things has enhanced my personal understanding of the Christian's actual God-ordained authority which comes from our position in Christ. We are His ambassadors and posses overcoming victory as Believers in our struggle with the Evil One - something Satan wants us to doubt and walk in confusion about. He is defeated; has nowhere near the power and none of the authority which our God has; and as God's children, we are victorious warriors in Christ with all of the power necessary to overcome all the power of the Devil! (Luke 10:19)

Amen!

Eric Barger
Take A Stand! Ministries
www.ericbarger.com

* For more on this topic and on Spiritual Warfare see Disarming the Powers of Darkness.

(c) copyright 2000, 2016, Eric Barger