On the Willesee half-hour on Tuesday Feb. 18, 1986, reporter Martin King confirmed that occult practices, including Satanism, are flourishing in our Australian capital cities.
He interviewed a 14-year old girl, Julia, who has a passion for the occult, a passion she conceived when she left her home and took to the streets of St Kilda. It has got her into trouble for stealing crucifixes and tabernacles from cemeteries and churches; but what is more significant is she admitted that after she joined the movement she lost a number of her friends; one died, another had a car accident, a third overdosed, and her boyfriend of some months was found hanged in his room - not, she believes, by his own hand.
Inspector Dennis Henry of the Victorian Police 'Children's Exploitation Unit' said that at least sixteen young people between 14 and 15 years of age known to him were used in Black Masses for sexual purposes, and in the process were embroiled in drug addiction, prostitution and devil-worship.' "There are at least half a dozen Black Masses held in the Melbourne area every week," he said.
Ronald Conway, a Melbourne Clinical Psychologist who counsels people involved in cults, including devil worship, said that he knew of several houses where Black Masses were celebrated - usually in the homes of affluent people where rooms are large enough to accommodate the rituals and the orgies associated with them. "You see only the end result in my job," he said, "but it goes on all right. The end result is very sad indeed - it's a short way to the mental hospital."
A young housewife who had been devil-possessed and later delivered by exorcism in a Canberra hospital said - sobbing at the memory of her suffering: "If you go through the pain of the evil influence, and the battle, it's ... suffering ... a real loss ... you might as well be dead." Her father witnessed the exorcism, and was clearly astonished and deeply moved by it. "I wouldn't have believed what happened if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. When the words were said: "In the Name of Jesus Christ I rebuke you Satan, and I demand that you leave Lyn's body," the reaction was immediate. She slid down the bed, went as stiff as a board, then shook from head to toe in spasm. I just couldn't describe what it was like."
She said that it all began just with innocent dabbling. She had agreed to appear on the Willesee programme because she wanted very much to warn others not to get involved. "You open yourself to something really dangerous, and you have no protection; you don't know anything about it. It's not fun. It's not a hobby. It's a real menace."
Inspector Henry confirmed what she said. "It's frightening," he said. "Young people are not being told the truth about what they're being brought into. They're told for example that they're being introduced to 'nature worship' and things like that. In fact it's a celebration of evil practices, with evil people encouraging them to do antisocial things, evil things, which are destructive to their mental health ... and their physical health. Anyone who dabbles in it exposes themselves to serious danger. But the devil is alive and well, and being sold as a 'good guy'."
The growth of the occult in our generation is quite surprising. When I was growing up in Australia forty years ago, very few people took much interest in it. The age of reason was upon us, and nothing was easily accepted unless you had reasons to explain it. Today, masses of people believe implicitly what in those days was dismissed as nonsense.
What is the 'Occult'? How widespread is it? How has it gained ground so rapidly? Where does it touch our lives? What does the Bible teach us about it? What should we do? These are the questions we shall ask and try to answer.
The word 'occult' means esoteric (i.e. for the initiated), involving the supernatural, the mystical, the magical - from a root meaning 'hidden'. The occult covers a vast range of pursuits and interests: ouija boards, magic writing, palmistry, fortune telling, seances, witchcraft, Satanism. It takes hundreds of shapes.
Historically the chief forms in which it has been practised have been astrology, magic, spiritualism and witchcraft. The most common forms today are ouija boards, fortune telling, seances and black magic.
In the last fifteen years it has spread widely through all levels of western society - in Europe, America and Australia. Film producers have cashed in on the craze with films like "Rosemary's Baby", "The Exorcist" and so on. Writers like Denis Wheatley have popularised it with books like "To the Devil a Daughter" ... he has made a fortune from them. In 1968, in the preface to one of them, he warned his readers: "No-one should have anything to do with the occult, or they may well find their wives and families ending up in mental institutions." But he kept on writing the books! In West Germany there is an extraordinary revival of the worship of the old Norse gods. The Church of Satan in San Francisco enrolled 10,000 members in the eight years following its establishment in 1965. In a Wisconsin University in 1984, 500 students enrolled in an official course in Astrology and Witchcraft. Indeed, in the U.S. it is estimated that there are 10 million people practising witchcraft, and 100 million devoted to astrology. On the U.S. West Coast, Satanist killings are multiplying.
