Video Games From the Pit

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Tom: Thanks, Gary. Welcome to our ongoing discussion of Dave Hunt’s book Occult Invasion: The Subtle Seduction of the World and Church. The specific topic for the last couple of weeks has been “The Seduction of Youth through Occultism.” And what we’ve been saying, basically, is that our young people are being prepared, mostly through the methods, techniques, and beliefs of occultism—that is, witchcraft, Eastern Mysticism, sorcery, drugs, and so forth, to not only follow but ultimately worship the Antichrist.

Now, Dave, what do you think would convince, let’s say, the first-time listener that we’re making sense here, or that there is sense to be made?

Dave:  Tom, maybe we ought to talk about what is the Antichrist’s religion we’re being prepared for. And you would find that in 2 Thessalonians:2:4Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
See All..., where it says, “He as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” And we believe from that verse and from other verses that the temple will literally be rebuilt in Jerusalem, that a man (he is called “that Wicked One”) who will be revealed, will ultimately sit in that temple; he will have an image of himself in that temple, which must be worshiped as God (Revelation 13). And those who will not worship his image as God and worship him as God will be killed.

Now, I think there’s another obvious . . .

Tom: Now, these are specific prophecies from the Bible.

Dave: Absolutely.

Tom:  I mean, these are not things that you’re making up or I’m making up.

Dave:  Right. Absolutely. Now, I think there’s another obvious application of this. Not just the temple in Jerusalem but our bodies are supposed to be the temple of the Living God. And for the first time in history, not just a handful of gurus in the East but millions, literally millions of people across the Western world are being taught techniques: yoga, Transcendental Meditation— I mean, all kinds of techniques—and drugs, are being taught to look within themselves, within what ought to be the Temple of God, to discover their “higher Self” and to discover that they are God.

And this, of course, was the lie of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden to Eve: “You can be one of the gods, too.” Well, now, how is he going to demonstrate this? Well, if you’re a god, you should have godlike powers.

So, what we’re talking about now, Tom, the seduction of youth, how youth are being led into the idea that they can function as gods. That they have these godlike qualities, that they’re available—the Human Potential Movement—and if I only know how to tap into these powers that all of my heroes on television and in the movies and video games and so forth—they all have these powers! It’s not science fiction any more. It’s something that we can actually do. And, then, in the public schools, they’re being led into exercises for relaxation, supposedly, and so forth, that will allow them to make contact with what is actually a spirit guide, though they generally don’t call it that—some “wise person,” an “alter-ego,” another part of your mind, or whatever it is—and through this entity that you make contact with in this altered state of consciousness . . .

Tom:  Right. Now this is also called, in 2 Thessalonians, the Lie. The idea being that there is the truth of the true and living God, and then there’s a lie. And that’s really what we’re talking about here. If people are going to accept this worldwide, as the Bible indicates they will, the lie has to become prevalent. The lie has to displace the truth.

Dave: If I have these powers, who needs God?

Tom: Right. So, really, we’re altering . . . part of this process is to alter a view of God, which, in this country (we mentioned this last week) that for the most part, we were in a Christian era—maybe nominally Christian, but at least an understanding of Christianity was pervasive. But today, that’s going by the boards.

Dave: Well, unfortunately, Tom, we have a Christianity, so called, that even involves these kinds of powers. You have someone like Morris Cerullo, for example . . .

Tom:  Here’s a guy who claims to be a Christian . . .

Dave: Oh, yes, he’s highly honored as a Christian, and I’m not even saying that he isn’t a Christian. I don’t know. But he says (and I’m quoting him verbatim), “When we stand up here, brother, you’re not looking at Morris Cerullo. You’re looking at God!” Okay? Well, he’s got a different idea of God.

Or, Kenneth Hagin says that “we are gods.” Kenneth Copeland, and so forth. Well, we’ve dealt with that before, but now, not only is that a false teaching that has been brought into the church, even into, seemingly, the evangelical church, where you have evangelicals . . . psychologists, Christian psychologists, who are leading people to go back in their mind and “visualize Jesus coming along” and solving their problems. (This “Jesus” is really a spirit guide pretending to be Jesus.)

