(00:01) Stephanie Warner: Welcome, everyone, to Season 4, episode 48. Hello, my Father.
(00:08) Marcus Warner: Hello, Daughter.
(00:10) Stephanie Warner: Good to be with you and even though you are still in Michigan, nice that we have this technology. I mean, this is good. And also I see we both wore blue today. We do that, we do that.
(00:23) Marcus Warner: Yes. Yours is in a different category.
(00:30) Stephanie Warner: It’s a different shade.
(00:32) Marcus Warner: We have family arguments about what color that is. I know. It’s like, what is that?
(00:36) Stephanie Warner: You know, we’re in the same family. We’re in the same family. Well, today, we are coming into, you know, the very light topic of the occult, as we are working through a book study of What Every Believer Should Know About Spiritual Warfare. And the goal of this series is to equip you with a spiritual warfare first aid kit so you can function with more freedom on your deeper walk with God.
For this series, you can also download a free discussion guide if you’re going through this book with a group. Hope that will be helpful to you. And you can come back to this series whenever you’re ready to do something like that. So thank you for being here with us, and for wading through these heavy topics. Father, this is, we’re getting into chapter six, which is all about the occult and there’s so much that could be said for this topic, obviously.
But we’re keeping it at the, what every believer should know, right? What every believer should know about the occult, as it were here. So would you just give us that introduction of, okay, what is the occult? What should every believer understand? Like, a definition, I guess. Yeah.
(01:55) Marcus Warner: Yeah. So, the term occult doesn’t occur in the Bible, right? Which so, we should probably start with like, where does it come from? What is this all about? However, the idea, the concepts of the occult are everywhere. And that is because it’s associated with idolatry and paganism.
And because the Israelites were surrounded by pagans, those pagans all practiced the occult. And the constant temptation to the Israelites was to include pagan practices in their own worship of Yahweh, and to include pagan practices in their everyday lives. And so there’s a lot of scripture warning them against these pagan practices. Those pagan practices we would call occult. They’re doing occult things.
And then, you get to the New Testament, you see the same thing. The Roman world was very occult, it was very full of pagan practices. And so, just to talk about paganism for a second before we talk about the occult. Paganism is, while it’s the worship of gods, it is not a highly relational religion. Most of the pagans were not looking to have a relationship with their gods, they were just looking to keep them out of their lives as much as possible.
It was like, leave me alone. If I do this for you, will you leave me alone? Or if I do this for you, will you be nice to me? And so it was very transactional, and very much of, what do I need to do to: one, keep you from hurting me, and two, to make you do something good for me?
(03:37) Stephanie Warner: To keep your favor, yeah.
(03:40) Marcus Warner: To keep your favor. And so you know the Latin expression is …
(03:42) Stephanie Warner: Do ut des, yeah.
(03:40) Marcus Warner: There you go, why don’t you explain it? What is do ut des?
(03:42) Stephanie Warner: Do ut des is I give so that you give so…
(03:52) Marcus Warner: Yeah, and when would they say that?
(03:54) Stephanie Warner: When they would be, you know, giving a libation or giving a, you know, giving an offering.
(04:01) Marcus Warner: Exactly. So every time they made an offering, it wasn’t, I’m doing this because I love you so much. It was, I’m doing this because I’m trying to manage this relationship. And so, I give so that you give. Okay. So are we good here? Is the transaction acceptable? That’s it. And so one of the things that God wanted to prevent, and one of the reasons why he forbade pagan practices is, one, he wanted to prevent our relationship from becoming transactional.
He didn’t want us to just have that, I give so that you give, kind of mentality. And you have to be careful because sometimes there are concepts that are like a seed faith giving that if you’re not careful, they can move in that direction to where, well, I did this, therefore God will do that. And so you have to be very careful how this stuff can trickle into our mindset and our thinking. But when it comes…
(04:55) Stephanie Warner: What is our heart posture? Yeah.
(04:59) Marcus Warner: Yeah, so that’s kind of paganism in a nutshell, but then you move into specifically the occult, which is characteristic of pagan practices. And the occult has to do with seeking two things primarily, and that’s knowledge and power. And for some people, of course, knowledge is power, right? So it’s like if I know things, then that gives me an advantage in life. And so you think about the kinds of things that you would tend to want to know, and things that you couldn’t know on your own that you would want to know about.