An Anglican Board of Enquiry, set up in 1975 in Sydney, recently reported a massive increase of interest and activity in the occult here in Australia. In NSW, Queensland and South Australia 1973-4-5, surveys were carried out by state bodies; they showed that almost 50% of high school students were involved in occult practices! - in the mid-1970's; and ... females outnumbered males by almost 2 to 1! Telecom now has its own astrologer on its "Dial a Horoscope Service"; it is among the top six such services, receiving 90,000 calls a month. High Priestess Claire Lord of Sydney claims that in Australia today there are 4,000 practising witches. It is hardly surprising that the "Week-End Australian" in May 1985 should report that "Witchcraft is arguably Australia's fastest growing religion." Christopher Koch, author of "The Year of Living Dangerously" claimed, "We are living in the greatest age of witchcraft since the 14th century."
The trend is accelerating all the time. It would be very surprising indeed if there was nobody here tonight who had not been involved in it, in some degree, at some time.
How has it happened? A number of elements has contributed to its growth:
1. The media - books, magazines and films, astrology columns in popular magazines and daily papers.
2. Friends and relatives - persuading family and friends to join in an 'entertainment', a 'diversion'.
3. The decline in the influence of the Christian church.
Since 1949 the church worldwide has declined numerically in proportion to the population growth. This has opened the door first to rationalism, and then to other philosophies that reject the necessity for faith. That opens the floodgates to superstition and worse.
Three reasons (among others) why people are attracted to it are:
1. To obtain power.
Mind-reading, fortune telling, psychic healing, levitation, the power to inflict harm on those you would like to be revenged on. Man desires to dominate - he will use what he can to do it ... if not other lives, then his own: so he consults astrologers or palmists or tarot card readers or fortune tellers, looking for predictions on the stock exchange, on job changes, family fortunes and so on.
2. To gain knowledge.
The things witches and mediums are reported to be achieving arouse curiosity; people want to know about them, even at first hand.
In bereavement, people want to communicate with the dead, and learn how their loved ones are, and where they are.
3. The love of darkness.
We do love darkness rather than light. We tend to choose falsehood. We do. Isn't it true that we tend to believe a lie about another person before we believe the truth? Isn't it a fact that we more easily believe bad gossip about people than good? Why? Because we love darkness rather than light! The occult belongs to the dark. And men and women love it.
The most common forms the occult takes in our society are:
1. Astrology
Astrology is over 5,000 years old. Kings and Princes sought to know from the stars when and how to wage their wars. Astrology assumes that the stars and the planets exert influence over our lives.
Perhaps it had an innocent beginning: the seasons, and river floods like those on the Nile, so vital to an agricultural society's survival, were obviously associated with the movements of the sun and the moon ... even of the appearance of the star Sirius above the horizon. It only needed an unusual phenomenon in the night sky like the appearance of a comet or a supernova at a time of crisis in world affairs to lead men to the conclusion that what happened in the heavens affected life on earth. But it is a far cry from the effect of the moon on the tides to its effect on the temperament your Aunt Agatha was born with!
The Christian has to ask himself seriously: "Who rules the life of this world? ... Christ, or the stars?" If a child of God seeks guidance from horoscopes, from zodiac signs or astrology, does he not thereby repudiate faith in Christ's Lordship ... and deliberately to disobey the clear requirements of God our loving Father: "Let no-one be found among you who interprets omens." (Deuteronomy 18:10) That means astrology, tea-cup reading, horoscopes etc. If we read the astrological charts in "New Idea" and "Womens' Weekly" and let them affect us, even in the least degree, we open ourselves to an influence upon our life which is quite alien to the Spirit of God.
A young minister whose story a brother minister tells resolved to demonstrate to his congregation just how foolish the occult was by going to an astrologer to have his horoscope cast - so he could then come back to his congregation and show them how absurdly wrong the astrologer was. He told the church what he had done, and what the predictions were. To his astonishment, the predictions then began to come true, one by one. There began a period in his life when he fell into the grip of terrible fear and spiritual conflict such as he had never known. He lost the power of discernment - his understanding of the Scriptures simply died. His ministry ground almost to a standstill ... until he recognised his folly, confessed it to God, repented it, disavowed it in the Name of Jesus, and asked God to cleanse and deliver him. The fear, the oppression and the turmoil lifted then ... and the predictions that remained unfulfilled all failed, then, to occur!
2. Fortune Telling
This is not the same as the spiritual gift of Discernment. Fortune telling is a counterfeit of the gift of discernment (all the gifts of the Spirit have demonic counterfeits, incidentally; be aware of that).
