This Week in Witchcraft - S1:E14

Defining Witchcraft as Demonic Appropriation of Alternate Authority

Welcome to This Week in Witchcraft. The elements have been conquered with intense heat, and witchcraft has become more cosmopolitan. Can you spot it out in the wild?

I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Deerem. David Kazin. And Andrew Hudson. We're changing a little bit of our routine here, and Michael has brought up a good point that we should go back over what we are doing here with This Week in Witchcraft, so we can best serve you and best give definitions to where you can follow us along as we go out and seek witchcraft in the wild.

Michael? Yeah, so this segment really came out of a study that we had here at church, wherein I had observed that in the daily Bible reading, you know, you read through the Bible in a year, there are so many instructions in the scriptures that tell believers to reject witchcraft.

And the different types of witchcraft that are listed are many and specific. And in reflecting upon how the Word of God, all scripture, is inspired by God and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, this applies to these passages as well that forbid witchcraft and tell us to be on our guard.

I reflected upon the fact that normally, as we read the Bible and we see expressions like that, that we say to ourselves, possibly, oh, this would be really good for people who live in other parts of the world.

This would be very helpful for missionaries who are talking to tribal people who maybe have a witch doctor nearby. And of course, that is true. But the scriptures are also applicable to our lives here in the so-called modern, advanced, western first world.

Just because we have a different setting, a different context, doesn't mean that witchcraft has gone away. Oh, it's still here. And if we're not recognizing it for what it is and then opposing it, then we're not being biblical.

So in the study on witchcraft, we needed a good definition. And leaning on the work of others who have been very thoughtful about the matter, namely Joe Boot from the Ezra Institute for one, I came up with a very short definition for witchcraft.

Witchcraft is demonic appropriation of alternate authority. And the idea is that authority is determinative of what is right and wrong, true and false, good and evil, beautiful and ugly. What is the authority?

What's the standard by which we're making this judgment call? Now, of course, the Bible tells us that God is our creator and he is the one by his own character in Revelation that defines all of this. He is the authority.

If we try to define our world and give expression to the values of our world around us with some other type of authority, where is that sourced from? Jesus says that the devil is the father of all lies.

Satan is the father of lies. So ultimately, every deception in which we are trying to call evil good and good evil, trying to say that the ugly is beautiful and the beautiful is ugly, every time we try and mess with those standards and come up with something alternate is sourced demonically.

So that witchcraft is the demonic appropriation of alternate authority. Now how does this square with the scriptures as the scriptures talk to us about witchcraft? We are reminded from the Bible in more than one place that the power of witchcraft, the power which lies behind the witchcraft and the idolatry in the scriptures is demonic.

We are therefore warned away from these things, that we're not to dabble in them, we're not to mix it up with it. How can we have fellowship with demons when we're in fellowship with the Lord? We're not going to share a cup with demons, we share a cup with Christ.

And Jesus himself identified witchcraft going on in even the most religious and sacred of places. As he points to the scribes and the Pharisees, the religious leaders of a corrupted second temple Judaism, and he says to these religious, very religious Jews, he says to them, you are of your father, the devil.

And in fact, Jesus describes the synagogue system of second temple Judaism and says this is a synagogue of Satan. So what is Jesus doing there? He is identifying witchcraft even in the most religious of places, even in the places where you don't think that witchcraft would ever be.

And this should alert us to how we are to interpret witchcraft going on around us. There are many different terms in the Old Testament that describe witchcraft, words like magic, words like sorcery, words like necromancy, enchantment, and so on.

And we did a deep dive into the grammar of those words at a study that we had here at our church, and we're just identifying the fact that there are all kinds of manipulations going on, manipulations of words, manipulations of language.

And this is at the heart of any actual ritual that comes forward. I mean, when you think of witchcraft, people unfortunately begin to think of ugly green women with big noses, warts and black hats and cauldrons and cats and so on and so forth.

And those are all the hokey incidentals that we think of as that which comes as the symptoms of witchcraft. These are the expressions of witchcraft. But actually, it all begins with the manipulation of words, trying to get at the manipulation of authority, trying to redefine everything in terms of demonic values rather than the values of God revealed infallibly, inerrantly in the scriptures.

