Welcome to a special edition of Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call, featuring Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon. I’m Gary Carmichael; thanks for tuning in. 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 with the focus on the book of Isaiah. In Religion in the News: “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Yogis at Club Meditation.” We’ll take a look at that story, and examine the question: “Who Created Evil?” 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 our revisit to our 2000 radio series based on Dave Hunt’s book, Occult Invasion . Today we focus on the question, “What is Sorcery?” Along with Dave Hunt, here’s Tom McMahon.
Tom:
Thanks for joining us in our on-going discussion of Dave Hunt’s book, Occult Invasion, The Subtle Seduction of the World and the Church . Last week we covered the subject of “Spirit Communication: Why people get caught up in it and why the Scriptures warn against such activity.” Dave, although it’s condemned in the Bible, nevertheless, contacting spirit beings has been going on since the beginning of human history. Since sheer ignorance on the part of some has opened the door to entities intent on destroying their lives, I think it would be helpful to address some of the things that might get them into something that could end up being very devastating for them. What are some of the more common ways people wittingly or unwittingly contact spirits?
Dave:
A major way is through drugs, psychedelic drugs, mind-altering drugs. The New Testament comes down very hard on something that it calls sorcery and that in the last days mankind will not repent of its sorcery and God’s judgment will follow as a result.
Tom:
Right. That’s Revelation:9:21Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts. and as we said before, we’re certainly not Greek experts, but that term “pharmakia” I mean, you don’t have to be a pharmacologist or a Greek scholar to understand that means pharmacy.
Dave:
So, drugs would be a major way and, as you know, mankind has used the sacred mushroom or the peyote from the cactus bud for thousands of years to contact spirit entities. That’s the whole purpose of the idea. In fact, North American Indians today, Native Americans or First Nation People, whatever you want to call them now still have the right by the laws of the United States to take peyote like Christians take bread and wine for Communion. And they do it in order to contact spirit beings. It catapults them into a spirit dimension. In fact, it was drugs that opened the door to the cosmic gospel of the gurus from the East. I have interviewed a lot of people— we quote some of them in this book and some of the other books on drugs—for example, here’s a young man who knew nothing at all about astrology, lived in a little town in California and had never read anything about it and had no interest in it. Suddenly, he is in contact with spirit beings—he has taken some LSD—and they are teaching him about astrology. They are teaching him that there is a Force that’s out there that governs everything and they are laying it out in live color in front of him. He is fascinated by it and when he comes out of his altered state, you know, he retains this information and it has now changed his life and the way he thinks. He had a friend who, on an LSD trip, was initiated into Transcendental Meditation. He didn’t have to pay Maharishi Mahesh Yogi a dime. He got it all from spirit beings on an LSD trip. Now, you don’t have to take drugs even. There’s a book in the library, used to be at least, 250 Ways to Reach an Altered State Without Drugs . For example, I was having breakfast in West Palm Beach ; I think it was, with a leading attorney who wanted to talk with me because he had heard of some of the research I was doing. He told me that he had been at this party the other night and he was standing there talking with a leading nuclear physicist, whose name would be familiar, who has done some amazing research being used in some of our top universities, and he said, we were just making conversation and I said to him: “Well, where do you get these ideas?” The nuclear physicist said: “Well, a lot of the ideas I get from a school that I attend at night.” The lawyer looked at him and said: “You mean you go to night school?” And he said, “well not exactly, not what you’re thinking of, but very often when I fall asleep, I awaken out of my body, out in space in the company of other top scientists where we are taught advance concepts by spirit entities.” Now, the lawyer wanted to get my opinion about that. He said “Was this guy drunk, was he pulling my leg, have you heard of anything like this? I said, of course I have. You had better believe it. It is happening to increasing numbers of people. For example, the invention for Xerox, the Xerox machine came by that means. The popular book that sold tens of thousands of copies in Christian bookstores, Jonathan Livingston Seagull —
Tom:
Let me go back just a little bit—when you mentioned “Xerox” and then you put it in the context, how does this information come about? Because we know that there are a lot of rumors and really false accusations against Proctor & Gamble and so on, but—
Dave:
Well, the inventor of Xerox himself acknowledged this.
Tom:
Right, and he wouldn’t say that he was communing with demons or anything like that. So, he would have a rationale for the inspiration that he has.
Dave:
The book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull , which was very popular, was a basic primer, you could say, on occultism and how to make contact and so forth. Richard Bach, who authored the book, said,—(I’m not making this up) — that he received all of this; it was dictated to him word by word by spirit entities. In our last program we talked about Helen Schucman, atheistic psychologist. She got a letter, 1100 pages, A Course in Miracles dictated to her by spirit beings. Again, it’s a phenomenon that it has been consistent down through history. Now, what is interesting, I would say, about the day in which we live, which I believe is the last days and I believe this is one of the indications of the last days. We quoted from the Scriptures and there are a number of other verses beyond the one that you cited that the world would be involved in sorcery; it would refuse to repent of it. It’s not that there are demons out there that are just zapping people, but, there are, in a sense, if you are open to it at all, but we are now training ourselves to do this. So, you were asking about techniques. Well, hypnosis—
Tom:
I would really like you to lay the foundation for this because some people are saying; well yes, I know the Bible condemns this, but now we have scientists doing this or we have these individuals doing that, and it doesn’t seem to be religious. Dave, tell us about Sir John Eccles. I know this is, even on his part, it’s speculation but it’s a learned speculation given the feelings. He’s a Nobel Prize winner for his work on the brain, right?
