Christians And The Occult

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Our Father in heaven, we thank you this morning for the glorious God that you are, powerful, majestic, holy, and yet loving, kind, generous.
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You are righteous. Father, all of your attributes, we just praise you for them.
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Lord, we pray that you would be with us this morning as we look at what your Word says about things that really have grown quite in fashion in terms of the world.
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And Father, I just pray that you would keep us from sinning against you in the name of Christian liberty.
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In Christ's name we pray, amen. Well, here I was a week ago or so walking the streets of San Francisco, and you never know what you're going to get in San Francisco.
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I got a Sunday school lesson out of it, so that was a pretty good deal for me. I start by asking a question.
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Are activities like tarot cards, Ouija or Ouija boards, and even astrology unbiblical?
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You check your horoscope out. Are they sinful? Is there anything really wrong with them?
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What about magic spells, palm readings, psychic predictions?
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Psychics, and I made the plural there for no special reason, but a psychic means to be of the soul, also called sensitive.
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It's a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses.
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I always like that. You know, I see things that other people don't see. We used to take those people for 51 -50 observations, but...
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Mental observations, I see. No, you don't. Okay, or if said by others to have such abilities, it also could be used to describe theatrical performers who use techniques such as,
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I like this word, prestidigitation. Yes! Cold reading and hot reading.
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That doesn't refer to, you know, being in a cold room or a warm room. It refers to having, you know, someone in front of you or not in front of you or whatever.
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But to produce the appearance of such abilities, the ability to know something that can't ostensibly be known, that isn't obvious to the casual observer.
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It can also denote an ability of the mind to influence the world physically and to the telekinetic powers professed by those such as Uri Geller.
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Have you ever seen him bend forks? You know, those guys who do that. Who is that? The amazing Kreskin who bends spoons.
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You know, and then they're useless. They can no longer use them. I don't know what the point of that is. But anyway, so I said I was in San Francisco.
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And, you know, just to prove it, let me move the microphone out of the way here. I have this handed to me by Valerie.
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Readings by Valerie. See, if she didn't do that, I couldn't do this. It's got astrological signs at the top.
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Very nice. She says that she can provide peace of mind through the ancient arts of tarot cards and palmistry and her psychic ability.
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I like this part. She never fails to unite the separated. Hasten happy marriages. Overcomes, that's her, you know, problem grammatically.
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Overcomes enemies and jealousies of all kinds. And anyway, let's see what else does she do.
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Don't be discouraged if others have failed to help you. She does what others claim to do.
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One visit will convince you this gifted psychic is superior to any psychic you have ever called or visited.
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Private and confidential readings. Thankfully, she doesn't post them on the Internet, I guess. But anyway, Valerie is available.
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I have her phone number. In the mid -19th century, modern spiritualism became prominent in the
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United States and the United Kingdom. The movement's distinguishing feature was the belief that the spirits of the dead could be contacted by mediums to lend insight to the living.
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The movement was fueled in part by anecdotes, that is, stories of psychic powers. One such person believed to have extraordinary abilities was
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Daniel Douglas Holm, who gained notoriety through the Victorian period for his reported ability to levitate to a variety of heights and to speak to the dead.
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As the spiritualist movement grew, other comparable groups arose, including the
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Theosophical Society. That sounds pretty impressive. Which was co -founded in 1875, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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Okay, so psychics basically are people who can allegedly discern things that ordinary people can't figure out.
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Palmistry, that is, to read hands, which Wikipedia defines as the art of characterization and foretelling the future through the study of the palm.
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Also known as palm reading or cureology. The practice is found all over the world.
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You know, you see them in those old movies, right? The old gypsy woman, you know, says, I see, you know, oh, you know, and all that kind of stuff.
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All that chicanery. I mean, I learned a whole lot of new words here.
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Those who practice curomancy, okay? That's not chiropractic.
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Chiromancy are generally called palmists, palm readers, hand readers, hand analysts, or curologists.
