Occultism: Not Superstitions, But Deceptions

It is of interest, I think, that the two shooters at the Columbine High School were into Hitler and occult symbols. But it would be a big mistake if we were to think that occultism and demon worship and all the things that go with it is somehow confined to some fringe teenagers who are deeply troubled. The simple fact is that occultism, and that word means hidden and has to do with a quest for secret knowledge and secret power in the spiritual world, is mainstream America. It’s everywhere. It’s in our schools. It’s in our businesses. People believe it. Books on it sell like hotcakes. And today we are literally inundated with occult phenomena. And it’s not superstition. It is deep, deep rooted deception.

Let’s keep in mind that Satan always wants to take God’s place. We’ve learned that as we’ve done this series of messages titled Seven Snares of the Enemy. We’ve learned that Satan wants to come along and entrap us. We’ve talked about alcoholism and such things as gambling and illicit sexuality, and all of those trappings. And today we come to the occult. Let me say that Satan always wants to deceive us, and he has, as we shall discover, about as many ways to deceive us as there are interests among Americans. He has many, many different ways, and all of his traps are hidden.

Now you’ve heard me say this before in a different context, but it’s not possible to catch a mouse with your bare hands. At least it’s very difficult. If you had a mouse in your apartment and you wanted to catch it, you wouldn’t say to yourself, “Now, what I’m going to do is I’m going to be very fast, and as soon as that mouse comes out, I’m going to grab it.” No, because the mouse is scared of you. If you’re going to catch a mouse what you do is you lay a trap, because a trap means that you remain hidden, and therefore you don’t appear to be there. See? Really you are, but it doesn’t appear that way. And what Satan does is he throws out all of these traps, many of which we shall mention today. And many people think that because he is hidden, it’s okay to become involved in some of the things we’re going to be talking about.

I’ll tell you what Satan’s method is. This is very important. He wants us to do what he wants us to do, and he wants us, nevertheless, to think that it is our idea. Remember Ananias and Sapphira. They had no idea that this deception that they were going to pull off was hatched by the devil. Yet when Peter came to them, and remember they had told a white lie, he said, “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?” They did not know that Satan was in their kitchen that morning, as they were sipping their coffee with a bagel. They didn’t know that. They thought this was their idea. So again, you see, Satan remains hidden as he puts ideas and inclinations into people’s minds and hearts.

Now what I’d like to do is for us to understand a couple of things when we talk about occultism. The experts tell us that you can speak about four different levels. For example, there are the teenage dabblers. Teenagers become interested in the occult because it is the unknown. It has fascination. It is a curiosity among them. And so what you have is they get into it through drugs and through heavy metal music, through MTV and through rituals. And eventually they may end up even doing such things as mutilating animals, which is always an occult phenomenon. And then the blood sometimes is taken and maybe even drunk so that the power of that animal gets into your soul. Those are the myths that survive in today’s occultic world.

And of course, Hollywood is very anxious to oblige. You have such things as Buffy the Vampire (or is it Buffy the Vampire Slayer?). Whatever it is, it is deeply occultic. You have movies such as Practical Magic, or The Craft. Now I want to tell you this, that if you watch that kind of stuff, it not only is impure. It is a doorway to the occult, and Satan remains hidden. You just say, “Well, I just thought it was good clean fun. It’s just silly superstitions. It’s just that movie makers today can have all these special effects so that witches can have power and all the rest.” I want you to know that that is not only the devil’s play yard. It is his doorway into the dark world of occult phenomena and demonism.

Why do young people get into it? One said, “I was so open and vulnerable to receive anything that could fill me up, anything that would make me feel valuable as a person, so I was open to receive whatever the devil had to give me, or God or whatever. It did not matter to me.” Teenage dabblers in the occult!

Then, of course, you also have self-styled groups that meet in covens. And I need to warn you, young people, that oftentimes young teenagers are brought into these through deception. They are given free drugs, free sex, and sometimes then they are blackmailed if they are videotaped, and somehow they are railroaded to become a part of these covens that exist in many, many different places.