Dave:
Yes. Well, some of the lectures—I’ve listened to a few of them and the books that Sir John Eccles has written are very fascinating. As you said, he received his Nobel Prize for research on the brain. He describes the brain as: “A machine that a ghost can operate.” He arrived at this conclusion, for example, he wired the brain of various people so that he could trace the neural activity through the various parts of the brain. He would give them a task; not just playing the piano that you could do sort of without thinking but something that you had to think to do and then he would follow the neural activity through the brain in his research. But then, he gave the same task to someone who, perhaps, had Parkinson’s or someone who was, in fact, paralyzed— could not do the task and he noted that always a certain area of the brain—he called it the SMA, the supplementary motor area—that fired first, and then, the neural activity spread from there. But in those who were paralyzed and couldn’t even do the task he noted that, that area of the brain fired normally, but then nothing else happened because the brain could not carry on the message that was being given to it by the spirit. Your brain doesn’t think; if it did we would be prisoners of our brain. Our brain is like a computer that we use. There’s a ghost in the machine, as they say and the brain is like a computer that we use to interface with this space-time-matter continuum in which our bodies function. So, even paralyzed people—that part, the SMA, of their brain fired normally, but then the brain could not carry out the instructions that have been given. Now, the altered state of consciousness is the key to the whole thing. It’s called the ASC or the SSC, the shamanic state of consciousness; because all the shamans, the witchdoctors, medicine men and so forth, all knew that they had to put themselves in an altered state of consciousness. Now, some of them did it, as we mentioned, through drugs, various forms of drugs. But others did it through a simple exercise called “visualization.” They knew that if they got into a relaxed state and they visualized themselves on a journey to the upper or lower worlds to the past or the future that they would meet some kind of an entity, whether it be animal or human. This would be their spirit guide.
Tom:
How does that relate to spirit entities?
Dave:
Well, in a normal state of consciousness your spirit runs your brain. In an altered state you have loosened the normal connection. This is the relaxed but alert state and there are all kinds of names for it—yoga. I remember having a debate on national television with Jose Silva, the founder of the Silva Mind Control. As a young boy, he would have all out-of-body experiences. But nobody is out of their body. The Bible says the body without the spirit is dead. So, if they are out of their body—if Shirley McLean was out of her body she was dead. It would be a resurrection to come back, but you have, as near as I can explain it is; it’s like a demon playing a video tape in your brain. And he used to go out of his body. We have people training you how to go out of your body. Robert Monroe, for example, has the whole institute set up for this and some of our top military intelligence people and the CIA—
Tom:
You listen to Art Bell—if you’re willing to do it.
Dave:
Okay, he will tell you about it. But Jose Silva, on his own, got involved in this. He was going out of his body and there was always this Indian sitting there in yoga fashion, yoga position—
Tom:
In his imagination.
Dave:
Well, yes. He thought he was out of his body and it was very real to him. Finally, one day this Indian told him that if he would follow his instructions he would become his guru, his spirit guide. And he did, and on that basis of following these instructions, he developed the Silva Mind Control it’s called, but now it’s known as the Silva Method. Hundreds of thousands of people are involved in this around the world. Now, Jose Silva used to say that yoga is the slowest way, that hypnosis is the fastest way, and Silva Method is the surest way to make contact. The whole idea with the Silva Method is you build a laboratory; you construct the laboratory in your mind and the big event the big day arrives when the elevator comes down into your laboratory and the elevator door is open and out walks two entities, a male and a female. This is Carl Jung’s animus and anima and these are your spirit guides and this is how they can do incredible things through these two entities. So, if you get into an altered state, no matter how you do it, you have loosened the connection between you, your spirit and your brain, and that allows another spirit to interpose itself, begin to tick off the neurons in the brain, create a universe of illusion, out-of-body experiences, psychedelic colors, voices, revelations, prophesies, inspiration, the various lies of Satan. So, the New Age Movement is also called the consciousness revolution. This is an old technique that has been used for thousands of years.
Tom:
You know, there may be some people out there listening to this and we are going to again address things like imagination, visualization, meditation and so on. But, you know, there are some people who think; wait a minute, I visualize things. And there is a visualization—I’m a writer, I wrote screen plays, very much interested in the arts, and there are certain things that would be impossible for me to do if I couldn’t begin to see some things, begin to visualize what I was—Now, we’re not telling people that’s occultic, are we?
Dave:
No. There are legitimate uses of visualization if you are an architect, an engineer, a screen writer or whatever. It’s when you use the imagination, when you use visualization in order to contact the spirit world, in order to contact God, to contact Jesus Christ, to get revelations, to get some hidden knowledge, or to acquire some supra-normal power that you wouldn’t otherwise have, then, you have stepped into the occult.
