July 22, 2026 Show with Dr. Keith Evans on “Can Anyone Really Sell His Soul to the Devil”

July 22, 2026 Show with Dr. Keith Evans on “Can Anyone Really Sell His Soul to the Devil”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnson.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 22nd day of July 2026.

And I do want to, before I introduce my guest and topic for the day, call your attention to a very urgent prayer request I have for you. I just found out yesterday when I called my dear friend of many years, decades, in fact, Dr. Thomas J. Nettles, who is a brilliant Reformed Baptist historian, I was calling him to invite him back on the program to discuss his new book that will be coming out, The Baptist Standards, Our Catechisms, Confessions, and Creeds.

And for the first time ever, Dr. Nettles had to politely decline my invitation because he has been recently diagnosed with cancer of the salivary glands, and it makes it extremely difficult and uncomfortable to speak, especially for long periods of time.

So please pray for Dr. Tom Nettles, that the Lord would have mercy on him and heal him completely of this cancer, and that this would happen quickly, and that he would resume his labors for the kingdom of Christ unhindered, and that we would hear good news and praise reports from him soon.

That's Thomas J. Nettles, and you can also look up quite a number of interviews I have conducted with Dr. Nettles in the past on Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Just go to irontripandzionradio .com and type in the search engine Nettles, N-E-T-T-L-E-S, and you will be blessed, no doubt, by this brilliant brother in Christ that I do hope and pray we here on earth have around for a long time to come to continue to bless us with his wonderful mind that God has given him.

He is one of those rare men of God who, in spite of his brilliance and his profound gifts, he remains an extremely humble and graceful man of God, and that is always a blessing to experience. Also, I want you to mark your calendars for the two remaining interviews I have for this week.

First of all, we have a first-time guest joining us. We have Dr. J. Chase Davis is coming on the program tomorrow. He is going to be discussing his book, Offensive Christianity. This is a new publication of Founders Press.

The subtitle is Restoring the Strength of Men in a Feminized Age. That's J. Chase Davis. Looking forward to that interview tomorrow. And then on Friday, I have a returning guest who's joining us all the way from Kenya, Africa, and that would be Pastor Murungi Egweta, who is pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Kenya.

He is a delightful brother and doing a wonderful work there in Kenya, and he has written a new book on the TULIP, the five points of Calvinism. So, I hope that you join us for that conversation as well.

The Demonic Realm and the Question of Selling One’s Soul

Well, today we are being joined for the fourth time by a brother who has truly become one of my favorite guests of all time. He is truly a fascinating brother who is coming from a Reformed perspective on issues that are rarely addressed by Reformed theologians and scholars and pastors.

He is well-versed in the demonic realm, and we are thrilled to have him return to address something in that realm. Once again, I don't like the fact that most of the people talking about things connected to the demonic realm, not all, but most it seems, at least those in the limelight of the media are theologically aberrant, and it's a rich privilege to know someone who is coming from a theologically Reformed perspective who has a deep knowledge and understanding of these things and is not allowing the heretics to corner the market on any conversation on the demonic.

His name is Dr. Keith Evans. He is Associate Professor of Christian Counseling at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, and former Director of the Biblical Counseling Institute and Academic Dean at Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the demonic realm in relationship to Christian counseling.

And today we're going to be addressing, can anyone really sell his soul to the devil, and is the contract permanent? It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back for a fourth time to Our Interpretation Radio, Dr. Keith Evans.

Thank you so much, Chris. It's great to be back. Well, this is a controversial issue that we are going to be addressing today. There have been people throughout history who have claimed to have sold their souls to the devil, whether they were saying this in jest or whether they were just referring to something that they believed they were doing is not always known.

And just to give our listeners an example of some of these characters, there is an infamous blues musician who claimed to have sold his soul to the devil named Tommy Johnson. And he, I believe, was an early 20th century blues musician.

And we have Niccolo Paganini, the 19th century Italian violinist, was so blindingly fast and technically flawless that audiences genuinely believed he was possessed. Rather than denying it, Paganini actively encouraged the rumor to sell concert tickets.

So whether this was an actual sale of his soul to the devil is not known. We have more recent folks from pop culture. Bob Dylan made a very cryptic confession of possibly selling his soul to the devil by saying that he made a bargain a long time ago with the chief commander on this earth and in the world we can't see.