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The basic framework for classical palmistry is rooted in Greek mythology.
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Each of the palm and fingers is related to a god. I mean, these sort of things ought to just, alarm bells, you know.
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Is palm reading harmless? Well, only if you think that each of the palm and fingers is related to a god or goddess is harmless.
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And the features of that area indicate the nature of the corresponding aspect of the subject. For example, the ring finger is associated with the
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Greek god Apollo, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In most schools of palmistry, hand shapes are divided into four or ten major types, sometimes corresponding to the classical elements or temperaments.
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And let me tell you something, other than, you know, 1970s musical groups, when you hear earth, wind, and fire, you should be running for the exit.
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Maybe even if you hear a 70s classic rock band. How about this, a fire hand would exhibit high energy.
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Oh, I see you have a fire hand. You know, that means you're a high energy, very creative, a person with a short temper, with a lot of ambition, all qualities believed to be related to the classical element of fire.
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What's the other one? Earth, wind, and fire, and water. Okay, which, you know.
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But that's, I mean, this is all straight pagan kind of religion. Thirdly, astrology, and we will be getting to the
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Bible eventually, I promise. Astrology. Astrology is a group of systems, traditions, and beliefs which hold the relative positions of the celestial bodies.
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Basically, by looking out at the stars, you can get information about personality, human affairs, and other terrestrial or earthly matters.
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A practitioner of astrology is called, duh, an astrologer. Astrologers believe that the movements and positions of celestial bodies, when the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will rule the planets.
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This is astrology. Yeah, thank you. Another child of the 60s or whatever.
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Despite differences in definitions, a common assumption of astrologers is that celestial placements can aid in the interpretation of past and present events and in the prediction of the future.
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And this all comes from, looking at number A on page 2, it comes from, basically,
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Hinduism. Some of the oldest written records, or as they refer to in Wikipedia, scriptures of Hinduism.
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Various disciplines throughout history. Many mystic or esoteric.
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What's esoteric, by the way? Secret or hidden?
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You know, kind of cool, gnostic, no one else knows, just kind of the inside club sort of thing.
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Many mystic or esoteric traditions have links to astrology, in some cases, such as Kabbalah, which has become quite popular.
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People like, what's her name, Madonna. Other people practicing Kabbalah. This involves participants incorporating elements of astrology into their own traditions.
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So you have Judaism, in the example of Kabbalah, mixed with this sort of mystic astrology, and you get some funky kind of stew.
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In other cases, many astrologers have incorporated other traditions into their own practice of astrology.
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And astrology has been incorporated into these traditions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. One that was kind of interesting is this
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Rosicrucian or Rose Cross thing that they referred to here, because it really is kind of a
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Christian version of Kabbalah. It's this weird hybrid between Christianity and astrology.
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But look at this. Belief in astrology holds firm today in many parts of the world. In one poll, 31 % of Americans believed or expressed a belief in astrology.
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And according to another study, 39 % considered it scientific. Well, yes, it is scientific, because as a
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Pisces, I don't even know what that means. Number four, tarot cards.
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The original purpose, I thought this was interesting, because I always thought that tarot cards were always, you know,
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I mean, again, what do I know of this stuff other than what I see in the movies? But, you know, the tarot cards are always like the card of death, and I thought they were always like that.
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And it turns out that they're actually card games throughout most of the world.
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And it didn't, if you look down at point A, it didn't really become associated with mysticism and magic until the 18th and 19th centuries, because the decks weren't quite like that.
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If you read all this, you'd see that they kind of developed over time. Down at point
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C, recently the use of tarot for divination or as a store of symbolism has inspired the creation of modern oracle card decks.
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In other words, they really have changed. These are card decks for inspiration or divination, containing images of angels, fairies, goddesses, totems, etc.
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Again, harmless? I don't think so. Anytime you're talking about, you know, images of gods or goddesses.
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The Ouija board, known as a spirit board or talking board. Now, this is a scary one to me.