Then there are, number three, the open ritual Satanists, the people who attend the First Church of Satan. And they’re kind of upfront—Satanists. But then you have another group. They are the hardcore Satanists, and they go about and they abduct children. They sometimes use teenage girls as breeders to produce babies that can be ritually sacrificed. According to the police, forty to sixty thousand ritualistic murders (I do not mean murders of infants, that the number would be that high.) take place in the United States every year. And that’s the end result of deep committed occult involvement.

I want you to take your Bibles and turn for just a moment to 1 Timothy 4 (and then we shall be looking at another passage as well), where the Apostle Paul tells us what’s going to happen at the end time. And you’ll notice he says: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.”
Now, is it the demons that actually do the teaching of the deception? Of course not! Remember Satan always remains hidden. He is not there. We’re talking about traps where he is invisible.

How does it happen? Such teachings come “through the insincerity of liars.” Now it’s one thing about the Bible. When you read it you never have to say, “Now what is he really saying?” Scripture says that it comes through the insincerity of liars. Now in some instances those liars might not know that they are lying. They might actually believe the stuff. But there are a lot of people out there who know the hollowness and the emptiness of the occult, and they go on promoting it anyway, maybe because of financial reasons, or they need to justify their own lifestyle, and these doctrines are disseminated all throughout our country today, and I don’t want to exaggerate, but practically everywhere.

And you’ll notice it says their consciences have been seared (as with a hot iron). Why is it that there is no compassion? Why is it that some of the eastern religions are unbelievably cruel? And I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Why? It’s because they are past feeling. The great word is cauterized—you know, when you have something that has been burned, and it’s healed and there’s no feeling left. What a description of these false teachers that come to us with wonderful theories but actually they are Satan’s teachers.

Now what I’d like to do in order that you might understand what it is I’m talking about is to give you some of the traps that Satan has in today’s society. And there are many others that we will not even mention. When Pastor McCloud was here last fall, he preached on the occult and he listed 40 different kinds of involvement. When the service was over we asked all those who would like to go down to Kappeler Hall for counseling, who have had occult involvement, to join us. And there may have been 30 or 40 people that came that night. He and I went through the list again and asked people whether or not there was anyone who had practiced this, and to our amazement (though we should not be amazed) all 40 of those traps were represented that night in a meeting that had far fewer than are here this morning. So we’re talking about things that specifically apply to… If they don’t apply to you, they most assuredly apply to the person who is sitting next to you, or perhaps who is sitting ahead of you. I mean there is occultism everywhere.
Now I’m not going to list those 40 because that would take too long. What I decided to do this morning (and the message was made up last night, but it was reviewed this morning and prayed about earnestly this morning)… What I decided to do is to categorize it in terms of certain categories that will just help us. For example, one is to acquire hidden knowledge. That’s one category. Here we can put astrology, automatic writing, crystal gazing, coffee grounds reading, or tea leaves, divination of all kinds including witching for water (like some of us used to ignorantly do out on the farm), fortune telling, palm reading, numerology, Ouija boards! That’s not an complete list, but all of those say, “I want some hidden knowledge that’s not found in the Bible, but I want to have hidden knowledge about the spirit world.”

The second category is power. Here we’re talking about witchcraft, the power to have curses, astral projection, black magic, levitation, mind sciences. This category has to do with power. And then the whole health fad!

One day Satan said to God basically, “Yeah, all that a man has he’ll give for his life.” Isn’t that true? There are some people who say, “I want to be healed so badly that I would rather be healed by the devil than die.” Well, I want you to know today that I’d rather die than be healed by the devil.

Now, listen. We live in a day of holistic medicine (Doesn’t that sound good?), a day in which people say, “Well, you know, we are not just physical entities. We are spiritual entities,” and that’s absolutely true. And then they go off onto eastern ideas of God that we will mention in a moment, and in eastern notions, and people say, “Well, we’re just into spirituality.” And so you have today holistic medicine, sometimes using crystals, or there is a book entitled Awakening the Healing Within. After all, if you are your own God you are your own healer.

