Occult Invasion (revisit) Part Five-Should Christians Use Divination?

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Welcome to a special edition of Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call, with Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon. I’m Gary Carmichael; it’s great to have you along side. Coming up in today’s program in Our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will continue their in depth study of the Doctrine of Salvation. In Religion in the News: “One-Size-Fits-All Chapel.” We’ll take a look at that story, and examine the question, “Who Were the Nephilim?” We hope you can stay with us. Our ministry, The Berean Call, offers a wide variety of teaching materials including books, tracts, audio and video disks and copies of our weekly broadcast on compact disk or DVD. You may also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, which we offer free of charge. We’ll let you know how to order later in the program.

Now: This week’s cover article. We continue a revisit to our 2000 radio series based on Dave Hunt’s book, Occult Invasion . Today we focus on the question, “Should Christians use Divination?” Along with Dave Hunt, here’s Tom McMahan.

Tom:

Thanks, Gary . The topic for this week’s program is Dave’s book, Occult Invasion: The Subtle Seduction of the World in the Church . We’ve been talking for the past couple of weeks about a relationship between evolution and the occult. Today, Dave, I thought that we would zero in more on what occultism actually is. To many of our listeners the term may make them think of magic or witchcraft but certainly not anything that would touch their every day life, or would it?

Dave:

Maybe we ought to define it first of all. Occult comes from the Latin, “occultist”, which means concealed or hidden. If you look it up in Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary , it defines the occult as, hidden, concealed, secret, esoteric, beyond human understanding, mysterious, and designating of certain mystical arts or studies such as magic, alchemy, astrology and so forth—it’s a wide range. Basically, what it is is some kind of a power that is not physical and cannot be explained by human science. I quote Archie Fire, Lame Deer, a Lakota Medicine Man, —it’s medicine men, witch doctors and so forth who claim to have these occult powers. He says, quote, a medicine man has spiritual powers to do something supernatural. Now, it’s not supernatural and somewhere we have to deal with the difference—

Tom:

We will. We are going to talk about naturalism and supernaturalism.

Dave:

But he says,—which cannot be explained by the white man’s science. Now you say, well, doesn’t that impact our lives? There are a lot of people who play the Ouija Board, for example. Ouija boards, in case people are not aware of it, were originally designed to contact the spirits of the dead soldiers who died in World War I over there in France . It wasn’t long before it became the most popular parlor game, past Monopoly. And, they have done experiments with ouija boards where they have scrambled the alphabet, they blindfold the persons playing it, they don’t even know where the letters are. Under those conditions it moves faster then ever spelling out meaningful messages. You are in contact with something going on out there. Or dowsing, water witching, over half a million wells have been discovered in the United States ....

Tom:

Some people would say well, if I’m contacting entities out there, you know, I want nothing to do with that, some people wouldn’t even believe in it, but there still is an interest in things like that but there are different rationales.

Dave:

ESP, psychic powers and so forth.

Tom:

But when you are talking about dowsing, that doesn’t seem to be anything with which you would be contacting spirits.

Dave:

It’s called divination in the Bible. The Ouija Board is a divination device. Divination uses any physical object that allows you to tune in to the spirit world. Are we really tuning in to the spirit world in dowsing? Yes. We can prove it very simply. Originally, it used to be that you took a green willow wand and walk across the ground and suddenly the thing goes down. They would say it’s the moisture in the green twig that’s attracted to the water in the ground and therefore, you know, some magnetic attraction. However, for a good dowser, that wand will bob up and down and tell you how deep you have to drill. It will also bob up and down and tell you how many gallons per minute the well will produce. If you were dowsing in France it will tell you how many liters per minute and how many meters deep you have to drill. So, information is being communicated. Now furthermore, we now know you can dowse for anything. You can dowse for buried treasure, for oil—a dowser dowsing in Kennebunkport , Maine —his name was Henry Gross—

Tom:

Now this is documented, right?

