|
 |
Satanism or Christianity? A
Source of Authority
The question can be simply put. Should we believe in a supreme and all-powerful Being who is the essence of goodness - a God who is so interested and concerned for His creatures that He sent His Son to be the saviour of mankind; or should we place our trust in a supernatural power of wickedness and darkness - the basis of occult beliefs? Only one other possibility has ever been considered, and that has been a belief that man can determine his own destiny and solve the world's problems. Despite the great strides made by mankind in the technical world - or perhaps even because of them - man's inability to solve the one problem that afflicts every human being has caused him to search elsewhere for answers. Man's great problem is his certain destiny. The great advances made in the last century and a half have shown that it is not just death that needs removing from the earth; the effects of mortality are equally serious. People are now living much longer than they used to. Yet who really wants to live an extra five or ten years if they bring no improved quality of life? In years gone by religion would have given mankind the opportunity to discover satisfactory answers to this universal problem. But society today has relegated religion to a very low position. Religion is the butt of comedians' jokes, and religious leaders rarely comment on anything other than sociological issues. This situation has occurred for a number of reasons. Primarily it has come about because the authority of God's revelation of Himself and His purpose has been forsaken. Men have failed to denounce as "sin" behaviour which is contrary to His law. Self-indulgent thought has been elevated by the producers and consumers of technology, and religious principles are scorned. Unthinkingly, Karl Marx's comment about religion has been widely accepted; he called it "the opium of the people". If religion has become a
no-go area for many people, where else can they turn?
Some deliberately push into the back of their minds the
reality of life and its unanswered questions and make the
desire for entertainment act as a buffer against
searching enquiries about man's destiny. But the claims
of believers in the occult have provided for others an
outlet for their frustration. The purpose of this booklet
is to examine these claims and to measure them against
those made in the Bible. Are they serious claims,
demanding careful attention? Or are they lust another
form of entertainment - a type of escapism where the need
to go to extremes is like a drug addict requiring ever
stronger and more frequent doses. Without wishing to make too much of the words themselves, for we wish primarily to examine the claims made by adherents to these beliefs, the derivation of the term "occult" is interesting and significant for our enquiry. It is based on the Latin word meaning 'to hide'. The occult therefore deals with those things which are kept secret or hidden, shrouded in darkness, or beyond the range of ordinary knowledge. Because they involve hidden or secret things occult practices are sometimes called the Black Arts. The terms themselves therefore involve a range of varying beliefs and practices, and any explanation of them can only cover generalities. Not all believers in the supernatural will believe all of the following, but it is a genuine attempt to show what occultic beliefs involve. The primary belief is in a strong power or force of wickedness. Often this is personalised, either into one demonic being - called Satan, Lucifer, or the Devil – or into a whole hierarchy of evil spirits through which the world and its inhabitants are controlled. As the supreme power in the earth, it must be obeyed or appeased. To defy it is to court disaster, and dread warnings are given of what may befall anyone who opposes it. The worship of the Devil by Satanists has therefore been likened to the worship of God, though as we shall see, the analogy is not really helpful. God does not ask to be appeased to stop Him unleashing His judgements on an unsuspecting world, yet this attitude is adopted by those involved in the Black Arts towards the ungodly supernatural power which they believe exists. All sorts of different means are used to show that they are 'in tune' with wicked forces, which they trust will then work in their favour; for them, and not against them. A lot of these practices
bear striking similarities, at least outwardly, to
religious devotions. At the centre of the religious life
of believers in Christ is the communion meal, when they
share together bread and wine - symbols of Christ's body
and blood - in memory of his victory over sin and death.
Many believers in the occult hold services where real
blood is offered and drunk as a mark of the 'fellowship'
existing between the congregation and the ungodly powers,
the blood having first been taken from a 'living
sacrifice'. It is sometimes suggested
that belief in the supernatural is not inconsistent with
believing in the God who created the world and sent His
Son for the salvation of mankind. There is, so it is
said, both a power for good and a power of evil, and man
must decide which he chooses to worship. Even some of
those who claim to worship God alone also recognise an
ungodly power of wickedness from which they believe they
have been delivered. They believe also that there are
evil spirits which can possess innocent people against
their will, and that they need removing - or exorcising -
to allow the individual to serve God wholeheartedly. We
must therefore find an answer to the following question: Followers of the occult may claim to believe in this struggle between good and evil, but by their 'worship' of a supernatural evil force they make wickedness supreme, not good, nor an equal sharing between the two qualities. Applying the test of the scriptures, we find that the Bible allows no room for this concept. Indeed there is a simple and straightforward statement found first in the Old Testament and repeated by the Lord Jesus Christ in the New which denies the idea of a divine contest between gods of good and evil. When he was asked which was the most important commandment in the Jewish law, Jesus prefaced his answer by saying. "The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, 0 Israel, The Lord our God, the Lord is one' " (Mark 12:29). The law to which he
referred went on to say that God recognises no rival:
"You shall have no other gods before me" (Exodus
20:3). Not that God was recognising the power of other
gods and asking His children to follow only Him, for
elsewhere He calls these other deities 'no-gods' (e.g.