Now folks, I don’t know how to say this to you more clearly than I am going to say it now, so if you forget everything else I’m going to say today, and I don’t want you to, but this is the one line that I don’t want you to forget. Everyone with me at this juncture! Any kind of spirituality that is not based on Christ and the Bible is occultic. Period! And so you have out there all of this great emphasis on spirituality and people say, “Well, he’s a deeply spiritual person,” but he’s not into Jesus. He’s not into the Bible. He’s in this metaphysical world on his own, making his own contacts. I want you to know today that if he… No matter how deeply spiritual, no matter how much it has helped him, no matter how much healing it has brought, he is part of the occult, because there are only two spirits in the world. There’s either God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who can be only contacted through Christ, or there is the vast network of demonic spirits who do good things, who give people help, who even heal them whenever possible to deceive them, and to make them think that they are into something that is very profitable and good. That’s why the whole healthcare industry oftentimes is inundated by New Age demonic thinking.

Number four, there’s the wealth category. Remember Napoleon Hill—Think and Grow Rich? He wrote another book entitled Grow Rich with Peace of Mind in which he says that while he was writing, six disembodied spirits came to him and told him what to write, and that his views would change the nature of American business. What was it that these six disembodied spirits told him to write? “Whatever the mind can believe, the mind can achieve.” And there you get into the whole mind science thing that is seen on television. PBS carries lectures on it. It’s thoroughly occultic and demonic, and nevertheless we live in that kind of an age.

So, just think of it. Think of it today, folks! You can have hidden knowledge. You can have awesome power if you get plugged into the right side of the occult. And you can have health and you can have wealth, and you can have it all and still be you without reference to God and without reference to the Bible. Can you get a better deal than that?

Now I have to ask a question, of course, and that is, “What’s God’s opinion of all this stuff? What’s His opinion of those who would rival Him and say, ‘We’ve got our own agenda and our own sources of knowledge, health and wealth?’” This is what He said to the ancient people who didn’t have as many different ways to get into the occult as we, but nevertheless: “Now therefore hear this, you lover of pleasures, who sit securely, who say in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one besides me.’” (chuckles) It makes me smile. How could the Bible be so accurate? Isn’t that exactly a picture of today? There is none besides me. Self-worship! God is talking about judgments, and by the way, this is Isaiah 47 if you wish to turn to it. If not, simply listen.

God is saying, “They will come upon you in full measure (He is speaking about judgment.) in spite of your many sorceries and all your potent spells. You have trusted in your wickedness and you have said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you. When you say to yourself, ‘I am and there is none besides me,’ disaster will come upon you and you will not know how to charm it away. (That’s the Hebrew word.)” You say, “Well, there’s nothing wrong with wearing charms.” Why are they called charms?

“Nothing will charm it away,” he says. “A calamity will fall upon you that you cannot ward off with a ransom. A catastrophe you cannot foresee will suddenly come upon you. (“Oh, I went to the fortune teller and she didn’t tell me this was going to happen.” I suppose so.) Keep on then with your magic spells and with your many sorceries with which you have labored at since childhood. Perhaps you will succeed. Perhaps you will cause terror. (God is taunting them here.) All the counsel you have received has only worn you out. Let your astrologers come forward, those stargazers who make predictions month by month. Let them save you from what is coming on you. Surely they are like stubble. The fire will burn them up. They cannot even save themselves from the power of the flame. Here are no coals to warm anyone. Here is no fire to sit by. That is all that they can do for you. These you have labored with and trafficked with since childhood. Each of them goes on in his own error and there is no one that can save you.”

Does God have an opinion about these things, or what?

Now what I’d like to do in the next few moments, and you know, oftentimes when I prepare a message like I was doing last night, I said, “You know, this message is going to be far too short,” and then suddenly I get here and I realize, “You know I think I miscalculated its length.” (chuckles)

What I’d like to do in the next few moments is to tell you what the doctrines of demons are so that you can recognize them. What are the underlying things that you will find? Now yesterday I had something to do in a shopping mall, and so I decided to go into the bookstore, and because I was preaching on this I went over to the New Age spirituality shelf (shelves plural). Dozens and dozens! Shall I say without exaggeration hundreds of books on the occult, and all under the guise of New Age spirituality? So I pulled a few off the shelf, and just began to read. I found exactly what I knew was there. You know you don’t even have to buy one of those books without knowing in advance the doctrines of demons that are going to be in those books. What are they? And here I’m going to take a single phrase from Satan in the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve, and that single phrase will become the basis for the doctrines.