Dave:

Yes, this is documented. You go to Kennebunkport, Maine, and you will find a plaque that says: In this room, October 22, 1949, Henry Gross dowsed three fresh water domes,—and he gives you the names of them—on a map of Bermuda, an island on which no potable spring water supposedly existed. In Bermuda , December 7, 1949 , Henry found the domes as dowsed in Kennebunkport —tells you the water they produced and so forth. Actually, ground water geologists had gone over Bermuda and had said there was no water there and they had to bring it in by ship or they had to catch it in rain. Now, here’s a man dowsing over a map of Bermuda maybe fifteen hundred miles away or so. Now tell me the relationship between lines drawn on a piece of paper as a map of Bermuda and what is actually under the ground over there. There is no scientific explanation.

Tom:

There is no physiological connection, — there is no scientific rationale that could explain that.

Dave:

Well Tom, on the one hand you would say it would be really easy to slip into this sort of thing. You know, I can remember when I was in the Army many, many years ago, we played around with hypnosis. We could do amazing things with hypnosis. You could get a guy as stiff as a board and put his head on one bunk and his heels on the other one and you could sit on it. Now, you couldn’t possibly accomplish that unless you were in a hypnotic state. All kinds of amazing things would happen. So then, you would have to ask yourself, what is behind this? It doesn’t seem to be normal. By the way, all these things are referred to in Scripture, Deuteronomy 18 for example, and they are absolutely forbidden in the Bible. So, it is so easy. You get involved in Positive Mental Attitude Seminars, success motivation training in the end. For example: I’ve talked to—here’s a high school kid who comes up to me and says, Mr. Hunt, I’m taking a business course in high school and the instructor tells me; write on a piece of paper my ambition. Do I want to be Chief Executive Officer or Chairman of the Board? What do I want to be? Sales manager? How much do I want to earn? Write it on a piece of paper put it under my pillow and sleep on it and this will bring it to pass. Well now wait a minute. What power is doing this? So, what happens is, you begin to believe that there is some kind of a power in your subconscious mind or—they have all kinds of explanations. Some universal mind out there and you can tune in to this. This is how religious science, science of mind and so forth—these things work. And the next thing you know, you have begun to believe that there is some force or some power, some spirit—it doesn’t matter what you want to call it—some higher power. It’s not the God of the Bible, but something that you want now to commit yourself to and you want to become in tune with this thing so that you can use it to your own ends. That’s the lie of the serpent in the garden and then the next thing you know, I’m a regular little god. I can use what I think are supernatural powers. So, a person is very easily drawn into this. Now, how would they protect themselves from this? Well of course, if they know the Bible they would know that it’s not biblical and they are warned against it. But even if you don’t know the Bible you would realize—wait a minute, this isn’t normal. There’s something going on here. I go to a palm reader—come on! You’re telling me that lines in my palm are there and they are going to tell me what’s going to—astrology—you mean the stars are going to determine my fate and so forth—reading in a crystal ball you mean—now wait a minute! We’ve got a scientist today and he is teaching people how to see their relatives in a mirror. They did this on TV, actually demonstrated it and suddenly, here comes your dead relative. Their image is in a mirror, mirror gazing. So, when you start to get involved in these things you realize: (a) It’s not normal. (b) There’s some real power here. (c) You ask yourself, what is it? Maybe I had better not get involved because maybe this power has some intelligence and it’s drawing me into this for some reason and I would be a fool to think I can use this power. No, it’s sucking me in so that it can use me. I had better back up fast and get some facts on this. And that’s what we are trying to do in this program.

Tom:

Certainly skepticism, I mean, non-believers have a healthy skepticism even to the point of denying the spiritual realm which we certainly are not doing here today. But is there a criterion for deciding if something is of the occult and how can we best discern whether or not, things that are not so obvious are really of the occult.