Tom:
Right. Based on what we said earlier, Dave, if I said, “chocolate ice cream cone.” Now, to me, I could begin to see that but this spirit, my spirit is in charge of this imagery. In other words, I’m able to see in my mind an object but based on Eccles’ idea, based on what you’ve said that if I somehow put myself into a state where another spirit can interpose itself and begin to do the same thing with my mechanisms—
Dave:
While you were still awake; it’s not a dream; you’re experiencing it. Tom, for example, I’ve interviewed quite a few people who have been, say, on LSD—never have taken it myself, I haven’t even taken an aspirin for many years, I don’t like any unnatural substances—but anyway, I can tell you that some of them have told me—Here’s a half a dozen guys and gals in a room; they have dropped acid, LSD. Suddenly, they are all seeing the same things. They are in the same imaginary landscape, sharing the same adventures. Now, you tell me how that happens without some common source of inspiration.
Tom:
Either it’s an objective reality that they have all tied into or you’ve got entities playing the same scenarios through their brains.
Dave:
So, this is the problem. Look, God speaks to us through his Word. He says some pretty serious things when he warns us, as we have already mentioned, and He tells us to give heed to His Word, to His advice and to follow and obey Him and He warns us that if we do not, if we follow our imagination and we follow the voices that Schuller says everybody ought to get in touch with, you know, then, we have some very serious problems and we are stepping into an area of grave danger. Well, the grave danger, first of all, is that we have disobeyed God. Secondly, we are out there—it always, I find it fascinating, Tom, that so many people think that when they get into a state of consciousness where they can’t verify, where you have lost touch with objective reality so you have no criteria for evaluating this thing, then, they think, suddenly, they are really being tuned in to some great wisdom. Well, part of the wisdom that they get is that they are God. And again, I have interviewed so many people; suddenly they couldn’t distinguish between themselves and physical objects. They weren’t just the rock over there or the tree, the sky, they were everything, they are it, they are the universe, and they are God. They think if I could just—See, this now becomes their reality; and they think there has to be some way without drugs. There has to be some way just by mental processes that I can become master of my fate. I can control my life and the lives of others, by the way, is one of their ambitions, but I could create reality with my mind and this is, you could say, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that many of these people are pursuing. And, it’s being pursued in some of our leading universities from Harvard to Stanford by parapsychologists who are attempting to find some power. It’s the human potential movement, another word for it. There is some infinite potential within mankind, some power greater than atomic power, if we could only learn how to tap into it. And so, they get involved in altered states in order to reach this potential. But, at the same time, when you get into an altered state you have lost contact with objective criteria for evaluating your experience and then, you are led into a great delusion.
Tom:
Dave, you said earlier that you believed that we were in the last days. I agree and we quote the Scripture talking about how sorcery will be abounding in the last days.
Dave:
Well, let me give you another Scripture: 1 Timothy:4:1Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly” —Paul says, so you had better pay attention— “that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;…” You learn an awful lot from that. I have verified, Tom, I can only say in my own research, most of these people who are the leaders in this movement now, at one time were professing Christians; some of them professing evangelicals. They have departed from the faith; they are apostates, they have rejected the faith that they once—I don’t think they were real Christians, they couldn’t have been but at least they tasted of it as the Scriptures say and they had some consciousness of the validity of the Word of God. Okay, “…they will depart from the faith giving heed to seducing spirits.” The Bible says there are spirits out there that are literally trying to seduce the human race just as the serpent seduced in the Garden. And then it says, “…doctrines of devils.” I find that interesting because Paul warned Timothy and said, “The time is coming when they will not endure sound doctrine.” I find that, and I know you find this, people are not too interested in doctrine that’s too dull, you know—give me something exciting; I want some exciting experiences. So, we are in a time when doctrine is being despised. At the same time, “doctrines of devils” are being embraced and we are teaching ourselves, even within the church, techniques, literally techniques, if you just visualize Jesus, focus on Him—Tom, there are so many Christian leaders, Christian psychologists who are teaching this—then this Jesus will really come to you. Or, you have some subconscious problem; let me regress you under hypnosis, into the past and so forth. So, we are literally training ourselves, opening ourselves up to these demonic entities.
Tom:
And, as the world, we know the world is being prepared for the antichrist, I mean, there is no doubt about that. And when we find things like, not only ideas and teachings, but we started off this particular program talking about drugs. I mean, we are in an over-prescribed society throughout the world. We have more than a million kids on Ritalin, which is scheduled to addictive drugs like cocaine. We see these things going on—
Dave:
By the way, Sigmund Freud was hooked on cocaine. In fact, he even prescribed it to his patients. There was a time when the major pharmaceutical companies prescribed it. They thought it was great stuff, but we now realize that it isn’t, but not for the right reasons.
Tom:
Well, we have a conditioning taking place today in the world and that grieves us. This is why you wrote this book, Occult Invasion, The Subtle Seduction of the World and the Church , and it’s not just subtle anymore. Maybe when you wrote the book—but I’m only kidding about that—but the seduction is taking place and the conditioning is taking place and what grieves us, many who claim to be evangelicals, who claim to be followers of the Lord, are falling into this. Some are leading the way.