Well, you want to know things like, am I going to get better from this sickness that I have? If I go into this battle today, am I going to win? Would I be better off fighting this battle a different day, on a different place, a different time, you know, are the omens favorable to me today? There’s all kinds of things I want to know. It’s like, you know, will this investment make a lot of money? Will this be a good business practice? There’s constantly things you want to know. And it just goes on and on.
So everything about, that’s what leads people to want to check their horoscope. Like, is this a good day for me to be starting a new relationship or not? Is this a good day for me to be entering into a business agreement or not? They’ll look for omens and signs, and sometimes they’ll get beyond just looking for omens and signs, and they’ll want to talk to a spirit directly.
And so that’s when you get into Ouija boards and like, okay, I’m going to ask a question, and I’m going to get a specific answer, and this thing’s going to spell it out for me. Or you go to a psychic so that that person can contact somebody, and talk to them directly for you, or a seance or something like that.
So, but all of those things, what they have in common is you’re looking for knowledge, you want to get information from people. Some of those are also blending into the idea of power, where it is, I want to have this experience of supernatural power, and I just want the thrill that comes from feeling like I have encountered something supernaturally powerful. But normally what I’m doing on the power thing is I am trying to affect reality.
(07:15) Marcus Warner: And so when I do that with power words, power objects, you know, power actions. So power words would be like spells and incantations. So you get all the Harry Potter stuff, like, you know, it’s like the old joke, I tried to learn Latin and ended up summoning something, you know. But those are power words. It’s the idea that if I say the right words, I can summon spiritual power of some kind.
I’m also sometimes looking for power by looking for a particular spirit. And so sometimes there can be a relational dimension to this, where I just really want to talk to my grandma, you know, because she would know what to do here. But that can be a knowledge thing, but it can go beyond that. But in…
(08:04) Stephanie Warner: So an occult itself is when you’re seeking something hidden or secret that is knowledge or power coming from not God. Like where are you seeking your knowledge and power?
(08:15) Marcus Warner: Yeah. So I think what’s happening here, one of the reasons I’m hemming and hawing a little bit is, I’m beginning to realize that there might be a third category beyond knowledge and power, and that is that sometimes people do this because they want a connection with someone who’s dead. And they aren’t necessarily looking for the knowledge from them or the power from them. They just want that connection and that’s another reason that people turn to this. But that’s what comes up with the idea of necromancy, and things like that of contacting the dead, and having some kind of connection with them.
(08:51) Marcus Warner: Yeah, all of that stuff is forbidden though. Like the Bible makes it very clear that those are pagan practices. They’re the things that the pagans do, and that Christians and the people of God are not to follow those practices. In fact, we are instructed specifically to destroy the objects that have anything to do with them. So I talked about power words.
Power objects would be, you know, amulets to ward off evil spirits, little statues I put in my garden to ward off evil spirits. You know, the…
(09:25) Stephanie Warner: Spell books and things and…
(09:28) Marcus Warner: Yeah, and so that’s where you have to be careful, because this can pivot into a Christian thing, where I have Christian objects that I think will keep me safe, if I have these Christian objects around. That’s a pagan way of thinking about them. That’s not…
(09:39) Stephanie Warner: We can talk about that. We can talk about the occult and syncretism here, but finish your thought on objects of power.
(09:43) Marcus Warner: Well, that’s just the idea. Like an idol would be a power object, or an amulet or any kind of object that is particularly used for occult purposes.
And then there are rituals, you know, sacrifices, things that you do. A sacrifice is the most common, and a sacrifice could be anything as simple as scraping a little bit of your food into the fire when you have a meal as a thank offering to a god. Or, to going to visit a priest and paying for sacrifices to be performed on your behalf. And these are also transactions, you know, that are designed to get you power, favor, or knowledge of some kind.
(10:33) Stephanie Warner: Yeah, well, and we just see the occult rampant like I mean, obviously it’s been around for a very long time. But I think that, you know, we’re in America, here in United States of America, and there was a a large vacuum for a long time of just like secularity of like, kind of a religious vacuum, and I think, you know, even across my life, I’m thirty five, even across my lifetime, having like just seeing the uptick of how much occult, just like people take it for granted and people are just like, what’s your sign?
