In this article I will take a look at Witchcraft and the Occult in our everyday lives. This subject matter has crept into so many pieces of our culture that we don’t often see it but sometimes it is blatant and Christians still partake in it. I will look at what Scripture says about it and then look at several ways that our world has made this palatable even for young children.
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Deuteronomy 18:9-14
9 “When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the [a]abominations of those nations. 10 There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass[b] through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, 11 or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. 12 For all who do these things are [c]an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord your God drives them out from before you. 13 You shall be [d]blameless before the Lord your God. 14 For these nations which you will dispossess listened to soothsayers and diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not [e]appointed such for you.
Deuteronomy 12:29-32 carries a similar message.
In the New Testament we see in the book of Acts that because of the preaching of Paul and the Apostles that people claimed that they were turning the world upside down. We are told that idol makers lost business because people stopped buying idols. We are told in Acts 19 that in Ephesus as Paul preached and cast out demons the fear of the Lord fell on the people and the name of the Lord was lifted up. In 19:18-20 we are told that many believers who formerly practiced occultic magic arts brought their spell and incantation books together and burned them with the value of the books estimated to be around 50,000 pieces of silver.
Throughout all of Scripture we see that serving other gods, consulting spirits, and witchcraft are considered some of the highest abominations against God Almighty.
I cover a lot of this material in The Light Project series especially in the lessons on New Age, Emergent Church, and Hinduism. Part of my purpose for writing this short article at this time is that a few days ago one of my children, who is ten, was sitting talking to another child of a similar age at an event where most people would claim to be Christian. The family of the other child I know would claim to be Christian. My wife walked up and noticed a book she was reading and saw that it was a spell book. She actually had three spell books sitting right there. At the time they were not discussing witchcraft but who knows when that would have arisen. I purposely talk to my children regularly about this stuff and will show them small amounts of material so that they know what to watch out for. Obviously though purchasing spell books for your child goes far beyond talking to your child about Satan’s lures.
The spell books are based off of the Disney series called Descendants. They literally have spells in the books that the children can attempt. What Christian parent in their right mind would allow their child to gain entertainment from reading spell books? This should be an easy one when considering different avenues of possible entertainment. However it seems that we must keep reminding people about what God calls an abomination. I could go on to list a myriad of shows and books that glorify witchcraft and occultism. Satan loves nothing more than to corrupt young minds and obviously this form of corruption isn’t even wearing camouflage. I realize that each parent must make the decision as to the exact forms of entertainment that will be taken in and it is very hard to find a movie or cartoon that doesn’t have some form of witchcraft in it.
A book that I would recommend reading regarding this issue is one called Harry Potter and the Bible: The Menace Behind the Magick by Richard Abanes. Some of you reading or listening to this will at this point stand up and vociferously start defending Harry Potter. Let me encourage you to just read the book. I do realize that some Christian families will allow their kids to watch and read things like Harry Potter but rarely will they have any discussions with them about its actual contents partially because they don’t know what’s in them. I also realize that Harry Potter was front and center for an older generation and now things like Disney’s Descendants has taken its place.
Shouldn’t Christians though be able to stand up and say that they will not allow their children to read things that glorify the demonic realm? Can we not work towards creating good forms of entertainment that glorify God and His creation? Christian parent, are you doing the hard work of a pathfinder to guide your children to a deeper understanding of what God lifts up and what He hates? It doesn’t matter what name it goes under whether it’s New Age Spirituality, Good Magic, Black Magic, or Earth Magic, God still hates it because it is deceiving people and drawing them away from Him.
We can know that even the word Christian has lost its meaning when we have Christian Witch conferences. Leonardo Blair shares a little bit about this at https://www.christianpost.com/news/jesus-was-a-sorcerer-bible-a-book-of-magic-say-christian-witches-ahead-of-first-annual-convention.html.
We see that Witches now outnumber Presbyterians in the US. Witches come in all shapes and sizes. Not all of them are gnarled old women walking around in black robes trying to get you to eat an apple. Now they walk down the street in broad daylight shouting from the rooftops proclaiming that they want to help you be the best person you can be as the LA Times tells us. They are good looking men and women. They proudly appear in Netflix and Amazon Prime movies. The US Naval Academy is now allowing Satanic services. Here is a link to a new book for kids called “A Children’s Book of Demons.” It helps them summon demons.
If you listened to my podcast with Malcolm Henderson from the mission Charis4Haiti you will know that these things are serious. He uses his medical knowledge to lead mission trips to Haiti and he shares Christ with Voodoo priests all the time. One of the recent stories of a Voodoo priest coming to Christ that Malcolm told was that this guy had sacrificed a young child to Satan to get the power that he had and buried the body of the child under his altar. One of the things that he did when he came to Christ was to dig all of that up and to burn all of his occultic items.
Sometimes it seems like even Christians don’t understand that the Satanic realm is real. In the Bible we read of the Sorcerers in Egypt being able to duplicate the miracles that Moses was doing. They weren’t all powerful though. Their power was limited because they were given their power by demons. God was the one working through Moses. We read in I Samuel 28 that Saul went to a medium which was expressly forbidden by God in Israel. Mediums and most witches will use what are called “Familiars” which is a demon that is familiar to them. Often the demon will inhabit an animal like a cat or an owl. Fun side note: if you watch the movie The Golden Compass which is geared for kids all the animals are called familiars. Anyways, back to Saul, the Medium was shocked when she was supposed to be calling up Samuel because she was expecting her familiar spirit to come up when God actually allowed Samuel to come up. It says that she cried out with a loud voice and knew immediately who Saul was.
We saw that Christ cast the demons out of the demon possessed man in the country of the Gadarenes in Luke 8:26-39. There were real world consequences. First the man was tortured by the demons and he destroyed anyone who tried to come near. Secondly, Christ allowed the demons to go into a herd of pigs and those pigs went crazy and ran to their destruction. These are real problems and Christians are treating these things like a fluffy little puppy that their child can play with.
It doesn’t help when people claiming to be Christian like Jennifer LeClaire attempt to teach Christians How to enter the Trance Realm without being deceived by the Demonic. I will deal more with this stuff in the future but the New Apostolic Reformation churches like Bethel with Bill Johnson, IHOP with Mike Bickel, and Hillsong are all pushing this stuff. Their doing grave sucking and “Christian Tarot Card” readings. Don’t fall for it. Get my Light Project series and watch the New Age, Emergent Church, and Hinduism to understand this better and I will be putting more out on the NAR in the future. Listen to podcasts like Chris Roseborough’s Pirate Christian Radio and Jesse Peters and Costi Hinn.
The short version is CHRISTIAN, GET INFORMED! Stop leading your children into deception and either find or create great stories of valor, adventure, and romance that glorify God.