Isaiah 37:19). He was in fact instructing His people that
they should worship Him wholeheartedly because there is
no other God; there is no other Supreme Being claiming
the devotion of human hearts. To worship anything else is
thus a denial of the authority and majesty of the One
God, the "Lord of heaven and earth", as the
Apostle Paul described Him to a company of Greek
philosophers who believed in a whole panoply of deities
vying with each other to receive the worship of mankind (Acts
17:24). "When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or one who practises witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord your God drives them out from before you . . . for these nations, which you will dispossess, listened to soothsayers and diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not appointed such for you" (Deuteronomy 18:9-14). In this important passage various practices are brought together, all of them alien to the worship of God. They have one thing in common, and that is a denial of the supremacy of God who created all things. One of the most heinous and repugnant practices it is possible to imagine heads the list: sacrificing one's own child by burning him on a bonfire. Only a depraved mind could conceive of such an inhuman act, and only a warped or desperate person could actually carry it out. Yet, if reports are to be believed, child sacrifice is not something only to be found in the history books; it is still practised. Some reports even suggest that it is on the increase. And as we look down the rest of the list it has to be admitted that it is fully up to date. All these things are found in our modern world. Not only is it true that voodoo is still practised in the Caribbean, and that witchdoctors still wield frightening power in many African countries, this list describes practices carried out today in countries of the Western world also, countries which pride themselves on their civilisation and freedom from superstition. The age of tolerance, where everyone is allowed to do virtually what they wish, actually makes the control of such revolting things very difficult to impose. After describing child sacrifice, the passage in Deuteronomy mentions the following practices: Witchcraft: describes the use of magic arts in order to try and influence the destiny of others. Soothsayers: attempt to discover the unknown or future events by supernatural means, by invoking powers believed to control the future destiny of individuals. Interpreting omens: is better known to us as the interest in astrological forecasting, or reading the stars. Sorcerers: use various means to bewitch and deceive their fellow men, claiming that they have special powers. One who conjures spells is called a witch or a wizard. Mediums: claim to pass and receive messages sent between the living and the dead. Spiritists: are also concerned with messages from the dead, They get involved in the whole range of spiritualist practices; tarot cards, ouija boards, automatic writing, etc. Calling up the dead: most believers in the occult feel that it is possible to communicate with the dead. When the Bible was translated into English in the 17th century, the word 'necromancy' was used to describe all the different practices used to obtain messages from the dead. The most extreme form of this belief actually uses dead bodies, mostly of animals, but sometimes of humans, to make forecasts about living people. An example of how men indulged in this forecasting is given in Ezekiel's prophecy where the king of Babylon is shown trying to discover whether he should attack Jerusalem: would an assault prove favourable, or should he attack the Ammonites first? "The king of Babylon stands at the parting of the road, at the fork of the two roads (one to Jerusalem, one to Rabbah, the capital of Ammon), to use divination: he shakes the arrows, he consults the images, he looks at the liver . . ." (Ezekiel 21:21). By dropping a bundle of arrows to see where they pointed, by questioning his idols and by examining the liver taken from a sacrificed animal he thought he would be guided in the most propitious way. How could these things have any eloquence? How could they tell him the true answer? No wonder God instructed His people to have nothing to do with them. One of the important things to be noticed from this catalogue of occult practices is that there are some which are indulged in casually by many in our modern world. Their pursuit is not confined to undeveloped countries where belief in the supernatural is sometimes blamed on lack of education, nor can they be relegated lust to the history books. It is not possible to brush them aside as being the province only of a small minority, or as being utterly harmless. The fear engendered by occult and satanist groups is known to hold many people in a trap of terror. Even the apparently harmless interest in 'the stars', where astrological forecasts claim to describe the pattern of future events in an individual's life, is potentially dangerous. The destiny of man is in God's hands, and is not controlled by the stars, or anything else. Where then did the idea of
a rival power come from? For someone who believes in an
ungodly and supernatural power of evil it provides the
answer to why there is so much wickedness and evil in the
world. The blame is thus placed outside man; he is not
held responsible for any of the world's ills. And in any
case, so it is alleged, this life is only a preparation