And what’s your like, you know, and it’s just part of pop culture. It’s part of, you walk into stores, and it’s just like in your face, and it’s everywhere, and it can be really hard to to navigate that. And like some people just don’t even recognize it as occult, and some people do but don’t have an issue with it. And so…
(11:33) Marcus Warner: Well, and it gets even out of things like, it’s become the punchline of a joke to stand up against some of these things. And so one of the things we talked about is like when it gets into the pop culture area, you start looking at, there’s a difference between knowing about things, you know, reading it or seeing it, and practicing it. There is a difference.
And there’s also a difference between I’ll just go back to the day, like Smurfs. People used to just mock Christians to death because we’d, you know, would say things about Smurfs, but it was teaching occult very clearly. It was really some stuff in there that was just like, hey, you little kids, this is how you do witchcraft. And so you have to be careful about, and it’s the same problem with Harry Potter and some of these things, is that if you don’t go into it with the ability to think critically and you don’t go into it with a solid theological foundation, it’s pretty decent training on how to be a witch. And so, that’s one of the reasons that these things can be problematic.
In fact, certain multiple surveys have shown that the number one reason that most witches became witches was reading Harry Potter, right? That was the number one entry point. And so does that mean that Christians should never read those books? I don’t think that’s necessarily the takeaway. But I also think you can go on to the other extreme, and you become so desensitized to it that you mock people who have any reservations at all, and don’t understand that you’re flirting with a danger zone here at some level, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.
So I look at that and it’s like I get it. And it’s the same thing with Halloween. It’s like I can see why people have multiple different convictions and perspectives on something like that, because it’s not straightforward. And I think they fall into the category, some of these things, of whatever’s not a faith is sin. So be fully convinced in your own mind. and if you’re not fully convinced then you probably should exercise a greater degree of caution. Yeah. So the occult…
(13:50) Stephanie Warner: Mm. Well, and there can be the weaker brother sort of thing of just like, yeah, I mean that’s same vein of thinking is what you’re talking about, of just like for some people, there are those areas like Harry Potter that some people are like absolutely not, and there’s some people who are like absolutely yes. I feel closer to Jesus with, you know, some of these storytelling, you know, things here.
And I know people who are on both sides of those issues very dogmatically, and some people who are in the gray, and I think that there’s just, it’s a matter of discernment and conviction, but we want to make people aware because sometimes, people are just ignorant in terms of…
(14:29) Marcus Warner: Yeah, some people are, if you don’t know what the occult is, it will infiltrate your life. Because it’s not passive waiting to be discovered, it is aggressive and it’s going to come looking for you. And so you kind of have to know what it is, to know what you’re even defending yourself against.
And that’s why we try to say, it is essentially seeking from a supernatural source, knowledge and power. Those are the two main things it’s after. Occasionally it gets into that kind of necromancy sort of thing where you’re trying to connect to a person, and sometimes that’s just for attachment pain. But in general, the occult is a transactional thing where you are trying to get knowledge and power to give you greater success in life.
(15:25) Stephanie Warner: Let’s talk more about syncretism. What is syncretism?
(15:27) Marcus Warner: So comes from, the two words meaning, to blend beliefs together. And the assumption in there is that they don’t belong together. So it’s the blending of beliefs that don’t belong together. And so classic syncretism we see in the Bible, my favorite passage on syncretism in the Bible, is in Judges, right? Judges chapter 17,18, where it’s telling the story where, and the assumption here is that the person reading the story knows their Torah well and knows what the law says…
(16:02) Stephanie Warner: Should know better.
(16:25) Marcus Warner: Should know better, and that multiple times in this story they will gasp and go, They did what? You know, because it starts with a man stealing eleven hundred pieces of silver from his mother, which is like, what? Okay, that’s stealing, and it’s dishonoring your parents. It’s like, what in the world? And then she puts a curse on whoever did it, not knowing that the son is the one who stole it. And he just like doesn’t want to be cursed, and so he’s like, No, I did it, I’m sorry.
She goes, Well, thank you. I’m going to dedicate this silver to Yahweh. And you’re like, great. Well, what does she do with the silver to dedicate it to Yahweh? She has an idol made out of it, right? And that’s a violation of the second commandment. You know, don’t use idols in worshiping me. But she thinks, she obviously doesn’t know the law, and she thinks that this is good, and she makes an idol for the worship of Yahweh.
Then they say, well, if we’re going to have an idol, then we have to build a shrine in the home. So we’re going to have a shrine in our home, not go and seek out the place that the Torah says we should be worshiping Yahweh. And then that’s the second offense.