So given that, we need to recognize that witchcraft is going on all around us all the time, and we need to be able to identify it, reject it, be able to work against it. And that's the goal of this segment, This Week in Witchcraft.

And we're called to a life of daily, recognizing that we are in a conflict, that there are strongholds, lofty speculations raised up against the knowledge of God. And we are to take all these thoughts, captivity to the supremacy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And that's what we're trying to do with this segment. We hope it's helpful in getting you equipped to spot witchcraft in the wild as we see it manifest time and time again. And Andrew made a statement earlier before we started recording.

Spotting Witchcraft in Media and the “No More Than Two” Article

Andrew, you said something about the prevalence of witchcraft. You see it all the time. You're inundated with it constantly. And my refrain was, what should I even select? I'm at a loss sometimes to even unimmerse, come out of all the propaganda, all of the witchcraft that's spouted on a daily, hourly basis from all forms of media.

Even on my phone, I have a newsfeed, and on that newsfeed has witchcraft that finds its way onto my phone. I was scrolling through my newsfeed and saw that there was a researcher who had published this study saying that brain function is negatively impacted for women having more than two children.

Okay. Well, that's interesting. Not necessarily witchcraft to begin with. So when you start reading it, it's saying that it affects late life cognition. And then it goes into who conducted the study. Well, interestingly, the team was led by a researcher, a PhD, who was an economist.

And so you're thinking to yourself, what does this economist have to do with all this? So that piqued my interest a little bit further, and he defines that, or he says that late life cognition is essential for maintaining independence, independence is a charged word there, and being socially active, maybe he has a different definition of what socially active is, and productive in late life.

And then he goes on to maybe, we see behind the curtain a little bit, for societies ensuring the cognitive health of older population is essential for extending work lives and reducing healthcare costs and care needs.

So he's definitely framing it from the economic costs of people being a burden if they're not doing what he thinks is productive. When you go down to the very end of the study, the mask fully comes off and it says the final effect noted was that having an additional child can cause a lower participation for women and lower labor, which leads to fewer hours being worked and lower earnings.

It says that labor force participation can be positively impacted cognitive function for both men and women. So in the end, this economist is trying to steer women to the workforce in the claims that it will be more beneficial for their late life cognitive abilities and there will be a less care cost associated with increased children and those women.

Most of our, wow, I mean that's, wow, what an article to find. Most of our segments, when we bring things on this week in witchcraft, we see this person is redefining life, redefining a baby, redefining love, redefining marriage.

You've brought up this person has redefined productivity, productivity, this person's.

Redefining socially active worth, worth, yes, worth as a human being.

So we would say God defines what a human being is. God defines what is worthwhile. God defines what is productive. God defines what is love. God defines what is life. And this economist, you have a study show that this guy has appropriating his own authority to redefine what is productive and he would appeal, well, this is what everybody says.

This is what everybody thinks. Maybe we should have a democratic vote on who's worthwhile and who should, in their late stages in life, well, you're not being all that productive or kind of a drain on society.

So hey, thanks, you know, Obamacare.

So anyway, what about Oikonomos, the economy of the home? Is that not a place to be productive? Yes. So I think Dylan is sneaking up on something here, but I can see him ready to chime in.

I'm about ready to burst because it's personal and to a certain degree, and I won't elaborate on that. It's like you're asking your children to slap corn above the door and not take care of you by not having more children.

You're viewing children as non-productive, non-worthy in the earlier stages of life. And you are not practicing, if this is the case, you are not practicing at all a biblical household economy. You're not practicing biblical deathbed hospitality.

That's right. You are disdaining the family in all ways for the sake of, and let's get this clear, it's not for the sake of your own economics. They're couching it as this, but it's for the economics of the state and the fiat system that they have built up.

And it's a Ponzi scheme that they're trying to taper. And the way they're trying to taper it is by getting rid of you as the carbon that they want to reduce. So no more than two. No more than two. Let's make it to, yeah, no more than two, which

It's not a one child policy. We're generous here. It's a two child policy. And it still doesn't fulfill the requirements for a healthy population. I thought children were a blessing.