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I mean, the scariest, I think, of all these. It is a flat board marked with letters, numbers, and other symbols, supposedly to communicate with spirits.
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I don't want to communicate with spirits. Since its invention in the late 19th century, the
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Ouija board has been associated with the threat of demonic possession. You want to know if demons can possess people?
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I don't know. Read this and you'll kind of wonder about it. Consequently, mainstream Christian denominations have wisely,
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I add, warned against using Ouija boards. Occultists, on the other hand, are divided on the issue, with some saying it can be a positive transformation.
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Others echo the warnings of many Christians and caution inexperienced users against it.
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I thought this was interesting that Parker Brothers holds the trademarks and the patents. You know, they make, what?
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Monopoly and Ouija boards. Which is worse?
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I don't know. You make the call. Many cases of alleged insanity are caused by the use of Ouija boards.
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I just took a couple of the examples because I thought these were interesting. Bill Wilson, the co -founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, when he was sober, used the
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Ouija board to contact spirits. His wife said that he would get messages directly without even using the board.
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Now, this is footnote. This is from the Big Blue Book, the AA thing. For a while, his participation in AA was deeply affected by his involvement with the
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Ouija board. Wilson claimed that he received the 12 -step method directly from a spirit without the board and wrote it down.
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Can I get some, you know, Outer Limits space effects, you know? Kirk Hammett of the rock group
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Metallica owns a series of signature guitars made by ESP Guitars which incorporate
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Ouija designs. I thought that was interesting. I used to tell my son when he was listening to Metallica that the basic message of Metallica was the world would be a better place without people.
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Pulitzer Prize winning poet James Merrill used a Ouija board and recorded what he claimed were messages from a number of deceased persons.
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He combined these messages with his own poetry in The Changing Light at Sandover in 1982.
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No wonder he won. So that's Ouija boards. Magic, sometimes known as sorcery, is the practice of consciousness manipulation and or auto -suggestion to achieve a desired result.
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Or retired, you know. A magician is any practitioner of magic.
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Therefore, any magician may be a specialist or a common practitioner. Yada, yada, yada, yada. Magic words are words which have a specific and sometimes unintended effect.
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They are often nonsense phrases used in fantasy fiction and, you know, open Saskatchewan.
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I actually asked for Bugs Bunny. Open Sesame, you know, Hocus Pocus, all that other stuff.
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I just like Saskatchewan the best. But, you know, even in teaching this class on angels, demons, and stuff like that,
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I started thinking about, you know, magic spells. So often they call upon someone to do something.
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You know, I can't even give an example because I don't know one. But if you cast a spell and you're asking someone to do something, you're, in effect,
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I would say, praying to a spirit to do something.
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And it wouldn't be God that you'd be praying to. Number seven, a medium, one who practices spiritism.
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Mediumship is the claimed ability of a person, the medium, to experience what he or she or others believe is contact with spirits of the dead or angels, demons, or other immaterial entities.
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Again, I don't know why you would want to do this. The role of the medium is supposed to facilitate communication with spirits who have messages to share with non -mediums.
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You see this on TV. I mean, people make a living doing this, where they say, you know, you want to talk to your dead father,
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I can communicate to you. You know, your father wants you to know that he forgives you for stealing all his money, or whatever, you know.
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I mean, I'm trying to think of the guy's name. I think there's a guy named John Edwards or something like that, and he's really big on this.
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Mediums claim to be able to listen, to relay messages from, and relate conversations with spirits to go into a trance and to speak without knowledge of what is being said.
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Kind of a scary thing. What would that mean, if that were actually true? If you could say something without having a conscious knowledge of what it was.
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Yeah, channeling really kind of sounds like demon possession to me. Mediumship is also part of the belief system of some
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New Age groups. In this context, we have channeling, and they have teaching spirits, or spirit guides.
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And this is very common in a lot of, I've even seen this in some school material where they teach kids to let their spirit guide show them the truth.
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Attempts to communicate with the dead, bottom of page three, and other spirits have been documented back to early human history.
