How much do demons know?
On October 27, 1989, while walking from her Middle School in Bay Village, Ohio, to a local shopping center, 10-year-old Amy Mihaljevic was kidnapped. Sadly, on February 8, 1990, the girl's body was found in a rural Ashland County, Ohio field. To date, Amy’s killer has not been identified.
In a documentary detailing the events surrounding her kidnapping and murder, Amy’s best friend revealed that just before Mihaljevic’s kidnapping, she and Amy had been playing with a Ouija Board in Amy’s room. Amy jokingly asked the board when she was going to die. With both girls’ hands lightly touching the board’s pointer, it moved slowly and spelled out one word.
S-O-O-N
Those who have studied the subject of demonology warn that occult tools such as Ouija Boards can act as points of contact between people and the demonic. If that happened in this case, and Amy and her friend were unlucky enough to come into contact with a demon, how did it know that Amy was about to die?
And, bumping things up to a higher-level question, how much knowledge do demons actually have?
The mind of a demon
During an exorcism, Stephen Joseph Rossetti, an American Catholic priest, relays how the possessed woman called him by a nickname he was given in junior high school 60 years ago, which no one in the present day knew. He says that one sign of demon possession is knowledge of the unknown — what is sometimes referred to as “occult knowledge” — which this woman manifested. Roessetti posits that, in such cases, there is a fusion of the demon’s mind with its human victim that allows such knowledge and purpose to pour out.
You see a few examples of this in Scripture, such as one in the Old Testament when a demon tells God how he will help undo King Ahab in battle: “And he [the demon] said, ‘I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets” (1 Kings 22:22).
Getting back to the question of what demons know, the Bible is somewhat sparse on the subject, but it does provide a few clues that help us understand the extent of their intelligence and understanding.
Demons are portrayed in the Bible as real, personal, intelligent spiritual beings with significant but limited (in relation to God) cognitive abilities. Their knowledge is greater than humans' in some areas, yet far inferior to God’s and constrained by creaturely limits, moral corruption, and divine sovereignty.
As you might expect, only God is portrayed in Scripture as omniscient: “Can anyone teach God knowledge” (Job 21:22); “Great is our Lord and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite” (Ps. 147:5).
Knowing the future and our thoughts is also limited to God alone: “Who is like Me? Let him proclaim and declare it … let them declare to them the things that are coming and the events that are going to take place” (Is. 44:6–7); “You alone know the hearts of all the children of mankind” (1 Kings 8:39).
When it comes to foreknowledge, Scripture does mention “spirits of divination” such as one example found in the book of Acts: “It happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave-girl having a spirit of divination met us, who was bringing her masters much profit by fortune-telling” (Acts 16:16). Paul’s exorcism of the spirit evidently changed her foretelling abilities to some extent because her owners recognized the difference and had Paul arrested, although we’re not told exactly what capabilities left her when the demon departed.
The Bible depicts demons as possessing higher levels of real intelligence and awareness than us and that they are rational, communicative beings (Mark 1:24; Luke 8:28–31), recognize individuals (Acts 19:15), can form plans and strategies (Eph. 6:11), and know hidden theological realities like who Jesus was (“I know who you are — the Holy One of God!” - Mark 1:24). They often know orthodox truths better than us with James stating, “even the demons believe — and shudder” (vs. 2:19).
Dr. Ed Murphy, in his book The Handbook for Spiritual Warfare, asserts that demons observe human subjects, can ascertain their weaknesses, and go about planting thoughts into their hearts and minds in a way where the person may have no idea the thoughts originated from a supernatural source. This falls in line with what happened to Judas: “The devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him” (John 13:2).
Murphy intimates that a demon's knowledge and agenda are along the lines of being expert social engineers or hackers: they have a massive database of human history and psychology that allows them to “predict” behavior and manipulate systems. But in the end, they are ultimately barred from knowing God's secret purposes and the exact timing of future things.
As to truth and its adherence, the demon’s knowledge is corrupted by rebellion, distorted by hatred, pride, and deception. While theologically informed and knowledgeable, they are morally blind. Put a different way, demons believe true things but hate the truth; their problem is not lack of knowledge but pride and lack of submission to God. And as the Bible says, knowledge without obedience produces terror, not salvation (James 2:19).
All that said, what about the case of Amy Mihaljevic and the Ouija Board? Scripture makes it clear that demons don’t know the future, so any demon behind the board’s movements couldn’t have known what was about to happen to her. Perhaps it was aware of the killer stalking her and inferred what was going to take place, similar to how a skilled chess player may not be able to read minds but is capable of reading patterns.
In the end, demons’ knowledge makes them dangerous, but never ultimate. If G. K. Chesterton is right when he writes in his book The Everlasting Man that “Nature is always looking for the supernatural,” only two choices of supernatural knowledge exist for us: God’s and the enemy’s. Understanding what demons know can be helpful, “so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes” (2 Cor. 2:11), but pursuing their knowledge is off limits for Christians.
In his book, The Haunting of Bishop Pike, Dr. Merrill Unger chronicles the tragedy of listening to demons and provides a good warning we should all adhere to: “The [conveying of knowledge] through demonic power is not free and purely beneficent. They always operate under the principle of compensation, with a price tag attached to them … one that must be paid throughout eternity.”
Robin Schumacher is an accomplished software executive and Christian apologist who has written many articles, authored and contributed to several Christian books, appeared on nationally syndicated radio programs, and presented at apologetic events. He holds a BS in Business, Master's in Christian apologetics and a Ph.D. in New Testament. His latest book is, A Confident Faith: Winning people to Christ with the apologetics of the Apostle Paul.