That was in 2004 on 60 Minutes. Katy Perry more recently said that she swore she wanted to be like the Amy Grant of music, but it didn't work out. So she sold her soul to the devil. And Snoop Dogg made a similar claim.

So we're going to be talking about this concept of selling one's soul to the devil or making a pact with the devil. Can this actually be something that literally occurs in anyone's life when they voluntarily do such a thing?

And we'll find out what is really happening when claims like this are made. But when did you first start to investigate these so-called claims of individuals selling their soul to the devil?

Yeah, I heard about it prior to my doctoral studies, and I kind of just dismissed it. Like, I guess it's just hyperbole. I guess people are just joking. You know, like I had seen the Katy Perry clip and I had seen the 60 Minute clip from Bob Dylan, and I just thought that they were goofing around, being tongue in cheek, talking about the cost of fame or, you know, saying, hey, this is a bad deal.

I didn't get what I was expecting. But then in my doctoral studies, studying the Puritans, they just talked about pacts with the devil, contracts with the devil, people making explicit covenant with the devil.

And they talk about it so plainly as a fact. You're really struck by it. And, you know, the main guy that I studied in my doctoral dissertation, William Perkins, prior to his conversion, was an occultist.

So he's actually speaking from personal experience with occult activity, not just like fancifully saying, oh, yeah, people make pacts with the devil or people are in league with the devil. And then, you know, hearing of even countries covenanting with the devil, such as Haiti and allegedly the constitution being carved on the back of a dead man's body, things like this, you know, just arrest the attention and make us ask, what is actually going on here?

Now, I had heard that a lot of the rumor or the folklore of Haiti being in many ways a horrible country in which to live, and sorry for anyone who may be listening in Haiti if you disagree with that, but the claim has been made it's because the enslaved citizens of Haiti had made some perform some kind of ritual to sell the souls to the devil in order to gain freedom from the bondage of France.

And I had heard that Pat Robertson, the charismatic televangelist, although he humorously, when running for president a number of years ago, president of the United States, claimed he was not a televangelist.

He clearly was a false televangelist, a word of faith movement televangelist. But he made that claim that Haiti had sold its soul to the devil. And apparently there might have been some half-truths in that, in that there was some kind in the 18th century, I believe, some kind of a voodoo ceremony that was performed.

But if you could maybe give us more details on that, if you have.

No, I was simply speaking to that voodoo ceremony that took place and seeking to, again, the slaves to gain their freedom. And what what will we do to gain our freedom? We're crying out for someone more powerful than us and reaching into the spiritual realms in unprescribed means in this voodoo ceremony.

So even if, you know, the claim that, you know, Haiti covenanted or took a pact with the devil is alleged to be myth, it's still rooted and grounded in genuine occultic activity that the nation was seeking to engage in.

So the whole concept of a human being somehow at least believing in it, but we're talking about the instances that may have existed and likely have existed. I'm sure there are people who have believed they were contacting Satan, perhaps through a prayer of some kind, some act of worship or ceremony, and whether or not Satan in their mind anyway actually manifested himself in their presence somehow visually or audibly.

Claims are made that people have made a bargain with the devil, usually involving some sought-after goal of fame or fortune, might even, who knows, be trying to win the love of someone who has been ignoring the individual, or could be a whole host of reasons.

But at least the most popular version in film and in literature is the idea of selling one's soul for either the possession of power and gifts and talents or riches. And is it even possible for someone to have that kind of control over their own soul?

Human Authority, Damnation, and Christ’s Temptation

Well, there's several aspects of the question that you're actually asking there, Chris. So the short answer to the last portion that you asked, do we have the power over our own soul to actually sell our soul and therefore enshrine our own damnation?

Absolutely not. And thanks be to God that we don't have power to enshrine our damnation, or we certainly would. And I don't mean that by we would all make pacts with the devil. I mean that we would have no power to deliver ourselves, and we would certainly unchangeably find ourselves on the way to hell.

So we're thankful to God that he is the one who saves our soul. He is the one who determines the ultimate destination of men without doing violence to the will of the individual. So, yeah, we don't have ultimate control.

And we even see that same notion show up in kind of an unassuming place in 1 Corinthians 4, where the apostle Paul says, I don't even have the ability to judge myself. And he's talking about clearing his own conscience, but he's making an ultimate point.

I don't have the ability to clear myself or condemn myself. That rests exclusively with God. And so that's a biblical point that we definitely have to camp on. But as far as someone entering into a pact with the devil in order to gain power and wealth and riches, we certainly see that attested to in the scriptures as well.