So, this is pervading the church, but it’s in public schools. It’s everywhere throughout our society, and, Tom, if this is not a preparation for the religion of the Antichrist, who himself sits in the Temple of God and declares that he is God and manifests what the Bible says, “lying signs and wonders,” these incredible powers, which then are the pledge that all mankind can have these as well. He doesn't claim to be the Creator of the Universe. He doesn’t claim to be Jesus Christ, resurrected from the dead, with the nail prints in his hands and feet. But he claims to be “the Christ” in the sense that he is the latest reincarnation of the Christ Consciousness. And now, we’re all reincarnations of something from the past—that’s another idea; I can’t even remember whether we’ve dealt with it.

But, anyway, these powers are available to everybody. And you can have these powers, too! So now we’ve changed the whole idea of God, and man, in relation to God, as a creature created by Him and dependent upon Him, looking to Him for His grace and His mercy and His salvation through Jesus Christ—we don’t need this salvation! All we need to do is find out “who we really are”; build up our self-esteem, develop our full potential. And this is the idea that is pervading both the secular world and the church.

Tom: Right. And it’s antichrist, because it’s not only a false . . . it displaces the true Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, with a false messiah, with someone the Bible talks about, and lays it out very clearly, who will, at one point in history, be in control, for a time.

Dave: Here’s a major in the Army, Michael Aquino, on the Oprah Winfrey show, and he said, “We’re not servants of some God. We are our own gods.” So, this is where we’re heading—this idea is being presented everywhere.

Tom:  Dave, now, going back to, really, the specific topic, “The Occult Seduction of Our Youth,” last week we mentioned a little bit about how our kids are being influenced, really, in major ways. We talked about education, we talked about drugs, we talked about psychology, and we also mentioned entertainment. I mean, this seems to be a major player in the process of conditioning our kids. For example, TV shows. This is where they pick it up. There are programs on, like, whether it be X-Files, or Sabrina, or Xena, the Warrior Princess, or Hercules—they’re watching people that demonstrate powers—occult powers.

And you also mentioned last week, and it was the same with me, some parents would say, “Well, come on, we grew up with that kind of thing. No big deal! We had Superman, and others that seemed to be able to do certain things.” Well, is that a legitimate argument?

Dave: Well, Superman didn’t claim to have occult powers. He just claimed to be a super strong guy from another planet. These were natural powers with him. And he didn’t offer these powers to anybody else. You couldn’t go into some visualization or meditation technique and get them. I mean, that was very mild, and, Tom, I hesitate to even . . . I don’t even keep up with this stuff, as I should, probably. I’m a grandfather now, and I need to check up on my grandchildren a little more, but I live rather far from them and don’t see them that often, so maybe the things that I’ll mention now are passé, but the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—they were very popular; I don’t know if they still are . . .

Tom: Again, with cable television, this stuff doesn’t go away; it just moves to another channel.

Dave:  Okay, now how did they maintain their powers? They have special powers. It was through Eastern Meditation, which they learned through their guru, Splinter the Rat, okay? He taught them how to get these . . .

She-Ra! I can remember a Sunday school teacher telling me—here’s some children in . . . I don’t know, kindergartners, and he’s saying, “Now if you have problems, who do you cry out to?” And he’s expecting them to say, “Jesus!” And a little girl said, “She-Ra! Princess of Power! That’s who I call out to!” Well, she’s the head of a group of sorceresses and goddesses who rule the universe from the Crystal Castle, which is the center and source of all power. There’s the half-human, half-animal Thunder Cats. Their eyes light up with an inner occult power. I mean . . . look, Superman, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers—they were not in this category. And you’ve just got so much of this stuff now, and of course it’s more accessible to children than it ever was before because of the video games, videos, they all know how to work their TVs or their computers. And some of these kids are so deeply into Pokémon—I know schools . . . I was just visiting back in the East, and the school had banned—well, Fridays they would allow them to bring . . . These kids are trading these cards—some of them cost as much as $50, maybe even more . . .