Yes. I thought that the rest at the end of the day was a reward for those who labor. Yes.

And the more children you have, the more production they're going to have later on in life as a group. It's just, it's maddening is what it is. It's demonic.

Yes. Yeah. So God says to his special creation, those made in his image, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Okay. And so that's the framework in giving Eve to Adam. And the Lord looks upon what he did in those six days and he says, very good.

And so this author wants to redefine what the good is. And the good is not the glory of God in the multiplying and productivity of the God fearing image bearer, those who are made in God's image. But the good, according to this article, is the good of society, which market how demonic it's called in terms of the greater good.

Oh yes. It's not the greater good for the greatest good is defined by the glory of God. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And the first instructions out the gate are be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.

Here's how you do that. But for the good of society, only have two children or less. If you want to be productive, if you want to have a good life, if you, if you want to make a meaningful contribution to the society, a sustainable contribution to the society, then women, you need to have two or fewer children.

Notice how this is directed at women's health. I wonder if that tagline has been present at all lately in the discussions in our country, women's health with the leaked document from the Supreme Court.

Well, you can handle it on the procreation side or you can handle it on the more spicy ways, right? Yeah. And there is a very clear underpinning here of, you know, women protect yourself against men, wives protect yourself against husbands.

Don't allow there to be procreation beyond a certain level because that's bad for society. You don't get to paradise that way.

Yes. Yes. And we've talked about paradise. Yeah. And in paradise, the command comes fill the earth and subdue it. Not outside of paradise, inside of paradise. And now outside of paradise, we're saying, no, have less kids or, or to a certain degree in certain articles, kill your kids.

And it's exactly the opposite of what we see.

God commanding of his creation in paradise and a despair is the pathos of paganism. So the salvation story of paganism is man is mankind. Humankind is a parasite, a blight upon Gaia and we're the problem.

The fewer of us, the better the way towards paradise. The way for salvation is our elimination. And thus the despair of paganism is evident beneath this article. What a sad thing that is. And I like the points that you were bringing up about what is productivity, you know, what is the actual definition of that?

It's been messed with in this article, but you know, how does God see productivity and what does God's plan for the family? This is something that is a huge blank spot in the North American evangelical church.

Let me tell you, it's a burden upon my heart. What is the Christian picture? What is the Christian picture of how family moves forward? For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

And all of a sudden you have another family, right? And yet there is still the honoring of father and mother. And there are many folks that I have known and people in our church even today that are operating in the givens of our current society as Christians and faithful and they are being sacrificial and they are loving and honoring their father and their mother in their elderly age and providing for them.

Okay. And right now the context is one in which the care of the elderly is outside the home in the main, in the main, even as the education of the children is outside the home, even as the counseling of the, of the sick and hurting of the heart is outside the home.

Even as any kind of, uh, all, almost all medical care must be thought of as outside the home. Everything economics, economics, uh, making money, everything that has to be outside the home, everything that was inside the home in the Bible has been moved outside the home.

And we have to begin to think, is that right? Is that right? In the cult of the expert, which is part of paganism, the home is no place for health, no place for the care of the elderly, no place for the education of children, no place for the counseling and comfort of the hurting.

It must all be taken care of by experts outside the home. And that's the cultural milieu in which we live. But we need to begin to think more biblically and back up. And I'm not saying don't use the hospitals and I'm not saying don't use any resources and so on, but I am observing from the scriptures that children are to honor their parents and in their older age, let's talk about a woman who has had a child, two children, three children, four children, and she has given of herself sacrificially to her child.

Okay? And now she's in her older age. She's not thinking as clearly as she once did. Her health is not as robust as it once was. She is not as productive for the greater good, right? She can't be out there with the hammer and the sickle and getting things done.

So what value is she anymore? It's iceberg time, right? Right. But what does the scripture say? What does the scripture say? What is the vision we have in scripture? The picture we have in the word of God is those who are in their latter years, the elderly, the sick, the infirm, being brought into the home of their children, children honoring their father and mother, caring for them in incredibly difficult, complicated, messy situations, but they're serving them.