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Again, this is from Wikipedia. The story of the Witch of Endor tells of one who raised the spirit of the deceased prophet
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Samuel, etc., etc., etc. It's all the way back there. One more, seance. The word came to be used specifically of a meeting of people who are gathered to receive messages from spirits, or to listen to a spirit medium discourse with or relay messages from spirits.
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Many people, including skeptics and non -believers, treat it as a form of entertainment. It's all fun and games, and then somebody gets possessed.
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All right, number nine. What does Scripture say? Note well that the Old Testament has much to say, and we hear all the time, well, we're not under the
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Old Testament law. Maybe we have the freedom to do these things. Well, I think the New Testament speaks a lot about it, too, and it never changes, and I note here,
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I think the reason is because these aren't some kind of laws that God gave to just separate the
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Israelites from the people around them, but really to keep them from idolatry, that is, worshiping false gods.
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Let's look at number ten. In fact, let's go to the Bible now. Number ten, Leviticus 19 .31.
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And when somebody has that, they can read it. If I can get a show of hands.
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19 .31, a very good year if you happen to like depressions. You're pretty...
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Okay, and what is... We've already talked about what a medium is. What is a necromancer?
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Somebody who talks to the dead. In fact, we have that down here. Mediums prophesying spirit of the dead.
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Those who allegedly contact those who are dead. Necromancers basically have inside info from spirit guides from either dead people or just unseen spirits.
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Now, why you would want to contact, again, unseen spirits, that's really outside of my realm of expertise. I don't really know.
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But Rooker says here, the Israelites were not to turn to mediums or spiritists who sought communication with the dead.
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This was a common Canaanite practice. That is, the pagans that surrounded them, the people who occupied the land of Canaan.
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The word medium is used of the pit from which the spirits are called up, the spirit of the dead, or here, the necromancer.
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The Septuagint, that is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, nearly always translates that word with the
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Greek word for ventriloquist. This translation may indicate a deception used on the part of the necromancer to deceive others into thinking he was actually calling up the dead, in other words, a fake or a fraud.
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MacArthur notes, mediums are human contacts who act as go -betweens to supposedly contact or communicate with spirits of the dead, who are actually impersonated by demons.
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I mean, the point of this, the bigger point is, if you participate in any of these things, even for entertainment purposes, you know, we talk in Thursday Night about whether Christians can be possessed by demons or whatnot, but this is throwing the door open to a world where we really ought to want to keep that door shut.
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R .K. Harrison notes, necromancy, which is the attempt to gain contact with the spirits of the deceased, is specifically prohibited to the
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Israelites. The medium was usually a woman who was able to obtain a materialization of certain deceased persons on request.
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The most notable attempt in Israel was in connection with the spirit of Samuel, but the medium's technique was not described other than she saw an old man's shade coming up out of the ground.
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In some Near Eastern societies, such mediums would dig a small hole in the earth to symbolize a grave and then put offerings in it to attract the attention of the person whom the medium desired to contact.
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That's just strange. Alright, let's look at Deuteronomy 18, 9 -14.
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And we ought to, first, number 10, don't consult mediums or those who attempt to communicate with spirits.
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Number 11, have nothing to do with witches and magicians. Deuteronomy 18, 9 -14.
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Who has that? Go ahead. I mean, think about what he's even putting on a plane with this sort of activity.
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Burning your child. Pretty serious issue.
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The term enchanter means one who consults by lots or tells fortunes.
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One who interprets omens, that was the next term. Oh yeah, the omen interpreter, however that's phrased exactly in ESV, means to interpret clouds, to look at the clouds and to kind of, that's basically a fortune teller, you know, same sort of thing.
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A sorcerer is one who works magic or bewitches. Eugene Merrill notes this, the phrase practicers,
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I want to say practitioners, practicers of divination refers generically to the whole complex of means of gaining insight from the gods, small g, regardless of any particular technique.