Tom: Part of this is greed, too.

Dave: Part of it is, yes. But still, they are totally absorbed. They’re obsessed with this. It almost possesses their thinking day and night.

Tom: See, again, what we’re trying to communicate here is that this is religious instruction.

Dave: Right.

Tom: And that . . . this is how we put it in the context of Antichrist, the antichrist religion. This is the condition that’s going on.

Dave:  We’re reviving the Star Wars series again, and, Tom, that is pure witchcraft.

Tom:  Well, simply, we talked about earlier the religion of Antichrist. There’s no longer a transcendent personal God out there. There’s a power, a force.

Dave: And you can tune into it! You can use it.

Tom: And for all of its entertainment value, of an interesting story, high technology, and so on, there’s a religious message here that the kids are taking in. And if they don’t understand biblical Christianity, or even if they don’t have an idea of Christianity in general, this is the only “god” that they know about. This is the god that they’re being reared on, raised in, and so forth.

Dave:  Tom, what they’re taught in Sunday school goes right by them now, because . . .

Tom:  If they go to Sunday school . . .

Dave: If they go to Sunday school. Even if they do go to Sunday school, they’ve seen it on the screen – I mean, this is exciting! And obviously, this is a whole lot more persuasive than something that they’re getting from Bible verses in Sunday school.

Tom:  You know, look at the films that are popular today. We mentioned Star Wars, episode 1. The film didn’t do that well—at least not as well as they’d expected, but the merchandising is going far and away what expectations were. Blair Witch Project—a popular film. The Sixth Sense was a very big film. These are all films with ideas that continue to reinforce occultism.

Dave:  There’s no question about it. I go way back to that first Star Wars film. And I took Rabi Maharaj there. Rabi is an ex-guru. He has a book out there: Death of a Guru. Fantastic. People ought to get it. He was once worshiped as God.

Tom: Yeah, he was a Hindu.

Dave: Right. As a guru. They would bow before him and put their offerings there, and so forth. Well, he became a Christian. He found out that the gods of Hinduism were out to destroy him! Not just to deceive him but to destroy him. But he came to Christ, and now he’s a powerful preacher of the gospel around the world.

But anyway, I took Rabi to that very first one, the Star Wars film. And we sat there in the theater poking one another. Wow! Look at that! This is witchcraft! The Force—not a personal god, now. There’s no personal god involved in this. There’s a force. It has a dark side and a light side. That’s black magic and white magic. “You can manipulate this for yourself.” When Obi Wan dies, he becomes a spirit guide from the other side, and, incredibly, as you moved on through this series of films, even Darth Vader turned out to be one of the good guys, because when he dies, he’s up there as part of this ungodly trinity of Obi Wan, Darth Vader, and Yoda, guiding Luke from the other side. I mean . . . Well, I don’t want to go into any more, but, Tom, the writer and the director of that film knew exactly what he was doing. He says it’s a religious film!

Tom: We’re talking about George Lucas, and he was heavily influenced by Joseph Campbell and his writing—occult writing.

Dave:  So he says that it’s a religious film, it’s presenting religious ideas. That is all the more dangerous, because it is a religious deception, and that’s the problem. And yet, some Christians try to preach the gospel from Star Wars! So now, we are perverting Christianity. We’re perverting the Word of God. We’re perverting our very concept of God and of man’s relationship to Him, and of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Tom: Now, Dave, there may be Christians out there who are saying, “Well, listen. I think these guys are just pushing this too far—that a society of rational people could ever turn to magic or witchcraft, sorcery, drugs, and so forth, for its further development.” They’re not buying it.

But let’s go to Isaiah 47. Here we have an example of a society that God chides for their involvement in witchcraft and sorcery and so on. Let me read a few verses. I’ll start with verse 9: “But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood: they shall come upon thee in their perfection for the multitude of their sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments. For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou has said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me.’”