And then the children, the children's children see this and God is glorified. I mean, this is the vision of the scriptures that I think is worth talking about in very sensitive ways because again, I'm not bringing this up to lay a condemning burden on any one who has loved their father and their mother and overseen with a special attention the care of their ailing mother or ailing father in a facility outside the home.

I'm not laying any condemnation upon them at all. And there's usually a very well thought out plan of action that went into that. But I would note the direction the Bible would lead us and there needs to be some discipleship and some growth in that understanding as we move forward, especially when we begin to think about the future generations.

Sure. And, you know, I would say some of this is cultural. It doesn't have to be that you have to find the expert outside the home. Why are the days gone when the expert comes to your home and helps you understand what is needed to care for your child during this time of fever?

Probably some good business models in there, isn't there?

Health insurance to be one of them and the fact that the government's going to subsidize.

All of that. Yeah. But the doctor should come to your home, right?

He should make a call. Well, that's one of the ways that they they mitigate some of their spending so they can get more and more is by you going to them. And they have more power and control in those areas as well.

Whereas if you're in your own home, you can say no very easily. If you are not, they have loads more control over you and they have you hooked up.

I would also say on the back side of it, although Christians are never too and Christianity is not a death cult. OK, well, we're embracing, you know, oh, I can't wait to die. Right. And that is not biblical because death is still an enemy and Christ is going to put death down.

Amen. OK, he's going to have victory over death, but it's still an enemy. And anybody who has watched and as I have watched a parent die. Over time, you're watching someone rob you of your loved one. You're watching a robbery right in front of you.

You can't do anything about it. So death is still an enemy. However, the fear of death, the fear of death, which is slavery, puts us into the fear of man, which is a snare. If we fear death, then we will be doing things that are unbiblical and we'll be looking at death as I have to submit myself and give or give my loved ones to two experts because I'm so afraid of death.

Right. Well, again, I'm not against using medicine. I am all for using every good advancement that there is for the good of my my wife and my children and so on. I am for that. Yeah.

However, we should not fear death. So I really like the fact that we chose this this article for this week in witchcraft talking about definitions of productivity, definitions of a valuable life. And the witchcraft is changing those definitions and said, all right, so what is the biblical model?

It says, all right, well, we talk about honoring our father and mother, talking about how a gray hair is a crown of glory, talking about, you know, just from a practical, you know, economic level, you know, the economy of the home versus, you know, outside the home on a practical level as well.

Having those people, those older generation, those people that have been there in your home, that's how you help preserve culture. Amen. Yes. I mean, it's it's how do you have values passed down person to person to person and your children?

And you mentioned that your children's children see that. Yeah. Father to son, father to son.

Father. Yes. And, you know, sometimes this is viewed in a very negative light about, you know, there's a lot of emotion that goes in with this. What if I didn't do a good enough job? What if I didn't help them in the right way?

What if they had lived, you know, 18 more months? If we had used a different path, there's all these concerns and it should be approached with prayer. Uh, the bringing of parents into the home as well is something that should always be done in the fear of the Lord and according to the scriptures.

And everybody has to recognize that we're here to serve one another, right? And that's why I'm saying there has to be discipleship that has to happen for people to recognize, you know, none of us are here to, to demand our own privileges and rights.

You know, it is not an easy thing, but it is a Christian thing to serve one another.

Can we say something to the opposite side of the coin to originally, I don't know where my parents were at as far as coming into the home with me later on, but I, I do see a humble attitude toward coming toward me rather than me having to go to them in those situations.

And I think that's, that's probably needed too because I've, I've seen that in family where the help was there, it was going to happen, but it was going to happen if those who are older were coming to the established family where they were at the growing family where they were at it, there is a give and take and there is, there is a sacrifice with, with taking some of that service as well.

And I'd like to see more of that. I'd like to see in my, in my generation, more going after parents and taking them back in. I'd also like to see in my parents' generation, a humility to leave where they're at maybe and come to your children as well.

And this has been observation in ministry last 15 years. Is that very often there is help available, right? But there is an awful lot of stubbornness and a refusal to confess the need for help and humility to change things up.