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Sorcerers, those who cause to appear, were diviners who specially lay in their ability to create apparitions.
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The interpreter of omens divined through the use of certain revelatory objects or devices such as a cup or through the actions or words of others.
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He or she engaged in witchcraft. They were adept at performing signs. I like this, the spell caster, literally the binder with a band, scary, was thought capable of invoking powerful curses that would bring their intended targets under control.
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The medium was a necromancer, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Regardless of the precision with which the foregoing can be identified, the most important point to be made is that any means employed by the heathen, that is unbelievers, pagans, to gain information from their gods or even to manipulate them to a certain course of action was to be strictly avoided by God's elect people.
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Such practices were detestable as were those who engaged in them.
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Again, this is idolatry and it's idolatry of a specific form.
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And God hates it. Why would you want to consult with spirits or with dead people or anything else to get information about the future because you don't trust
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God? Let's look in the New Testament, Acts 16.
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Yes, Becky, you can ask me a question. But you'll have to ask me another question because that was your first question. Yes, you may.
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She asks, you know, how can psychics sometimes help in police investigations, you know, help find people that are missing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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You know, do the demons do good deeds? Well, Satan has, and therefore the demons have, power to do things.
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So certainly, I mean, we know the Antichrist is going to perform false miracles and even fool a lot of people into thinking that he's good.
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So I think demons would certainly be able to do this kind of thing, especially in that which is knowable, that is the physical world, they would be able to do that kind of thing.
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We don't hear that sort of thing very often though. Otherwise, every police department sadly would have its own psychic.
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So good question. Yes. Yeah. Pam makes an excellent point, which is, you know, how better to convince people that they ought to trust in psychics and therefore, you know, lead them away from God than to provide information like that and therefore prove the legitimacy of the psychic method.
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So, excellent point. Let's read Acts 16, verses 16 and 19.
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Who has that? Go ahead, Eric. Okay, so there we see that she was definitely having some impact and she was actually good enough to make a considerable amount of money.
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But Paul cast the demon out of her. Kistenmacher says this, wherever the church develops,
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Satan tries to obstruct the work of God's servants. True? Absolutely. That's what
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Satan does. He blinds the eyes of those who cannot see anyway. He hardens their heart.
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He makes it even more difficult. For instance, in Samaria, Simon the sorcerer offered Peter and John money to obtain the gift of the
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Holy Spirit. He gives a couple of other examples. Likewise, at Philippi, Satan used a demon -possessed girl to thwart the work of the missionaries.
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On the way to the place of prayer, a slave girl who has a spirit of divination meets the missionaries.
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In the Greek, Luke writes that she had a spirit called Python, which translators render divination.
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I guess it was easier than choke you out or something like that, wrap around your neck.
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The word Python referred to the legendary snake that guarded the Delphic Oracle, a sanctuary in central
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Greece but was slain by the god of prophecy, Apollo. In later years, the term denoted a spirit of divination that dwelled in a medium.
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As the priestess of Apollo at Delphi was able to predict the future, so this slave girl served her masters in Philippi as a fortune teller.
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She was an instrument of demons who used her as a mouthpiece, and she was a lucrative source of income for her owners.
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Expositors commentary says this, but while the demon -inspired words provided some free publicity for the missionaries and helped gather an audience, when it continued for many days, it became a nuisance.
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Paul, it said, was annoyed. The demon's words were getting more of a hearing than the proclamation of the gospel, so Paul commanded the evil spirit in the name of Jesus Christ to come out, and the demon left her.
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Presumably having been delivered by the power of God, she became a Christian, this is their theory, along with Lydia, the businesswoman, and members of her household, etc.,
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etc., etc. Yeah, why would
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Paul allow that to go on for several days? I don't know.
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I'd just be guessing. Number 12.
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We're going to go back to the Old Testament for a minute. Idolatry and the mystical arts go hand in hand.
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Let's look at 2 Kings 17. Who has that?
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2 Kings 17. Not the whole chapter.