for entry into the spirit world. Is it true, for example, as believers in the occult allege, that ungodly evil powers are responsible for all the wickedness evident in the world? The Bible utterly renounces this idea. Instead, it explains that the responsibility rests fairly and squarely with man. Consider the following passages: "The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5). "The heart (of man) is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). "Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies" (Matthew 15:19). Man cannot shrug off this
responsibility by blaming something outside himself. If
no-one is looking, the temptation is strong to try and
'get away with' a wrong act that will benefit ourselves,
rather than struggle to do something for someone else at
great personal cost. This temptation is from within and
arises unprovoked. Jesus explained that when evil
thoughts are allowed free rein they can lead to violence
and murder, and that uncontrolled desires lead to theft
and adultery (Matthew 5:21-28). Yes, the Bible is right:
man's wickedness is great in the earth. Their descendants inherited the same situation: mortal bodies, a defiled earth and, through their leaning towards sin, constant temptation. No man or woman has been free from these, the result being that the world has become full of wickedness. And all men and women die: there is no exception. The amazing thing is that we all carry on as if this were not true; as if life will always continue. Against all the evidence mankind believes that there is some sort of immortality-if not for the body then at least an immortality of the essential personality, often described as the 'soul'. It may be a lovely thought, but we would be deluding ourselves if we really believed it. The wise man's statement concerning the situation of man at death is chilling, but deep down everyone knows it is true: "The dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, their hatred, and their envy, have now perished; never more will they have a share in anything done under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 9:5,6). The dead have no contact with the living, nor can the living contact the dead; for there is nothing there: "They die and return to their dust" (Psalm 104:29). This basic fact has serious implications for all who believe in a spirit world, and think that messages can pass from here to there and that answers can be received. Anyone placing his hopes in such a system is deluding himself. All that can be learned from the dead is that without the intervention of God death is final, and man is helpless. Yet how often, even from those who profess to be believers in God and students of His word, is the opposite impression given? This lack of understanding and reverence for God and His word should cause us serious concern. God is not like men who can be mistaken. We cannot choose to believe some things He has revealed and reject others as we would do with a fallible human being. We have to accept everything, or reject Him totally. To deny what He has revealed about man's nature and destiny is to deny also His promises regarding man's salvation from sin and death. To believe that there is something in the world not of His making or contrary to what He has revealed limits His power and authority. Jesus claimed that "all power in heaven and earth" was given him by his Father (Matthew 28:18). This would have been untrue if there is another who has all evil power under his control. In a fascinating passage in Isaiah's prophecy God spoke to a Persian king who believed in equally powerful gods of good and evil, of light and darkness. As an explanation that Israel's God is Lord of all the earth, He said: "I am
the Lord, and there is no other; there is no God besides
me . . . I form the light and create darkness, I make
peace and create calamity; I the Lord do all these things"
(Isaiah 45:5-7). We need to understand
clearly what this means. In the Bible sense, evil is the
consequence of sin. It is not sin itself, nor even the
cause of sin. Furthermore, God's response to sin has a
twofold purpose: to expose sin for what it really is -
disobedience of God's commands – and to cause the
sinner to appreciate the benefits of complying with His
will. The introduction into the world of thorns and
thistles, of illness and suffering, of pain and death
was, as we have seen, because of man's first sin when he
transgressed God's law. Man was the moral offender, but
the physical consequences were God's condemnation of his
offence, designed also to be a constant reminder of his
waywardness. Unlike the idea behind a supernatural force
willing men and women to do wicked and sinful acts, God
did not introduce these things as temptations designed to
make man sin. God did not want man to die, He wants him
to live! "God . . . desires all men to be saved",
the Apostle Paul said (1 Timothy 2:4). Evil is present in
the world, not to tempt men and women to defy God, but to
remind them of how He views transgression and sin, and
what they lead to - how they are the natural precursors
to mortality and death. In addition to being a rightful
punishment of disobedience, evil and calamity exist as
spurs to better things: as an encouragement to good, and
not wicked ways. "There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying; and there shall be no more pain: for the former things (introduced because of man's first sin) have passed away" (Revelation 21:4). This promise is bound up in the work of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. His work reveals the falsity of all beliefs in a spirit or hidden world under the control of a being alien to the ways of God. In Deuteronomy, immediately following the passage which warns against involvement in the whole spectrum of occult practices because they are deceitful, Moses told the nation of Israel this further important truth: "The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear" (Deuteronomy 18:15). The nation was to have no