Dave, I could go on, but . . . well, let me go down to . . .

Dave:  Go down to verse 12.

Tom:  Verse 12: “Stand now in thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast labored from thy youth; . . . ”  This is what we’re talking about! “. . . if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail. Thou are wearied in the multitude of thy councils. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things which shall come upon thee.”

Now, God’s directing this at ancient Babylon, but is there an application for us today?

Dave:  Tom, you said people out there are maybe thinking, You can’t get a rational scientific society of today to imagine they can develop magical powers, and so forth. Well, you know that our top universities, they’re involved in parapsychological research in the laboratory trying to prove that man does indeed have these powers, telekinesis—that we can communicate . . .  Edgar Mitchell, on Apollo 14, he’s trying, by telepathy—and with some success—to communicate back to earth. The KGB’s involved in it. The CIA. Well, the KGB is now called the FSB, but they’ve been involved in this. It’s . . .

Tom: Dave, even at the kindergarten level, our kids are being taught to move into a higher form of creativity through these methodologies and techniques. Now, why would that be introduced except people see, or recommend it, to solve the problems of mankind?

Dave:  It’s the Human Potential Movement.

Tom:  Right.

Dave: “Our potential is infinite,” so we’re going to somehow develop these techniques. And so this goes back to the lie of the serpent. This has permeated every society down through history. And, Tom, we could give all kinds of examples. Once in awhile, you see the thirteenth floor in a high-rise building, but generally you don’t. You go from the twelfth to the fourteenth. How many people—you set up a ladder on a busy street. I guarantee you, most of these people will walk out into the gutter and out into the street to avoid walking under a ladder. Oh, they would say they don’t really believe that, but there is a certain amount of superstition that holds everybody. There are a lot of people a lot of people who still . . . well, they still think the stars affect them. They read their chart, their astrological column in the papers—I mean they’re in every newspaper, Tom!

Tom: Dave, we did a News Alert about the courthouse in Miami, where they were having problems on the grounds outside the building. They had dead animals, because people who were into Santeria were going through these rituals to make their court cases work to their effect. We have medical people; we have lawyers, attorneys, I mean, people with degrees, into this stuff big time to solve their problems. Not only the attraction of power, and so forth, but basically they’re trying to solve their problems.

Dave:  Okay, so let’s try to explain what . . . so, what’s wrong? So somebody has some little superstitions and so forth. I mean  . . . oh, they’ve got a little “insurance policy”; maybe they’re trusting in this or that, but what’s the problem with it? The problem is God says that He’s the true God, that all other gods are false. He “will not share [His] glory with anyone else.” And if we turn to these false ideas, we are not trusting in God. If we’re not trusting in God, and we’re not honoring the true God, who created this universe, who created us, who has told us—He’s given us His laws, and we have broken His laws; He’s told us there is only one way of redemption—only one way to be reconciled to Him—and that is because His Son, God eternal, came to this earth through the virgin birth, became a man, never ceased to be God, will never cease to be man—He’s the one and only God-Man—He paid the penalty that God’s holy righteous laws required for sin. And that only in that way—Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, the Life. No man cometh to Father but by Me.” In only that way can man be reconciled to God, can he be forgiven, And now, we have all of these other ideas: the Force, or astrology, or some occult technique—now this is going to be your “salvation.” This is the way you will conquer your problems in life. So, in fact, our civilization—our society—has rejected the true God, the God of the

Bible, the God who created us, and has turned to false gods. And that can only bring about destruction of society now and of the soul eternally.

Tom: Dave, Isaiah 47, which you just quoted, this is Isaiah, the prophet. It’s his chiding . . . It’s actually his prophecy with regard to Babylon. Now, if somebody doesn’t understand or take this to have application with regard to the Antichrist—have further application down the line—I think they’re missing something. And this is what we’re appealing to. Again, these are not our ideas. We’re appealing to the Scriptures, which underscore what’s taking place today.

Dave: Amen!