First, a wrong pantheistic view of God! Remember what Satan said to Adam and Eve, or to Eve at least? You shall be like God. How in the world can you be like God in the sense that you can be the creator of the sun, the moon, the stars? It’s unthinkable. So pantheism comes along and says, “God is all, and all is God, and therefore, I am God too because everything is God. God is, in pantheistic literature, the great universal spirit into which you can plug in, in many, many different ways. He’s out there to be manipulated, to be used for your benefit. He’s a god who is both good and evil so that you don’t know exactly what he is. He is the force. Call him whatever it is that you wish, but somehow he’s out there to be accessed by anyone at any time in different ways.

Catch this. I know that I could have stayed there for hours. I didn’t. I was just there a few moments, but I could have stayed there for hours and read every book on the shelf, and not one of them would have told me that God is so holy that He is unapproachable unless you come with the right sacrifice and through the right person.

There is no holiness of God. There is no fear of God before their eyes, the Bible says. Why? It’s because it’s the pantheistic god. It’s the universal spirit. There’s so much more that could be said.

First of all, a wrong view of God underlies it all. Secondly, a wrong view of man! The devil says, “You shall be like God.” Basically people are good. Oh, I know that in witchcraft there are evil people who need to be eliminated, but in witchcraft when you have the power, you know, to cast spells, you have the responsibility to punish those who are evil and to reward those who are good. And you have that power, you see, because you can put those spells on people—those curses.

Now, I want you to know that nowhere there is there a concept really of sin. There is evil, but the evil exists outside of people. And furthermore, if there is any evil, the human race is divided on the good people from the bad people. There is no understanding that evil resides in every one of our hearts. And while the bad people may be put out, the good people live and are rewarded with good health, with beauty, with lots of sex and with all kinds of material blessings that come their way. And that’s the world, you see, in which they live. At the end of the day, pick up those books and read them. Don’t buy them. Don’t actually invest your money in them, but at the end of the day, what you’ll find on every page is self-worship.

I just read from Isaiah a moment ago: “You who say there is me and none beside me.” Yeah! Narcissism! It all exists for me. You have to do what is right for you with a human understanding of what that means. A wrong view of God! A wrong view of man! Nowhere will they tell you, “You know, we are so sinful that unless God were to redeem us we would be damned.” I never found that in any book.

Let me give also a wrong view of death. Totally wrong! You know, remember that Satan said to Adam and Eve… I always jokingly say this. You’ve heard me say this before. I always think that he was actually speaking to Shirley McLain there in the garden because he said, “You, Shirley (surely), shall not die.” (laughter) He told Adam and Eve that. But what do you mean you don’t die? Reincarnation! Reincarnation says nobody dies. You just keep being recycled until eventually you go around and you’re recycled enough times, and if you have been good in this life, why then indeed you will have a better life to come.

It is a heartless, cruel, unbelievably cruel doctrine of karma. Imagine looking into the eyes of a little boy who has been burned by an angry abusive father. And you look into his eyes and you say, “You know what you are getting now? You are getting what you deserve because you were bad in a previous life that you cannot remember because a veil of forgetfulness divides you from your past, but you are getting what you deserve.” Heartless! Cruel at the end of the day!

So there’s a wrong view of death. There’s no God to fear. Why, when you die, Betty Eadie says you’ll see a Jesus whom you are worthy to embrace, a Jesus that will not judge you, a Jesus who will accept you, and everybody in the end wins. Doctrine of demons! The Bible says that when you die, it is appointed unto man once to die, and after that to face judgment.

Let me say also say that there’s a wrong view of redemption. More specifically, there is no need for redemption. I’ve already mentioned that if there is any salvation it comes through self-discovery, self-affirmation and self-worship. You see, the doctrine of demons is directly opposite to the Bible. In the Bible man fell and God redeems us. In New Age literature it is the opposite way. God fell! You say, “Well, how can that be?” Let me take a moment to explain.