Like that concept is not alien from the Bible. In fact, that's really the height of the temptation offered to Christ, where Satan says, bow down to me. I mean, like this is an overt covenanting with Satan.

Would you be willing to bow down to me, and I will give you everything. That which you came to purchase by your death, let's take the shortcut. You don't have to go to the cross. I will give you the nations.

All you have to do is bow down to me. And so we see in perhaps the clearest interaction in scripture with the devil, we see one of these offers to sell one's soul. Now, of course, Christ didn't. Of course, Christ couldn't.

You know, if we entertain for just a second, just the blasphemous notion if he would have, he wouldn't have. But if he would have, the whole earth would have been uncreated. Everything would have ceased to exist because, you know, it's impossible for God to sin.

But we do truly have an offer for covenanting with the devil there.

And you mean the temptation to covenant with the devil? Yes, absolutely. Christ didn't even contemplate the idea. And why is this idea that someone can do that? There may be people that are so hateful toward God or indifferent toward God that they actually may attempt something like this.

Some hardcore rock musician who wants to improve his talent, he wants to improve his fame and fortune, does some kind of a ceremony or even praise to Satan, I want to make this deal with you. Why is this whole concept, if it can't happen, why is it still nonetheless a dangerous thing?

Overt and Implicit Pacts with Satan

Yeah, and when you say can't happen, I mean, we mean in an ultimate sense that we can't enshrine our own damnation. But I do think that the interactions themselves do take place. The Puritans talk about overt pacts with the devil or implicit pacts with the devil.

And overt, again, as you said, some manifestation either in one's mind or perhaps even actually appearing in form to be able to interact with, but an overt covenant with an unclean spirit. And why might one engage in such an overt activity?

Again, as we said, the offer of pleasure or honor or wealth or power or promotion. And then the implicit covenants that the Puritans speak of, well, using superstitious means to try and gain benefit. We even see this, I was just interacting with a seminary president from Uganda a couple of weeks ago.

He was over in the States, and he was sharing that as believers are converted out of just the animistic religion of their culture, that they still are tempted to go back to superstitious means when their kids get sick or when they have a financial difficulty.

And instead of turning to the church or turning to prayer, they go to the local witch doctor or they go to the local shaman or whatever, and they're not overtly covenanting with Satan, and yet they're using means that are entrusting themselves to satanic power and ability.

And that's not speaking to do they work or not, it's just speaking to there's an implicit bargain here. And so that's why the Puritans talked about overt covenants with Satan or implicit. And I think that we have to see that implicit would be even more subtle, more sinister, that even as my Ugandan friend is sharing, even some from the church are tempted to go back to those old superstitious means.

But if I might share one other story about why someone might engage in an overt pact with the devil. A Reformed pastor friend of mine, he's still a pastor, faithfully pastoring to this day, and when he first began in ministry, he was involved in prison ministry, where he was interacting with a man in that prison that he was ministering to, a man who was a very large man, very muscular man, powerful man, but also was very prominent in that particular prison.

And as this pastor, Reformed pastor was engaging in the prison ministry, the man shared with him at one point that he was in league with Satan, that this man was a Satanist and not in the mocking, you know, joking way of, oh, I just, you know, think all that Christianity stuff is ridiculous.

Yeah, I'm a Satanist, but sincerely was saying that no, he was a Satanist in covenant with the devil. And my pastor friend said, why would you be in league with Satan? Don't you know he hates you? And the man laughed in response, and he says, of course, we know that Satan hates us, but he gives us power.

And there was just a real recognition there and a plain speaking of, yeah, I know that this is an antagonist. I know that this is not somebody who's good. He's a malevolent being, but he gives us power.

And so why might someone enter into league with the evil one, either explicitly or implicitly? Well, for the benefit that the people.

Are seeking to obtain. Now, the odd thing is, the baffling thing is that the idea of the existence of an actual being called Satan indicates the likelihood that the person believes that God is real and that heaven and hell are real.

And why it boggles the mind, would anyone for any temporary benefit they think they're getting on this earth, why would they want to involve themselves in something that would lead to, at least in their idea of what a pact or a contract is, to an eternity of torture?

I mean, it's mind-boggling to me.

Impatience, Short-Sightedness, and the Value of the Soul

It is, and the Puritans have much to say about that. And it's actually really pastoral, what they have to say about that. So they give two reasons for why somebody would throw away their eternal soul, or at least try to throw away their eternal soul in order to gain temporal benefit.