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Verses 16 and 17. Go ahead, Chris. I found that one interesting because of the idea that they worshipped all the hosts of heaven.
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Expositor's Commentary notes, The shameful record of Israel's spiritual harlotry is catalogued after the clear prohibitions of God.
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The people had entered into the worship patterns of the pagan nations. This is what they did all through the
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Old Testament. They had put aside worshipping the one true
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God and started worshipping the idols of all the people around them. The apostasy had been formally initiated by Israel's own kings and all
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Israel had followed their devious plan to pretend to worship God in the official state religion. Matters had grown even worse.
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The external rites had become more openly false, etc., etc., etc. I should have highlighted this.
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But basically, down here, closer to the end of the paragraph, every sort of idolatry had been tried from the calves of Jeroboam to the
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Asherah pole, from the worship of the heavenly host to that of Baal and the loathsome practice of human sacrifice.
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Well, what is the worship of heavenly hosts? It's astrology. It's the same basic thing.
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Would you, I ask the question, would you entertain yourself with idolatry, with the actual worshipping of false gods, and yet, you know, people will, well,
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I'd just like to consult astrology every day in the newspaper because I just want to see, you know, what's happening.
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Okay? I just want to, I just have fun with it. Alright. Number 13, astrology is not a meaningless waste of time.
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Jeremiah 8, 1 to 3. Go ahead,
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Casey. Again, this is talking about astrology and God doesn't see it as a mere waste of time or just something we consult for our own enjoyment.
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I mean, there's pretty serious language here when he talks about the consequences of doing this.
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They shall be as dung on the surface of the ground, worthless. Death shall be preferred to life by those who participate in this.
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Again, talking about the host of heaven, celestial army made up of the planets and stars inhabited by divine spirits who are in control of human destiny.
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That's what they believed. The Babylonians were experts in the discipline of astral divination, that is, looking at the stars, projecting what the future was going to be.
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And then Dan, let's look at Acts 742. And again, when we look in the
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New Testament, admittedly, most of these are from Acts, which is a narrative, but I think we see specific principles which have not gone out of vogue just because we are in or under the
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New Covenant. Acts 752, and I'll just go ahead and read that. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?
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Oh, maybe I should get the right one. Oh, I do have it. And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one whom you have betrayed and murdered.
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Or have I? I don't have the right verse. So I was off for a couple of verses here.
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742, so I'll read that one now. But God turned away and gave them over to the worship of the host of heaven as it is written in the book of the prophets.
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Did you bring me slain beasts and sacrifices during the 40 years? This is
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Stephen condemning, talking about the graciousness of God over time.
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And he brings this up again. And look what MacArthur says here in the authorized notes. The host of heaven,
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Israel's idolatrous worship of the sun, moon, and stars began in the wilderness and lasted through the
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Babylonian captivity. Kistemacher notes Moloch, not Molech, but Moloch was the
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Canaanite Phoenician god of the sky and the sun or the planet Venus. Rephan, with many variations in spelling, is another name for the planet
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Saturn. In short, both names refer to the worship of heavenly bodies.
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In their worship, the Israelites had degenerated to bowing before the stars in the sky. Perhaps they did so during the 40 year period when they were out in the wilderness because the text states that the
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Israelites lifted up the tent of Moloch. There is a parallel between idol worshippers carrying the tabernacle of a heathen god and Levites carrying the tabernacle of the
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Lord in the desert. Again, God takes this very seriously.
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He wants to be worshipped by His people and will not accept anything less.
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Number 14. Habitually practicing such things will keep one out of heaven. It's fairly shocking.
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Look at Galatians 5, 17 to 21. What exactly is the threshold?
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You know, if you read astrology, does that mean you're going to hell? I'm not going to say that.
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What I'm going to say is that the Bible forbids it. And we're going to see that here.
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Galatians 5, 17 to 21. Who would like to read that? Go ahead,
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Bruce. Okay, and again,
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MacArthur, this is from his commentary, says this. The second group of sins, specifically idolatry and sorcery, relates to man -made religion, which is as much a product of the flesh as our sexual sins.