And this of course is something that needs to be worked upon and lovingly in an honoring way. These conversations always need to start a decade before they do.

And sometimes it needs to be, mom, dad, come add to my household, right? Like because they, of course they are going to, but they're saying, I'm a burden. Oh, I don't want to be a burden or I don't want to be this.

It's no, come and add to my children's lives. Come and add to my life. We need you. Yes. I need you here and not, not a, well, I guess we'll take you in. I think that may be a better way to put it to your parents is you're going to be adding, this is your purpose towards the end of life.

Biblically, this is your purpose and you should be adding to this household productively in the way that you can.

Yeah. Instead of taking on the work to do. Yeah, I'm putting you to work. Well, there's a productivity in the household that God has ordained versus an article like this that says, you know, if you're too family oriented, you won't be productive for the work on Namas at the state.

Yes. Yep. And those who don't take care of their old mothers, the widows, are they not worse than infidels? I'll tell you when you read in the gospels, there was three times that Jesus, the Bible says got indignant and it's a word for, he got really mad.

It was when they tried to bring little children to him and his disciples got in the way and and he got mad. He got mad when he walked into the temple and saw what they were doing to his father's house of prayer.

And he got mad when he told the Pharisees, you're not taking care of your parents. You're saying what I would have put aside for you and your care. I have declared Corbin as, you know, we're going to give it to God.

And so I'm not going to take care of you because I've, I've, I've written it off as a, as a temple tax write off here. And I'm not going to take care of you. And that's the, that's the other time where we read that Jesus got indignant was when the children would not take care of their parents.

So, I mean, there's an indicator for you.

Recommended Reading, History, and Media for Christian Discernment

Well, I think that wraps that about up. Now we'll move on to the segment where we suggest a bit of content that we think will benefit you or edify you in some way.

Michael, I've got a book by John MacArthur, Ashamed of the Gospel When the Church Becomes Like the World. This is the third edition. Important to know because this was a book that was released in 1993, which is basically ancient history as regards the advance of paganism within the evangelical church.

So they released it again in 2010 and I tell you here in 2022 they're going to do it again. So the examples and the concern that the stating of the problem in the book is going to seem probably dated, but that will make the book all the more relevant because you realize where we are today.

The basic premise is that there's a whole lot of people trying to do church, but they're ashamed of the gospel. And so they are trying to do things to look like the world, sound like the world, feel like the world so that there's an easy entry point for people to buy in.

And then he just kind of deals with the problems of that. What I appreciate most about this book is that he spends so much time going through passages of scripture, showing the clear instructions of Christ about how church ought to be done, what church is all about.

And it is so plain and it is so fortifying that this book is well worth the read. It really clarifies the point, relevance and power of the church in the plan of Christ.

So I also have a book. This is a history book by Ian Birch and it's called To Follow the Lamb Wheresoever He Goeth. It's the ecclesial polity of the English Calvinist Baptist from 1640 to 1660. And it sounds really heady, but it's not.

In Baptist circles, you hear a lot about the Second London Confession of Faith, 1689. Well, there was a First London Confession of Faith, 1644, and that was written by seven particular Baptist churches in London that were purposely defining themselves over and against the Anabaptists, which just a century earlier on the continent were part of the quote unquote radical reformation and were anarchists in some respects.

So these. Moonster. Yes, yes. Not just a cheese. So Ian Birch traces the formations of the first Baptist churches in England. These are our forebears. These are the people that were coming out of the Reformation, looking at the Bible and saying, how do we do church?

Because I see how the church is aligned with the state and then the church and the state was part of our cultural identity. And when they started reading the Bible for themselves, they started to see a different pattern emerge and they started to talk about believers baptism.

But that wasn't what separated them initially. It was the polity. It was our church is supposed to be independent or are we subservient to the state? And for them to ask the question, who is king over the church?

Do we follow King Jesus? Do we follow King James? And they would say, well, we need to follow King Jesus in this in this sphere. And as they started to articulate some of these views, you have men like Henry Jacob, John Lythrop and Henry Jesse or the LJ or the JLJ.