David Pope, the editor of the "Son Times", a Christian newspaper that recently commenced publication in S.E. Queensland, told me that he was prevailed upon to visit a fortune teller - for fun ("it can't do any harm") - who warned him, among other things, that he would face a very grave danger at sea very soon. He laughed outright, because he never went near the sea. Swimming pools were about as near to the water as he ever got. To his astonishment he very nearly drowned less than a month later off one of our Gold Coast beaches; and from that time on, all sorts of bad things began to happen in his and his family's life - sickness among his children, failures in business ventures and so on. When he realised the folly of what he had done, he confessed, repented, and trusted God to deliver him. Then the sicknesses stopped and his business began to pick up.
You may smile and dismiss such stories as mere coincidence. But if you had heard as many such stories as I have, you would not be smiling. You would realise that when you admit a fortune teller into your life, you may admit into your life at the same time an evil spirit that may be informing that fortune teller ... in which case you will fall into a demonic snare.
3. Charms and fetishes
We can be influenced in this area by the occult without even realising it, by bringing back curios associated with pagan religions from overseas holidays, for example; or by wearing zodiac signs and fetishes of all sorts on bangles and even key-rings.
Deuteronomy 7.25-6, "The images of their gods you are to burn in the fire. Do not covet the silver and the gold on them; and do not take it for yourselves, or you will be ensnared by it. For it is detestable to the Lord your God. Do not bring a detestable thing into your house, or you, like it, will be set apart for destruction."
Have nothing to do with those things; Have nothing to do with even their silver and gold melted down. If you do, you may be inviting demonic influence into your life..
While Stewart Robinson was home on furlough from Bangladesh in 1981, he visited a family here in Brisbane who were experiencing endless distress over the children's health. Accidents overtook them. One by one they were dying. They had been on a visit to A.B.M.S. mission fields in Papua New Guinea and had brought back with them many objects and artefacts they had bought in the markets there. What more natural than to bring back mementos of their visit? ... funny masks and so on. When the family got rid of those things from their home, the health of their children returned and the accidents stopped.
In Acts 19 we read how the Christians in the church at Ephesus brought the fetishes and magic scrolls they had used in their former lives and made a bonfire of them in the market place ... about $3,000,000 worth! And the result, Luke records, was that "the word of the Lord spread widely and increased in power." Why? Because demonic bondages had been broken, and the Spirit of God was released to flow freely in their lives again.
Perhaps you should think seriously about objects you have in your home, and trinkets you wear as decorations ... and do a bit of burning of your own! I am serious. If you don't, you may bring harm, not only to yourselves, but upon the whole church in fact. As long as those things are not put away, you remain open to oppression by those evil influences that led to their manufacture. What do you want to be open to - the Spirit of Jesus, or the spirit of evil? I ask you to be serious about this. You will say, "But I paid $300 for them." Maybe you did. Is your health and welfare worth that to you? Is your family's? Would you sell your brothers and sisters in the church for that?
The same brother pastor mentioned above was called to another home in Melbourne where the child had been sick for years and years and years; the parents were getting no rest, night after night after night, and they were worn to such a frazzle they had begun to fear for their sanity. While he was praying with them, he felt constrained in his spirit to ask if he might look through their house ... search it. They agreed, and he found innocent-looking things that had been given to them by friends who had been on overseas trips - things related to heathen religions. He said, "These will have to go." And they took them down to the back garden and smashed them; every one - some made of solid jade, very beautiful, worth hundreds of dollars. Since that night, the health of their boy improved ... like that.
A witch interviewed in 1985 on Sydney television said that she trains the pupils in her coven in witchcraft for six years before she opens them up to the inner powers of that particular form of witchcraft. She was asked, "How do people come into this?" She said, "There are three very common ways: astrology, palmistry, and tarot cards. These are the common entry points." She went on, surprisingly, to reveal her hand. "People do not realise," she said, "that behind these apparently innocent pastimes, there are enormous spiritual powers operative; but we get them in in these ways, and they just come in and in and in."
And they are caught.
What does the Bible have to say to us about all this?
Some pretty uncompromising things, and with good reason; for Satan rules a kingdom of spirits in rebellion against God who are subservient to him. Their objective always is to tempt, to deceive, to accuse, to condemn, to pressurise, to resist, to oppose, to control, to steal, to afflict, to kill, to destroy, to defile, to corrupt anything that is of God's creation. They are particularly concerned therefore to attack those who are "new creatures in Christ Jesus." It is hardly surprising that the Bible has strong, stern, stringent things to say about them.
Deut. 18:10: "Let
no-one be found among you who interprets omens." That's astrology,
cup reading, horoscopes etc.
Lev. 19:26, "Do not practise divination or sorcery."