Originally matter and spirit were one. They were unified. But then God broke apart into matter and spirit and now it is up to us to redeem God by bringing Him together through transcendental meditation, which is, incidentally an awesome doorway into the occult. And so what you do, you see, is you do it like Kazantzakis, the author of The Last Temptation of Christ who said, “God does not save us.” And this a quote now, so listen carefully: “God does not save us but we save God by transmuting matter into spirit.” We are the Saviors, and in occult literature Eve is prized for having eaten the fruit of the tree because now she has knowledge. And the serpent is worshipped and prized. All of that to the doctrine of demons!

Now, I must hurriedly get to the most important point of the message, and that is how do you get free from the occult? Some of you have gone into the occult sometimes unknowingly, and just because it’s unknowing, that does not mean that you might not be affected.

Neil Anderson, in one of his books, tells the story of a missionary who went into a pagan Buddhist temple. He took off his shoes in reverence, and that night spirits mocked him as he tried to sleep. When I was in Japan I refused to go into those temples where tourists go. It was enough for me to see it from a distance, because remember if there is spirituality that is not based on the Bible or Christ, it is occultism.

What do you do when you have those strongholds of the devil? Let me suggest very quickly. Number one, you have to be absolutely convinced of the power and the victory of Jesus. Let me share that verse of Scripture that I shared with a man who told me that he lived in the occult capital of the Midwest. Witches, covens, animal mutilations—all kinds of things happening!

Revelation 3:9 (Jesus is speaking): “I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie—behold, (Now listen.) I will make them (I like the New American Standard. It says “I will cause them.) come and bow down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you.”

Oh, I love that verse. Here is Jesus, who is ascended, and He says, “I have opened the door for you that nobody can shut, and if I ever shut a door, nobody can ever open it. And I will cause those who are of the synagogue of Satan to acknowledge the truth.”

Are you convinced that when Jesus died and rose that His triumph over the devil was complete? There is nothing left to be done except that the sentence still has to be commuted. But Satan is out on bail, and he’s enjoying his time supposedly, though I don’t think it’s an enjoyment at all. And all of the work has already been done, and the victory has been purchased, and now Jesus invites us to stand there and say, “Participate with me in the victory.”

“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimonies,” and like we often sing, “The blood has never lost its power.”

Secondly, we have to repent. We have to repent of that involvement. Jesus said, “If you are not with Me, you are against Me.” And what that repentance means is an acknowledgment. I have been into the following.

Now in counseling people who are in the occult, most of them have no idea all the things that they have been involved in until you read the list. They say, “Oh yeah, yeah, I forgot I was… Yeah, that’s right. I remember. Yeah, we did do some levitation,” or “Yes, we were into Ouija boards,” or “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did go to a fortune teller,” or “I’m into dream analysis.” Whatever! And they begin to realize that they’ve been misled. And so what you need to do is to confess that this is Satan’s territory. These are the doorways into the occult, and you need to say, “Oh God, I am guilty of…”

What I’ve noticed in counseling people is that if you pray with them over a long period of time and you’re not in a hurry, and you have periods of silence, God will often bring to mind things that they were into that they had forgotten about. Those must be confessed and forsaken and acknowledged as being occultic.

Next, identify the lie that brought you into the trap. What was the lie? Was it a desire for knowledge, knowledge that is hidden from us and that only God knows, and you wanted to get into this hidden knowledge? Was it power? Did you want to have some kind of power of a witch to zap somebody? What was it? Was it this great desire for health, and health was more important to you than whether or not it was done God’s way? Is that what got you in? Confess it! Was it money?

Whatever the mind can believe, the mind can achieve, which incidentally is nonsense. You know the little engine that went up the hill and said, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” It had a much better chance making it to the top of the hill by its optimism than if it were a pessimist. There’s no doubt about it. But if, when it got to the top of the hill, the tracks were washed out, it wouldn’t matter how often it said, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” It’s not true that whatever the mind can believe, the mind can achieve. What’s the lie that brought you into it?