This was they call kind of the mother church. They had a couple of different guys. This is from 16, 16, 16, 23, somewhere around in there. He started to have these small congregations that were coming together and meeting together and talking about how do we do do church?

That's not directly under the king. How do we do church? We're, we're Christ is king. And somewhere between 1633, 1633 and 1638, somewhere around in there, there was a Calvinist Baptist congregation somewhere in London.

And then by by 1642, you had a couple of churches, maybe two to three by 1644. There were at least eight congregations in London because seven of them formed a 1644 First London Confession of Faith. And by 1660, there were over 130.

So within the short time you had these groups, they were just just multiplying. It did Baptist churches in Ireland. You had people like, like Jacob who were actually came over to the United States and some of these ideas of the separation of the state and the church, you get our ideas of the, at least in the constitution, it affected how the United States was formed.

Look back at the first Baptist churches in Rhode Island, you know, these ideas of a separation of church and state, these, these, these different spheres. And then chapter three is really the central argument of the book.

And I'm going to finish with this. Um, they wanted to organize a church according to the rule of Christ as prophet, priest, and king. They wanted to have a Christological framework for who this person is that we are following.

How are we going to do church? Well, Christ is our prophet, Christ is our priest, Christ is our king. And this is, you look at these men who, who, who formed this, this small body in England and it grew and grew and grew because people were, they could read the Bible for themselves and they could see how, how that, that we can, we can have a direct line to God.

We didn't have to have this ecclesiastical hierarchy and the church is transnational. It's not just, it's not a part of our national identity. We're just, we have a direct line. So they had, you know, these local independent congregations and a loose association.

And, uh, as you read about these people and the, the hardships that they endured and they didn't, uh, they were, they were poor. They had, they had laity that was, you know, heaven forbid, they had laity that were lead, uh, leading these churches versus the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

So, uh, there's a whole lot in here, but if you're interested at all about early Baptist history, you want to learn about who the Baptists were in, in England, you're going to be shocked that they were not like your little Southern Baptist church in Georgia that, you know, has been around since 1923.

It's going to look very, very different. Interesting. So 1644 first Lenten confession. And these are the people that did it, um, to follow the land wheresoever he'd go with by Ian Birch. Great.

Pornography, Sex Trafficking, and Abortion

I'm going to lead it with this. Statistically, 30 of all data transferred across the internet is pornography. By the family research council, frc .org in their issue analysis in November of 2017, they produced the link between pornography, sex trafficking, and abortion.

This goes into how pornography is linked to abortion through sex trafficking. I would hesitate to say that someone doesn't that, that no one out there doesn't know is someone who's doing the 30 of those searches.

I think, I think we all would say we know someone. This was helpful for me in a period of my life whenever I was addicted to pornography and it was, I've always been staunchly against abortion and this was an influential tool that the Lord used in my life to get me to realize that it's not just me that I'm affecting, that there are ramifications that span even down to the murder of the innocence.

So I would advocate that you check this out. Family research council, frc .org their issue analysis in November of 2017, the link between pornography, sex trafficking, and abortion.

Yeah, I think it's a good resource to just have in the arsenal, whether you pick it up or not, to remind yourself of that link. It's, that's helpful. My recommendation is bright hearth. It's a podcast and it's done by a couple in Ogden, Utah.

It's a bright hearth. H E A R T H like a hearth. That's not many people have in their homes anymore. But they address many of the things that we talked about on this episode, especially when it comes to the family household and the family economy and deathbed, hospitality, all these things.

They do it in a, a much more joyful light than I just presented it. But I think mine was responding to a negative article. So it just hopped out at me. They do a wonderful job of laying those things out.

They have a lot of good insight on parenting as well. And beauty restoring beautiful arts within the home and arts like that, like hospitality or arts like homemaking arts, like discipleship of children in the home.

And it is very household centered. And I enjoy that very, very much. So I wanted to share that with you all.

And that wraps it up for today. We are always very thankful for our listeners tuning in every week and for supporting us by rating, reviewing and sharing the show. And we hope you can join us again for another week of uncovering and rebuking witchcraft in the modern world.