Lev. 19:31, "Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritualists."
Lev. 20: 6, "I will set my face against the person who turns to
mediums and spiritists."
If you have
turned to them, then you should know that God's face is turned
against you. Deut
18:10, "You shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of the
nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who practises
divination, a soothsayer, or a witch, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or
a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer (i.e. those who call up the
dead). Whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord.
The nations give heed to them; but as for you, the Lord your God has
not allowed you so to do. The Lord your God will raise up for you a
prophet like Moses from among you - from among your brethren:
him you shall heed."
And that prophecy, as John 1:25-27 shows, was fulfilled in the coming of Jesus. God has given HIM to you to guide you - no other. Whatever there really is 'out there', in the world into which the occult reaches, God only knows. But if He has said, "It's dangerous; don't meddle with it," then we are fools to fancy that we know better than God.
In Joshua 13.22, the Israelites were commanded to eliminate Balaam because of his practice of divination. Throughout the Old Testament, indeed, those who dabbled in these things were to be put to death, so great was the danger they presented to God's people. They put the whole community at risk. With the coming of Christ into the world, of course, death is no longer a necessary remedy; He brought deliverance ... and deliverance is a remedy God always prefers to death!
But to try to control another person's life, or your own, or the future, is to try to take the lordship of life out of the hands of God into your own. To do so is to show that you do not accept God's purposes - that you refuse to live by faith in Him. Any practice that denies the lordship of Christ is to be avoided ... at any cost. For you thereby forsake God's word and hand your life over to some demonic power. You cannot seek the protection of anything other than God without forsaking Him. One is of light and the other is of darkness, one is of good and the other is of evil, one is of God and the other is of Satan. "Choose you this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Joshua 24.15
But do understand the protection you have in Christ Jesus. He has triumphed over all the powers of darkness, and extends the power of His victory to cover and protect all His own. The Christian has powerful weapons to defend him against the powers of darkness.
He has the Word, the
Spirit, and the Blood
... the Word of God, the living and powerful Word of God by which
Satan was defeated in the wilderness when he tempted Christ
there;
... the Spirit of God, in Whom the power of Christ's victory is
resident; and
... the blood of Jesus, by which He has overcome the devil and all
His hosts. In the power of the shed blood of Jesus we too may share
the victory with Him: Rev. 12:11, "They overcame him by the blood of
the Lamb and by the word of their testimony." (Not that there is any
"magic" quality in the physical blood itself; rather, the phrase "the
blood of the Lamb" denotes the victory our Lord achieved over all the
powers of darkness when He shed it.)
If you have Christ, you have nothing to fear, for 'greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world." I John 4:4. Take advantage of every means at your disposal to keep close to Jesus so as to walk through life under His protection:
... pray. Every
day.
... listen to Him, in the Bible. Every day.
... company with His friends, your fellow Christians.
Often.
It has not been my aim to be alarmist; I have tried soberly to speak the truth as I see it. I honestly believe the danger is insidious and very great..
Here is a check list I ask you to ponder. If you have been involved in any of these areas, ask the Lord Jesus to wipe you clean of any smear that may have been left on you; trust Him to deliver you from any evil influence that may oppress you; seek His protection.
Witchcraft, magic, curses, black masses.
Ouija boards or magic writing (hands around the table on a glass that moves to letters round the table spelling out words), planchettes, table tappings, automatic writing.
Astrology, horoscopes, palmistry, tarot cards, tea-leaf readings.
Seances, consultations with mediums, healing through magic practices, astral travel.
Amulets, letters of protection, pagan fetishes, relics or artefacts from religious rites associated with witchcraft.
There are many more. Any group or organisation that denies the absolute Divinity, the absolute Lordship and the absolute Saviourhood of Jesus Christ is open to the spirit of "antichrist." And no Christian should have any part in any of them.
In case your life has been touched at any point by these things, here are Scriptures to lay hold of, with a suggested prayer to offer after each:
Ephesians
1:17 •
Through the shed blood of Jesus all my sins are forgiven,
and Psalm
107:2 • I am
redeemed out of the hand of the enemy. Romans
5:9 •
Through the blood of Jesus I am justified and made
righteous. Hebrews
13:12 •
Through the blood of Jesus I am sanctified, made holy and
set apart to God. I Cor.
6:19-20 • My
body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit Who is in me, Whom I
have from God. I am cleansed and sanctified, and therefore
the devil has no place in me and no more power over
me. Revelation12:11 •
Through the blood of Jesus and the Word of my testimony I
overcome Satan.
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