Dave:

A lot of our young people got involved and older ones as well, unfortunately, in psychedelic drugs. I’ve talked to so many of them that I have interviewed and we deal with it quite a bit in this book and other books. But here are half a dozen guys or girls in mixed company who have dropped acid and they are sitting in a room together. Suddenly, they are all experiencing the same adventure in the same landscape, they are all there together. Now, you tell me how does that come about? Furthermore, there is a philosophy that comes through and it comes through all around this world whether it’s under hypnosis, in yoga or on drugs. The whole idea of drugs is called sorcery in the Bible and the idea is to contact spirit beings. The Native American, the First Nation People, the Aborigines or whatever you want to call them, who occupied America and now their descendants living here today have the right under the laws of America to use peyote as a religious ritual and they contact spirit beings. So, the world of the occult, we have to understand, doesn’t involve some force that’s innate in the universe, it involves spirit beings. Because information is being communicated and there is a purpose behind it.

Tom:

Dave, back to this criterion though—for example, you used dowsing and you took us through just logic, just reason, that there had to be something behind this that was not just some kind of physics or chemistry that we didn’t understand. There is some more involved information. So, is that what you are saying? The Bible condemns this. I want to go over some Scriptures in a minute but my point is to recognize that we’ve got to use our head. We’ve got to search the scriptures but we also have to check things out reasonably and rationally, correct?

Dave:

Absolutely. If you go to a fortune teller and they give you some secret information or something, you’re going to have to ask yourself, where does this come from? They’re telling you what’s going to happen, well, how do they know? Is my fate all determined and if it is how come they know this and I don’t and where does this information come from?

You had better ask yourself some hard questions, because you can then be enslaved to wanting to go back to the fortune teller to find out more and the next thing you know you are drawn into dependence upon this power. And that’s exactly what it wants and then you don’t need God, you don’t need the Bible. But now, you have a substitute and this is Satan himself and he’s the one who is behind it and I don’t think, rationally, as you study this, you can come to any other conclusion.

Tom:

Most of the condemnations of this we find in the Old Testament but it’s also supported by the New Testament. Let me go over some of these Scriptures. Deuteronomy:18:10-14, “There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire.” A contemporary example of that is, this fire walking business. We haven’t seen too much of it lately but for a while it was a big trend and people who went through those experiences would say, wow, this experience—if I can do this I can do anything, everything is open to me! Well, it’s not exactly the same but there is a connection, don’t you think? So, to continue with the Scripture—or one who practices 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. (vs. 12) 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. (vs. 13) You shall be blameless before the Lord your God for these nations which you will dispossess listen to soothsayers and diviners but as for you, the Lord your God has not appointed such for you. Other commandments, Leviticus: “Give no regard to mediums or familiar spirits, do not seek after them to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God.” Now those are Old Testament. Somebody would say, well, yes, but that was under the law and that was the Old Testament. But we find in the New Testament, Galatians:5:20: idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, and heresies. These are all condemned. Acts:19:19, “…also many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all and they counted up the value of them and the total, fifty thousand pieces of silver.” Why would they do that if it was okay—if God, in the New Testament, was saying, O well, don’t worry about it—it was just an Old Testament thing.

Dave:

Well, God said, you will have no other gods. I am the Lord your God. So, the occult is dealing with some power that is god-like. It’s not a normal human trait and when they try to say that this is a potential that we all have—well, wait a minute, come on, this isn’t natural. No, if it were natural why doesn’t everyone naturally exhibit this? No, you have to get involved in this. You have to give yourself to this power and it can come to you in many forms. Well, I can tell you that the witch doctors, the medicine men, they recognize that there is a spirit world and that there are spirits out there who are guiding and who are empowering them. You cannot explain it as some kind of a force. A force doesn’t have intelligence. A force doesn’t communicate information. Information is communicated over a telephone wire but somebody is talking on one end and someone is listening on the other end. It doesn’t come about by electrical current in and of itself. That’s one of the ludicrous parts of the Star Wars force, with a dark side and a light side and so forth. No, that’s not rational. So, you’ve got to come to the conclusion that there is some entity, some being, some spirit, because it’s non-physical. Physic power is non-physical, that is behind this and it is certainly not the God of the Bible who warns us against this.