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The deeds of the flesh not only defile men themselves, but also their relationship to God. All human religion is based on self -effort, on man's sinful insistence that he can make himself acceptable to his humanly conceived
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God, I would say that should be a small g, by his own merits. In other words, the
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God of your own imagination. Consequently, human religion is the implacable, immovable enemy of divine grace, and therefore of the gospel.
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Idolatry is the obvious sin of worshiping man -made images of whatever sort. Now listen, sorcery translates pharmakeia, from which we get pharmacy, which is good, and pharmaceutical, which is also good, mostly.
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It was originally used of medicines in general, but came to be used primarily of mood and mind -altering drugs, similar to those that create so much havoc in our own day.
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Many ancient religious ceremonies involved occultic practices in which drugs were used to induce supposed communication with deities, and pharmakeia thereby came to be closely related to witchcraft and magic.
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Aristotle and other ancient Greek writers used the word as a synonym for witchcraft and black magic, because drugs were so commonly used in their practice.
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You know, again, just as a sidelight, drug use, you know, is it a disease?
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It looks to me like it's a sin, and it would fall under, or it's closely associated with idolatry.
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Number 15, magic is something to be shunned. Magic is something to be shunned.
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We're going to look at the Seven Sins of Sceva, but we're not going to go through all I heard a sermon by Al Moeller a few years ago, which was very good and very entertaining.
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I like when he talked about Sceva, Sceva, Sceva, Sceva, Sceva, Sceva, and, you know,
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Sceva, Seven Sons of Sceva. But let's look at Acts 19 verses 11 to 19.
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Charlie. Yeah, you want to cast out demons, you need to study that passage pretty well and see how that all went.
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Kistenmacher says of this situation, he says, The demon -possessed man gives the seven exorcists such a beating that they narrowly escaped from the house in which they were.
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Thankful to be alive, they emerged naked and wounded. The Greek indicates that the wounds lasted for a considerable period before they healed.
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On the one hand, these exorcists learned not to invoke the name of Jesus. On the other, the incident promoted the cause of the gospel.
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I would say they learned not to, you know, falsely invoke the name of Jesus, not to presume on his name.
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But second, the work of the Holy Spirit upon the converts at Ephesus was to become obvious.
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Again, what Kistenmacher says, the Greek text reveals that these Christians were gradually coming forward, probably in the worship service, you know, sitting on the anxious bench, just as I am on the organ, coming forward, where they first confessed and then reported that they were practicing magic.
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Suddenly, they realized that their conduct was unbecoming to a Christian lifestyle, and that they had to put aside their evil deeds.
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What were their evil deeds? These people were practicing divination and sorcery, interpreting signs and omens, engaging in black magic, casting charms, or consulting the dead.
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Now they were told that long ago, God had forbidden these detestable practices. The word of God convicted the
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Ephesian believers of their sin. As a result, they repented and turned from their evil deeds. This is what happens when you come to Christ, and you look at your life, and you realize there are some things that you have been practicing that you may no longer practice.
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You put them aside. Will. TBN. I don't know of a denomination that does that, but I mean, you could certainly...
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Are you talking about the casting out of demons, or the seven sons of Sceva?
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Oh yeah, there are plenty of people who still try to do that, cast demons out. All I can say is, we don't have any epistle in the
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New Testament, or even the instructions of Jesus about how we would go about doing that today.
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We don't have anything like that. He gave power to some of the disciples to do that, but he also gave them some other instructions that people wouldn't want to follow today, so there's no indication anywhere in Scripture that we can do that.
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Yes? Well I don't know if it will eradicate...
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I don't know if I would agree with that, that preaching the gospel to someone will necessarily eradicate the demon, but I think that would be the right thing to do.
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Yeah, yeah, the Holy Spirit can certainly eject a demon.
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Let me just say this about demon possession, and then we'll close.