And the two main reasons they give is their impatience under suffering, that the immediacy is just so significant, so ever-present. Well, I'll do anything. Just get me out of this. Right? And so that's similar to my Ugandan friend, the seminary professor, saying that people are tempted in the church to go back to these superstitious means because of suffering.

I'll try anything. I just want my son to stop suffering. Right? So that would be one reason. And then the second reason that the Puritans shared for why people would do this is short-sightedness, that people want an immediate and temporary gain because they're not realizing the distant suffering, and instead think the distant suffering is uncertain, but the immediate gain is what is important and what is beneficial.

And can I just read one quote? This is actually from William Perkins, but I think it's so helpful. He says this, let it be observed what a precious thing the soul of man is, that the purchasing whereof can make the proud spirit of Satan so far to abase itself as to be at the command of a silly woman.

He's not making fun of women there. He's talking about witches. Right. Again, what an inveterate malice Satan bears to man for which the gaining of a soul will do that which is so contrary to his nature.

It may teach man what to esteem of his soul and to not sell it for so base a price. I know that there's some old English there, a little bit hard to understand the prose, perhaps, but I hope we appreciate the point that Perkins is making, that Satan is willing to put himself at the back and call of a silly person for a time that he might gain an eternal soul.

And so do you see the pastoral point that Perkins is also making? It should teach us to value our souls so much more if such a proud spirit as these unclean spirits would be willing to go through such humiliation to put themselves at the whims of people in order to gain a soul, that we should value our souls that much more.

And I actually think that's an incredibly pastoral point.

Amen. And we have to go to our first commercial break. If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr. Keith Evans on the theme, Can Someone Really Sell Their Soul to the Devil?

Or you can ask a question on anything involving the demonic realm. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the USA.

Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, and I could readily understand how this topic may evoke questions from people who have intensely personal and private matters that they want to question my guest about because of the fact that they may have a past experience before they were born again where they believe that they sold their soul to the devil, or maybe they're not even born again yet.

Maybe they are beginning to have a conscience bothered by the Holy Spirit and they're being drawn by God, and they are terrified of this act that they have performed or believed that they did permanently make a contract with Satan that can never be broken and that hell is a certainty for them.

It could be a host of other things. So we will obviously respect your request to remain anonymous, but if it's a general question, please give us your first name, at least, city and state and country of residence, and don't go away.

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Puritan History and the Prevalence of Occultic Pacts

Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, we are having a fascinating conversation today with Dr. Keith Evans, who is on the faculty of Reform Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. And we are discussing, can anyone really sell his soul to the devil, and is the contract permanent?

And if you have a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Please only remain anonymous if your question is a personal and private one.

And we do have Daryl in Gastonia, North Carolina. And Daryl asks, it is fascinating that even in the days of the Puritans, it was prominent enough an occurrence for someone to be selling their soul to the devil, or thinking they were doing that, that the Puritans were commenting and writing about it.

I was wondering if you are aware of how prevalent this activity was, and when in history is it known to have existed?

That's a good question. I'm not a church historian, so it'd be fascinating to ask my colleague on the same faculty here at RTS Charlotte. And you're close enough in Gastonia, perhaps you could swing by RTS Charlotte sometime, Daryl.

But anyway, the answer to your question is, in the Puritan's day and age, the vast majority of people were not professing believers. It wasn't like an overt Christian culture or something like that. Everybody was Christian in the sense that it was a parish model.

And like, of course, you know, we're Christians, as opposed to we're sincere, like evangelicals who are pursuing the Lord Jesus. So it was a much more syncretistic culture in the sense of, you know, kind of everything goes in the culture.

As far as how prevalent it would be of people selling their souls to the devil, I would think it would be pretty comparable to our day and age, in the sense that you see the same type of consorting with unclean spirits throughout all times and all cultures.

And as a culture is more overtly Christian, as the gospel tide comes into a land, well, then people are going to be more covert about things like that. And so you're only going to see prominent people in our land saying, well, yeah, you know, I got so prominent in music or whatever by selling my soul to the devil.

Whereas, you know, kind of grassroots paganism is going to be taking place all times and all cultures. It's just going to be more quiet in an overtly Christian culture. So I don't think that the Puritans would have had much, much more people selling their souls to devils than in our day and age.