contact with the defiling practices of the heathen
peoples around, for God was promising to speak to them in
a very special way, and to reveal Himself uniquely to
them. He would send a prophet - one who speaks forth His
word, putting man into the context of his past,
explaining his present circumstances, and opening up the
possibilities of his future destiny. He therefore has become the way of escape from sin and death for all who associate themselves with his victory. Moses told Israel that God would send someone they needed to listen to – "him you shall hear". How different all this was from the occult practices of the nations around. God's word is a light showing men and women the sort of life they should live (Psalm 119:105). Jesus is the light of men (John 1:4), the light of the world (John 8:12). Satanic, demonic and occult practices are dark and secret, and God sent Jesus as a light to shine even into their dark recesses and expose the serious errors indulged in by those who follow them. Yet some people believe
that Jesus himself recognised the existence of a satanic
control over mankind. We need to be certain that Jesus
spoke and acted in accordance with his Father's word
spoken through earlier prophets if we are to accept him
as The Prophet promised when Moses spoke to the nation of
Israel warning them against meddling with occult
practices. A careful examination of the Bible accounts of the miracles of Jesus and his disciples shows that where there was clear physical evidence of the cause of the disease, the ailment is simply explained: men were blind, lame, or deaf; they had withered limbs, could not straighten themselves, had continual bleeding, or were lepers. Only when there was no obvious physical cause, or where the illness was inexplicable by the information available at the time, are evil spirits ever mentioned. One example from many will make the point. In Matthew's gospel two incidents of healing are brought together. The first concerns two blind men whom Jesus healed. The record says simply, "their eyes were opened" (Matthew 9:30). But straight afterwards, when the two men had left, another man was brought to Jesus. He was "mute, and demon-possessed" (verse 32). How strange that two men were blind because their eyes needed opening, but a man was dumb because he was possessed by demons! If there really is a spirit-inhabited world, then both illnesses would have been caused by unclean spirits. The only explanation that makes sense of the information, and which accords with the rest of Bible teaching, is that illnesses without any obvious cause were ascribed in those days to evil spirits. This does not mean that Jesus himself was uneducated about these things. He knew that there is only one God, who has no rival. But through his miracles Jesus was showing the people how in the kingdom age sin and mortality will no longer bind those whom he raises to be made like himself - immortal and incorruptible. Even if he had described to them some of the processes discovered by medical science in the last two centuries, Jesus' countrymen would not have understood. But they were able to understand his power and the promise it held for the future. The effect of this knowledge on Jesus' followers in the years immediately following his period of ministry in Israel was that they clearly perceived the truth about the occult, about magic, and about Satanism - that they are based upon false claims, and only exist where there is a climate of fear; a climate they seek to create and preserve. Those who practised these things also saw the difference between their alleged powers and the power exercised by the apostles. One man in Samaria, for example, "of a long time had bewitched the people . . . with his sorceries". When he witnessed the power of the Holy Spirit, he knew it surpassed the 'powers' he claimed to possess, and tried to persuade the apostles to sell it to him (Acts 8:9-24). In another city, Ephesus,
there were some people who had also been caught up in
occult practices. They were convinced of the supremacy of
the power exercised by the apostles when some "itinerant
Jewish exorcists took it upon themselves to call the name
of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits . . .
and the evil spirit answered and said, 'Jesus I know, and
Paul I know; but who are you?' " The effect of this
incident was that "many of those who had practised
magic brought their books together and burned them in the
sight of all" (Acts 19:11-20). "When they say to you, 'Seek those who are mediums and wizards, who whisper and mutter', should not a people seek their God? Should they seek the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them" (Isaiah 8:19,20). This is the advice we have
attempted to encourage in this booklet. Only one
authority exists which is trustworthy in these matters.
How can the dead offer any hope to the living? What can
they teach us except that death is certain for every man
and woman on earth? Mediums and wizards, practitioners of
occult arts, all claim to have contact with the after-life
where the spirits of dead men reign. But there is no such
place. there are no 'spirits of dead men’.
Spiritists' claims do not stand up to careful scientific
examination. But more importantly, those who say these
things "do not speak according to this word" -the
Word of God - which denies the existence of such a world.
Do you want to be associated with life, or death? With light, or darkness? God recognises only those who approach Him in the name of Jesus Christ. He is light, and he is life. MICHAEL ASHTON All quotations from the Revised Authorised (New King James) Version of the Bible. Reproduced by courtesy of the Christadelphian Magazine and Publishing Association by whom all rights are reserved. |
|
