{"id":15332,"date":"2026-01-06T02:50:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T02:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=15332"},"modified":"2026-01-06T02:50:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T02:50:16","slug":"how-much-do-demons-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=15332","title":{"rendered":"How much do demons know?"},"content":{"rendered":"


By Robin Schumacher<\/span><\/span>, Exclusive Columnist Monday, January 05, 2026<\/span>Unsplash\/Marek Piwnicki<\/span><\/p>\n

On October 27, 1989, while walking from her Middle School in Bay Village, Ohio, to a local shopping center, 10-year-old Amy Mihaljevic\u00a0was kidnapped. Sadly, on February 8, 1990, the girl’s body was found in a rural Ashland County, Ohio field. To date, Amy\u2019s killer has not been identified.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0documentary\u00a0detailing the events surrounding her kidnapping and murder, Amy\u2019s best friend revealed that just before Mihaljevic\u2019s kidnapping, she and Amy had been playing with a Ouija Board in Amy\u2019s room. Amy jokingly asked the board when she was going to die. With both girls\u2019 hands lightly touching the board\u2019s pointer, it moved slowly and spelled out one word.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

S-O-O-N<\/em><\/p>\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?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

And, bumping things up to a higher-level question, how much knowledge do demons actually have?<\/p>\n

The mind of a demon<\/strong><\/p>\n

During an exorcism,\u00a0Stephen Joseph Rossetti, an American Catholic priest,\u00a0relays\u00a0how 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 \u2014 what is sometimes referred to as \u201coccult knowledge\u201d \u2014 which this woman manifested. Roessetti posits that, in such cases, there is a fusion of the demon\u2019s mind with its human victim that allows such knowledge and purpose to pour out.<\/p>\n

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: \u201cAnd he [the demon] said, \u2018I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets\u201d (1 Kings 22:22).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s and constrained by creaturely limits, moral corruption, and divine sovereignty.<\/p>\n

As you might expect, only God is portrayed in Scripture as omniscient: \u201cCan anyone teach God knowledge\u201d (Job 21:22); \u201cGreat is our Lord and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite\u201d (Ps. 147:5).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Knowing the future and our thoughts is also limited to God alone: \u201cWho is like Me? Let him proclaim and declare it \u2026 let them declare to them the things that are coming and the events that are going to take place\u201d (Is. 44:6\u20137); \u201cYou alone know the hearts of all the children of mankind\u201d (1 Kings 8:39).<\/p>\n

When it comes to foreknowledge, Scripture does mention \u201cspirits of divination\u201d such as one example found in the book of Acts: \u201cIt 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\u201d (Acts 16:16). Paul\u2019s exorcism of the spirit evidently changed her foretelling abilities to some extent because her owners recognized the difference and had Paul arrested, although we\u2019re not told exactly what capabilities left her when the demon departed.<\/p>\n

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\u201331), recognize individuals (Acts 19:15), can form plans and strategies (Eph. 6:11), and know hidden theological realities like who Jesus was (\u201cI know who you are \u2014 the Holy One of God!\u201d – Mark 1:24). They often know orthodox truths better than us with James stating, \u201ceven the demons believe \u2014 and shudder\u201d (vs. 2:19).<\/p>\n

Dr. Ed Murphy, in his book\u00a0The Handbook for Spiritual Warfare<\/em>, 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: \u201cThe devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him\u201d (John 13:2).<\/p>\n

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 \u201cpredict\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

As to truth and its adherence, the demon\u2019s 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).<\/p>\n

All that said, what about the case of Amy Mihaljevic and the Ouija Board? Scripture makes it clear that demons don\u2019t know the future, so any demon behind the board\u2019s movements couldn\u2019t have known what was about to happen to\u00a0her. 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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the end, demons\u2019 knowledge makes them dangerous, but never ultimate. If G. K. Chesterton is right when he writes in his book\u00a0The Everlasting Man<\/em>\u00a0that \u201cNature is always looking for the supernatural,\u201d only two choices of supernatural knowledge exist for us: God\u2019s and the enemy\u2019s. Understanding what demons know can be helpful, \u201cso that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes\u201d (2 Cor. 2:11), but pursuing their knowledge is off limits for Christians.<\/p>\n

In his book,\u00a0The Haunting of Bishop Pike<\/em>, Dr. Merrill Unger chronicles the tragedy of listening to demons and provides a good warning we should all adhere to: \u201cThe [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 \u2026 one that must be paid throughout eternity.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Robin Schumacher, Exclusive Columnist Monday, January 05, 2026Unsplash\/Marek Piwnicki On October 27, 1989, while walking from her Middle School in Bay Village, Ohio, to a local shopping center, 10-year-old Amy Mihaljevic\u00a0was kidnapped. Sadly, on February 8, 1990, the girl’s body was found in a rural Ashland County, Ohio field. To date, Amy\u2019s killer has<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[534],"class_list":["post-15332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-christian-living","tag-demons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}