Perhaps it's just spoken about a little bit more overtly than it's spoken about in our day and age. So hopefully that's at least a start to the answer to your question.

Okay, we have Buddy in Dormont, Pennsylvania. And Buddy asks, do any of the Puritans you have read on this issue relate to people they were able to lead to Christ after having claimed to have sold their souls to Satan and perhaps they were used to do so or are just reporting on the.

Fact in their writing? Well, as I mentioned, William Perkins himself, as an occultist, at least in an implicit as opposed to explicit pact with the devil, was, you know, engaging with these spirits knowingly and knowing what he was doing.

And so he would be a personal example and prime example of one called out of Satanism, called out of occultism and into the Lord Jesus Christ. But as far as, you know, pastoral accounts or something like that, oh, we've had this conversion, we've had this, no, it doesn't show up in Puritans' writings in that way.

But they do point us back to the scriptures, and they point us back to perhaps the clearest example of somebody who is outwardly in league with the devil, so much so that he is sacrificing his children to demons and even filling all of Israel with the blood of the innocents as he's sacrificing them, you know, in occult worship and erecting occult worship in the temple of God.

And I'm, of course, referring to Manasseh, King Manasseh of Judah, and he is just a sinister fellow. As you read about him, certainly in Second Kings, Second Kings 21 just leaves it off like, man, this man is about as wretched and satanic as they get.

But as you read his account in Second Chronicles 33, it's amazing, his story of redemption, that as he's carried away in captivity and they put rings in his nose and he's suffering in the throes of prison, he cries out to the one true and living God, and the Lord hears his humility and the fact that he humbles himself in prayer.

And there's an incredible contrast between him and his son who follows after him, it says that his son who walks in evil did not humble himself like his father. And so Manasseh then goes back to Israel, goes back to Judah, and he cleanses the land from all of the impurity that he himself instituted.

And so you see him bearing the fruits of repentance. And so here's this clear example of a man who's in overt, outward, occultic, demonic activity, to the extent of human sacrifice, his own son included, and even he is not beyond redemption.

And what an amazing picture of redemption that is.

The Danger of Occult Practices and the Unpardonable Sin

Amen. We have Carl in Toronto, Canada, and Carl says, even though you are making the point that a person does not have enough control or authority over their own soul to permanently sell it to the devil, could not such an action, at least a believed experience, lead to great judgment of God even on this earth and great harassment and some kind of torment from the devil and his demons on this earth?

Absolutely. And whoever wrote that,.

That is a wonderful and perceptive question. And if anything I have been saying has remotely suggested that this is like just a trifle or that, oh, it's no big deal because, well, the Lord can redeem.

I am not speaking in a flippant way here. People should not be trifling with even implicit consorting with devils. That's why reaching into the spiritual realms in unprescribed ways, in unprescribed ways, I mean, like not through prayer and the reading of the word and through public worship and the sacraments like that, that's how we reach into the spiritual realms, right?

And so to trifle with superstitions and trifle with occultic practices, like Ouija boards aren't just like a game and tarot cards aren't just like, oh, silly fun or palm readings aren't something, you know, you just do on vacation.

Oh, wouldn't that be funny? Or horoscopes aren't just silly things people read. Like we shouldn't be trifling with even implicit consorting with devils because there are real entities alive and well reaching back if we find ourselves reaching into the spiritual realms in unprescribed ways.

And so to the question that you're making, it's an excellent one. Is there real suffering? Absolutely. Is this to be trifled with? Not at all. Is it possible that like this brings real and certain calamity and even perhaps ultimate calamity just because the person isn't beyond redemption doesn't mean it's not possible that one continues to walk?

In fact, that would be the natural course of things if the Lord doesn't intervene, that they continue walking straight into the fires of hell and tragically so. But your question makes me think actually of Esau, who for a trifle sold his birthright.

Now, I know that's not consorting with devils, but he despised his place in the covenant with the people of God. And then there's this terrifying verse in Hebrews 12, 17, I think that should haunt everyone.

It says that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears. That's not a trifle at all. Esau thought it was a trifle, but there was no means of repentance because the Lord did not grant repentance and he was not seeking repentance rightly, but he was seeking it in human efforts.

So this is not to be toyed with at all. Huh. We have William in Chicago, Illinois, and William says the age-old question that is frequently asked and often has different answers given to it is that famous verse in Matthew 12, 31 to 32 about the unpardonable sin.