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I spoke about this on Thursday night. There are denominations, in fact,
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I know the Four Square Church near where we used to go to church in California practices, they have what they call delivery ministries, which is the idea that Christians can be possessed or inhabited,
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I guess inhabited is probably better, by demons. And so I would reject that idea based on 2
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Corinthians 6, I believe it is, where it talks about, you know, we use the unequally yoked part of it, but we don't really consider the fact that it is the
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Holy Spirit that has taken up residence in us. We talk about, you know, receiving Christ, we don't talk about, you know,
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Christ, the Holy Spirit working in us to the extent and residing in us to the extent that demons are not permitted in there.
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I mean, the whole idea of demon, a demon taking up rental space inside of us when we are called the temple of God is a little bit,
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I would say, far -fetched. If you belong to God, you don't belong to Satan too. Can you be afflicted by demonic activity?
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Yes. Can you be inhabited by a demon? No. The short answer is no.
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But there are Christian denominations out there that will hold meetings and, for example, let's say you struggle with drugs, you struggle with pornography, you struggle with whatever the sin issue is.
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Instead of saying repent, you know, turn and repent, they say, let me cast out the demon of alcoholism, let me cast out the demon of pornography, let me cast out the demon of kleptomania, you know, whatever it is, they'll cast them all out.
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Yeah, you can't be a slave to two masters, exactly right. I mean, you're owned by one or the other. Anyway, the ultimate result of this work of the
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Spirit is what? That they repent and they show their repentance by gathering all their old magic books and burning them.
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You know, I think some of us may have a tendency when we first get saved to go overboard. I think I got rid of every single one of my albums,
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I got rid of all my comic books, I got rid of a lot of things that weren't necessarily sinful, but these people recognized that what they had in their possession in and of itself was sinful.
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So they brought them all together and they burned them. And you can see for yourselves here that there certainly was enough to think that they had 50 ,000 silver worth of all that.
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And then I just go on to note, there's some good quotes here, but I go on to note that from the
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Old Testament to the end of the Bible, sorcery is sin and is associated with idolatry and those three passages there, it just compares in Revelation, it just compares idolatry with sorcery over and over again.
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Casey, did you have something? You're trying to cool me off, maybe? Alright.
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Well, if you have any questions, I'll answer them. Yeah, okay.
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It's very, no, it's very much in our, it's very much in our culture.
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In fact, you know, talking about music and stuff like that, when we think about what it said there in Galatians and this whole idea of pharmacheia, you know, drugs being mood -altering substances that really kind of open,
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I think you could say, the door to this whole world of demonic activity can be pretty scary.
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You know, it kind of reminds me in a way of that, when we're talking about all these things, you know, the Ouija Board, all these other things, it reminds me of those commercials, you know, where the roach shows up at your door and knocks and says he wants to use your phone.
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I mean, you know, demons are kind of knocking on the door, hey, you know, we got this little
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Ouija Board, a little astrology, a little pharmacheia, you know, just don't, you just don't want to be involved in that,
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Stephen Hawking, warning about aliens. Yeah, well, and I mean, certainly, you know, the idea of mind altering or mind numbing kind of drugs, you know,
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God uses feelings for a reason. We feel guilt, we feel shame, we feel remorse, sometimes for our own good, so that we'll repent of what we've done.
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So, an excellent point. All right, let's close in prayer. Father, we look at this morning at a situation, we're at a number of situations and a number of sins that I think many of us tend to take somewhat lightly, that we tend not to give the weight they're due, but when we think about things like idolatry or child sacrifice, we would take those very seriously, and your word puts these things on a par with that.
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With the idea of knowing the future by contacting spirits, by contacting dead people to speak to them, all these things really open the door to a world that you have expressly forbid us to enter.
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Lord, I pray that you would keep us all from that, that you would let us think rightly about it, that we would worship you as we ought, that we would not have any other source for information other than you and your word, that we would trust in you fully, that we would worship you fully, and Lord, that we would seal our homes from these threats.