Let me give you another point and that is that you must forgive those who have wronged you. You know, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2:11-12, “You must forgive the person and there must be no bitterness lest,” he says, “Satan deceive you and we are not ignorant of his devices.” You see, if we retain sins in our lives like bitterness and other kinds of avenues, it always gives Satan this right. Strictly speaking, it’s not a right because he doesn’t have the right, but it always gives him this doorway to harass us and to keep bringing us down.

Then, of course, there has to be submission. We’re on point number five now. Submission to God! It says in the book of James, “Dearly beloved, submit yourselves to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you,” but also the body of Christ. You know, there are some people who say, “Well, you know, I’m only accountable to God.” Most people who say they are only accountable to God, and they are not submissive to the leadership of the body of Christ, are really taking their place with Satan who fell because of pride. And so what we must do is… Sometimes we need the body. Jesus said regarding some demons, “Some do not come out except by prayer and fasting,” and you need the collective help of other people to bring you out from Satan’s clutches.

Finally, the armor of God! The armor of God! And as Pastor Worley pointed out to me one time, the armor of God is not just something that you put on every day and then you say, “Oh my goodness, I left a piece behind. I got dressed this morning and I left the shield of faith in the bedroom.” No, it’s a whole lifestyle. You put on that armor and you live that way with a breastplate of righteousness so that Satan’s attacks can never get through because the breastplate, the righteousness of Christ and your righteous life, continues to ward off those attacks, and there can’t be any (What shall we say?) ground that is given to him because of something that is in us.

Remember what Jesus said. He said, “The prince of this world comes and he says, ‘But in me he has found nothing.’” So there’s nothing that he can do to me. And we live a lifestyle of faith and in the Word, and we put on the helmet of salvation, all of that, of course, found in the sixth chapter of Ephesians.

You know, when bull moose are in the wild they fight to see who is going to be the leader of the herd. And once the battle is over the conqueror is never challenged again. It’s just assumed he’s won, so it’s over. That’s what the devil likes to do. He likes us to fall into those snares, and we talked about many of them in this series of messages. And we’re talking about the occult today, but you can put all the others right here. He wants us to fall in and then say to us, “See, there’s no way that you can get out. I have won it. I have you under my authority, and you have to obey me.” That is a lie. And Satan is going to be called on that as the liar and the author of lies.

I like to tell the story of that painting where a man drew a chess game, and the devil and a young man are playing chess. And the agreement is that whoever wins becomes the leader of the other person. The loser becomes the servant. And the way the picture was painted is the devil just declared checkmate in three moves. And so the young man’s face was painted pale.

But Paul Morphy who looked at that painting in the museum stared at it (a great chess player). He looked at it this way and this way and this way and discovered something, that the painter had overlooked a move that the boy could make. It isn’t checkmate! And I say to those of you today, harassed by Satan, “There’s a move that you can make. There’s a move that you can make.”

Having triumphed over principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it, and just as a serpent has been crushed into the dirt (and you take your heel as you walk along, and you’ve got really hard heels, and the road is hard too, and you grind him into the road that you are walking along), Satan has been ground into the dust. And Christ is triumphant.

Some of you have never received Him as Savior, and what you need to do is to realize that He’s the only way to God. Now, tell me one New Age book that will tell you that, that apart from Jesus you are lost forever. That’s what this book tells us. But the doctrine of demons has a myriad of ways of salvation. This book, the Bible, has only one.

And though this world with devils filled
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us.

The prince of darkness grim,
We tremble not for him.
For lo his rage we can endure
For lo his doom is sure.
One little word shall fell him.

And that little word has six letters—CHRIST. We renounce him and we serve the King of kings and Lord of lords.

Let us pray.

And now, Father, we ask today that You shall take these thoughts. Oh Lord, speak to those who are bound. Speak to young people tempted to get into occultism. Speak to those who walk past fortune tellers, wondering what it would be like to have their fortune told. Speak to those, Father, who are in environments—work environments where there are crystals and all kinds of ways to somehow get in contact with the spirit world. Speak to those, Father, who are in healthcare, who are tempted to go the direction of non-biblical spirituality. And help us, Father, to discern the doctrines of demons from the lovely truths, the transforming truths, of Your Word. And save those who need to be saved, and deliver those who need to be delivered, we ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.