And then third, they take one of their sons and install that son as priest, and that son is not a descendant of Aaron. So we have a third violation of Torah. And you know, people are like, what in the world is going on here? And then it concludes with, Now I know Yahweh will bless me because I’ve done all of these things, and they’ve just violated his law left, right, and every other direction. So along comes a Levite.
(17:41) Stephanie Warner: Like, oh good, Levite will set it straight.
(17:43) Marcus Warner: Yeah, and the audience reading is like, Yay, it’s a Levite, because part of their job was to instruct people in Torah. But they come and say, you’re from the holy tribe, right? Why don’t you be our priest? Well, this was not a descendant of Aaron. Levites couldn’t be priests unless they were descendants of Aaron. And you’re waiting for this person to correct everything, and instead they go, how much does it pay? And he agrees to the terms and he becomes the priest. And this guy keeps showing up.
It’s like there’s a whole cult that gets started that is basically syncretistic in that it is claiming to worship Yahweh, and it has certain, you know, things that are accurate about Yahweh in it, but it is all pagan, and it’s all being done in ways that are actually forbidden by Yahweh. And so that’s syncretism, right? It’s where you are bringing two things together that do not belong together. And so you’re using an idol to worship Yahweh. You’re using somebody who isn’t a true priest. You’re, you know, breaking all of the rules, and you’re doing it your own way.
And so we see this in the New Testament. We see it especially in a church like Colossians, Colossae. It was not uncommon for people to turn to Jesus as their Lord and Savior. But when they got sick, they still went to the temple, and got a potion from the priest, and offered a payment and a sacrifice. And they thought that there were some things that Jesus was good for, and there were some things that you needed other spirit power for.
We see this today in a lot of places where people will still go to the shaman or to the healer in the family line, and the fuzziness between, well the person calls themselves a Christian. So even though what they’re doing is occult, maybe it’s okay. And that’s the danger of syncretism, is that you can practice the occult in the name of Christianity, or you can call yourself a Christian, and have some Christian elements to what you’re doing. You’re blending it with things that are blatantly occult. And God’s like, No, that’s a major danger and that’s the kind of stuff we need to repent of.
(20:12) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. Well that’s a great segue to my next question. which is, when when dealing with occult related sin, you have an acrostic RED for walking through. So just like we walk through CCC process, this is Renounce and Destroy. So can you explain RED?
(20:35) Marcus Warner: Yeah. So yeah, Renounce is, we’re going to have them make a declaration renouncing their involvement with anything that was occult. This was specifically first done actually with somebody coming out of Mormonism, and then again with somebody coming out of Freemasonry, and then with people coming out of specific Wiccan groups and things like this, and we would have them go through this process, and make the declaration, I renounce my participation with this group. Or I renounce my participation with these activities.
And then the E is End. I would end my membership. And so to whatever extent it was possible to get off of those roles and to end that, you wanted to end your membership.
And then D destroy was you want to destroy the paraphernalia that you used in your worship, that was really idolatrous or occultic in some way. And so that’s why we have all three of those things in there. So it was very concrete and practical. So it says in Deuteronomy, I think it’s chapter 12, it’s like when you enter this pagan land, you’re just to destroy their idols, destroy the asherah poles, destroy the altars, destroy these, you know, the things that they have.
So it’s on the basis of that, and a lot of times it’s a lot of money. And that’s the point of Acts chapter 19. It’s like when the Christians realized, oh, as Christians we shouldn’t be having magic, you know, and occult stuff in our possession, and they brought it out and they destroyed it and set it on fire. And the amount of money was massive that it cost them to do this.
There’s also sometimes when it’s got like a family heirloom sort of element to it, but that doesn’t change anything. It’s like I think of the guy from Southeast Asia whose family’s responsibility was tending a pagan altar. And their family had very expensive possessions related to this. It was one of their prized possessions, was the things connected to this altar. Well, when he got saved, he went and he destroyed it. He destroyed the whole altar. He destroyed everything about it. And my favorite part of it is, he peed all over it to make sure that it was no longer sacred or able to be used in any way again.