Tom:

And Dave, some people would say, well, you know I played around with Ouija boards and nothing ever happened—I got involved with this and it was a little waste of time and money but there are plenty of testimonies out there to people who have, not only been entrapped, but the bondage, the destruction in their lives, is, for some who haven’t come to Christ, ongoing today, isn’t it?

Dave:

The Exorcist was based upon a true story and actually that person got involved with this through an Ouija Board. So, if an Ouija Board is nothing what’s the point? If it has some power then you had better find out what this power is. What is the point of asking an Ouija board questions, or looking to it for guidance? I mean, that’s ludicrous. So, the person who even begins to play the game is suspecting, at least, maybe there is something there—and you had better stay away from it because God warned you to stay away from it. Now, the reason for that is, because there is an enemy of the human soul, an enemy of God, and his name is Satan, Lucifer, the devil. He’s called by a number of names and he wants to damn men’s souls and he is intent upon deceiving them with the same lies with which he deceived Eve. And the major lie was you can be like the gods. So, this is what physic power is all about. You can gain control of your life, you can heal yourself, you can become wealthy, you can get what you want, you can find things or locate wells or, you know, whatever. You would think this is wonderful that a man would dowse over the map of Bermuda and find three wells—isn’t that terrific? Yes, but wait a minute, that causes a person then to believe in this power and to become the servant really, eventually, of this power instead of the servant of God.

Tom:

And, servant underscored here, really bondage, really entrapped. People get into this because of a power trip but they become the victim.

Dave:

You look to it for guidance; you look to it for help, instead of looking to God.

Tom:

Dave, you know, again, there are people who either pooh-pooh this or say it’s no big deal or they dabble a little here and a little there and so on. Certainly, they may not be affected to the way that some are, I mean, lives destroyed, but isn’t this a conditioning effect, isn’t this leading up to something? If I recognized and maybe was sort of skeptical about this but all of a sudden I see a new variation of it, something that I am attracted to. Isn’t this conditioning me if I buy into it for some big payoff down the line?

Dave:

Well, what the person is looking to is the magic effect. This seems to validate in itself as being something desirable—something I want to tune in to or something I want to look to and the Bible does say that there is a man coming, antichrist, who will be the ultimate demonstrator of all this power. It says he comes with all deceivableness among righteousness with all the power of Satan to deceive the world. So, if a person is impressed by magic, you know, by seemingly supernatural—but it’s not, we still have to get to the difference between supernatural and natural—actually this is naturalism but it seems to be supernatural—then, when some man arises who can do the ultimate in this, he’s going to follow him. So, yes, the world, I think, is being set up for something and it’s amazing how many movie actors and actresses, how many celebrities, athletes and so forth, I mean, look, just to be superstitious about the number 13, and there are many hotels and you go up the elevator and it goes from 12 to 14. There are people who wouldn’t walk under a ladder. Some star athletes have a certain shirt that they think if they wear that or, you know, a rabbit’s foot, or—there all kinds of ways that you can be drawn into trusting or fearing some power out there that is not of God. And then, when this man, that is the ultimate demonstrator of it arises, Wow, he’s got the world’s attention.

Tom:

You know, you would think if this was legitimate—I mean, it’s been around forever—but something would have developed here. There would be an individual or there would be somebody with psychic powers that would have developed that to the point of stability, of being able to control it. We have no examples of that. We have some people who have been touted as having this power or that power, whatever, but we never see consistency, we never see something that’s really controlled but we do see lives destroyed.

Dave:

They are working on it in the laboratories from Harvard to Stanford. They are trying very hard and they can demonstrate some amazing powers but you are right. It is very capricious—you don’t control it, it controls you.

Occult Invasion (revisit) Part Five-Should Christians Use Divination?

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