Thank you Jeff, George and Jerry. I appreciate your thoughtful replies but they are going to take me a while to digest. Meanwhile, I'd like to ask you a specific question to see if you have a biblical answer to it. What if you had the impression of the Lord speaking to you within yourself? Let me try to be very clear. I have on two occasions in the past heard a voice inside my head I immediately knew was a demon. One said "she is praying to Jesus Christ," and that was before I was saved, the other, years later, said the name of a woman my whole church was praying for, as if to insist that I pray for her, although I was already doing that. In any case, whatever the message, I knew immediately they were demons. I had no doubt whatsoever. At one point I even sought exorcism, but in the charismatic context that's rather like sending the fox to the hen house I'm afraid. Others simply reassured me that if I have the Holy Spirit I can't have a demon inside me. Well, can they then project their voices inside a person's head from outside? I don't know the answer to any of this. I haven't had such an experience for many many years, but the demons may just be keeping a low profile.

I wasn't even going to write about any of that. I only did so you'd know I am making a distinction between those experiences and another kind of "voice" I heard on a few other occasions, but it's not quite accurate to say I "heard" anything in these cases. It was more like words etched on my soul, written rather than spoken. They were very brief messages of wise instruction about my current situation, and I took them as from the Lord, as I did not take the other voices.

I think now that I'm writing this that they too couldn't have been from the Lord, but I'm not sure biblically why not. Well, I think the answer might be that they produced no good fruit. As far as I know they didn't produce any bad fruit, but I would expect a true instruction from the Lord to have an impact on me that these didn't really have. Maybe I'm answering my own question. They didn't inspire me to greater obedience, or humility or any Christian virtue, they didn't provoke awe or any appropriate emotion in me. Hm. They were EMPTY. That is how I've been coming to see demonic communications lately, as empty. Now I have to admit that that describes this different kind of voice too.

This kind of experience isn't part of the gifts of the Spirit, but it is certainly a supernatural experience, which can only be from the Holy Spirit or the demonic spirits.

What about the experience I had once of having a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses come to the door and I prayed for an answer to them, and "I will not give My glory to another" from Isaiah came immediately to mind. Now THAT has to be the Lord, surely.

But that's not a voice inside me, or a writing inside me.

Well, I didn't have all this in mind when I started this thread, and I'm afraid it's the sort of thing people probably don't have a clear answer to, but there it is. I do associate it with the charismatic movement although these particular experiences are not the gifts of the Spirit.

There is a young man who gives what he calls a Bible Study which he posts at Sermon Audio, and he's said a lot about how exposure to certain kinds of teachings bring demons to a person. I feel I need to deal with all this somehow and I'm not sure how.

It's very upsetting because it makes me wonder if the Lord is with me at all.

Perhaps just more intensive study of the Bible will do it.