And it was like drawing a line, like, no, there is zero overlap like between Christ and Belial. Like we are not going to have any marrying of these two things together. So it can be costly, it can cost you relationships. When Gideon was called Jerubbaal because he destroyed the family altar and it cost him some relationships. It can be costly monetarily as well. But this is if we want to…
(23:30) Stephanie Warner: You’re really, you’re really selling it. You’re really selling it. So what…
(23:33) Marcus Warner: Yeah, Jesus said count the cost. I mean, this is part of the problem here is that, sometimes we’ve gotten involved in things that are dangerous, and exiting them is important, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not without danger. And so we are relying on God to provide for us, and to be our protector and our provider, and understand that Christ is supreme over all of these things, and so it’s not that there’s no cost, but we trust that God is going to get us where He wants us to be in the end.
(24:10) Stephanie Warner: What if somebody isn’t sure if they’re dealing with something that needs to be destroyed, or broke you know, or…
(24:15) Marcus Warner: Yeah. Well, you already know the answer. So we call it the rule of thumb, right? I know you’re asking the question here. So that’s a nice little softball question. Our rule of thumb on how do you know when to destroy it, and when it could just be cleansed, right? Was it created for occult purposes, then it needs to be destroyed. Is it an object that somebody may have put a curse on or that got associated with the occult that can usually be cleansed.
So the example would be like, if I got a gift that was a watch, but it came from somebody who practices witchcraft and they may have put a curse or a hex or something on it, I can generally cleanse the watch. But if I am actually given an amulet that its whole purpose for existence is to ward off spirits, that needs to be destroyed. And that’s rule of thumb. There might be some exceptions, we always say to pray and seek God and see if he leads you in a different direction.
(25:17) Stephanie Warner: Yes. if people are feeling a little freaked out about occult topics and occult things, like could you give a little maybe hope or guidelines for how to deal with the occult?
(25:32) Marcus Warner: Yeah, you know, there’s all kinds of levels. There’s dabblers, right? There’s occult dabblers. And those are the people who may not even realize what they’re doing. But they are opening up doors all over the place in their life for demonic activity, because they’re just not showing discretion and discernment at all. And that’s usually a matter of just renouncing and getting rid of, or destroying the few things that you’ve collected.
And then you get occult practitioners. And they’ve actually joined a coven. They’ve actually joined, you know, a group. And that gets a little more complicated. There’s a little more cost to leaving, but there’s tons, like you can search the internet, there’s tons of testimonials of former witches and whatever, and what they went through to get free. And God has been faithful, and he’s gotten them to a good place. And a lot of them are now kind of reaching out across that aisle, so to speak, and saying, hey, there’s hope for you.
I heard a podcast recently about a former New Ager who spent the first half of his life pursuing Hindu gods and the New Age and all these things, and got radically saved, and now he’s living as a Christian, but he had to go through deliverance, and he had to go through ending all of these things. And now he’s trying to expose what goes on in the new age, but he’s also trying to reach out to people in the new age, and show them that there’s a better way.
(27:08) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. All right. I’m looking at the time here and realizing that I need to wrap us up. But the good news is if you’re enjoying this series, two things. One, just remember you can come to the Battle Ready Conference and you can watch it after the fact as well. There’ll be a link in the description for that. But also I’ve decided that this is not the end of the study. So chapter six is the last chapter in the book.
But we are going to come back next week, and we’re going to look at Appendix Two, which is where Dad unpacks the role of experience in spiritual warfare. So we’re going to come back and wrap up the series with that episode.
So yes, thank you, everybody, who was on the trail with us. Thank you for your prayers, thank you for all of our trailblazers and our donors who keep us, who fund us, and keep us going. Thank you for our volunteers, thank you for just every listener who tunes in and shares with friends, and we’re so glad that you’re with us, and we hope that this is helpful for you and yeah, just thank you. Father, any final thoughts for this episode.
(28:22) Marcus Warner: Yeah, I just say that you know the level at which you need to understand the occult is directly related to how much it is impacting your life. So if you grown up in a family where there’s a lot of occult activity, you may need to study a little bit more. If you were in a group and you were actively engaged in this, you may need to study a little bit more. If you’re working with somebody who’s heavily involved in it, you may need to study a little bit more.
For most people though, they don’t need to make a deep dive study of the occult, but there are some fundamentals about it that the Bible teaches and makes very clear that every Christian should know, and that we should be able to recognize those things to avoid them and keep short accounts in our lives.
(29:10) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. Yeah, this is good. I’ll see you back next week.
