71: The Occult Invasion of America

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail Podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God.

Season 1, episode 71. Today we are doing a special on the occult invasion of America.

[00:28] Marcus: Something light.

[00:31] Stephanie: Oh, dear. Hello, Father.

[00:32] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. Nice topic we have here… The world cult invasion of America. Is that what we’re talking about this time?

[00:39] Stephanie: Yeah, yeah. But at one point we were joking about a series like The Wacky, Wild, Wonderful World of Warfare or something. I don’t remember exactly how you alliterated that. That’s not this, but it’s something about saying the occult invasion of America makes me think of wacky warfare.

[01:00] Marcus: Wacky clickbaits. We should get some.

[01:01] Stephanie: Oh gosh.

[01:01] Marcus: Yeah.

[01:02] Stephanie: It was your idea.

[01:03] Marcus: It was my idea.

[01:06] Stephanie: So. Yeah. And actually this topic’s gonna sit pretty well between our two series. We just wrapped up our Identity Series and we’re going to be talking about authority and the authority of the believer next. And I think this will be useful, but first, an icebreaker.

We are a very theatrical family and whether we’re just at a birthday party or on stage, we will dress up in costumes or do whatever. We’re very theatrical. So what is a favorite costume that you have worn?

[01:38] Marcus: A favorite costume that I have worn? Well, the first one that pops in my head was in junior high. I played Julius Caesar and got to wear a toga. That was kind of fun. More recently, I remember dressing up like Tolkien for a Lord of the Rings party. So that was kind of fun too. How about you?

[01:57] Stephanie: I love that that’s more recent for you. That was my 13th birthday.

[02:00] Marcus: Yeah, that was very recent. Two years.

[02:04] Stephanie: Oh, no, I remember that very fondly. And I also remember your stories of being Julius Caesar very fondly. You know, when I think about it, the first thing that pops into my head was when I was the Queen of Hearts.

[02:17] Marcus: Ah, yes, I remember that. ”Off with her head!”

[02:18] Stephanie: Yes.. I’m always cast as the villain. I was Miss Minchin in Little Princess. Anyway, that was also a fun costume.

[02:31] Marcus: Did you have some counseling?

[02:32] Stephanie:  About people’s perceptions of me? Yeah. Okay. It was a good time, but yeah, the Queen of Hearts costume, I think that was my favorite. It was poofy and fun and not a normal costume.

Well, I guess on that note, we’re going to talk about spiritual warfare.

[02:55] Marcus: From the Queen of Hearts to spiritual warfare. Let’s do this.

[02:58] Stephanie: Yes, you know, at Deeper Walk, we talk about spiritual warfare all the time in a variety of contexts, but I think popular culture is talking about it more right now. This episode comes out October 30, I believe, so we just thought we’d enter into the conversation.

[03:17] Marcus: It’s the Halloween season and people sometimes look to Deeper Walk for help when it comes to understanding the occult and what to think about things related to that. So it’s a good time for a podcast on this.

[03:27] Stephanie: Yeah. So, Dad, as we said, the topic of the occult invasion of America was your idea, and as we were talking about it, you did make the clarification, we’ve actually already been invaded. It’s more like the normalization of and reprogramming and such, but talk to us about your initial thoughts. Why this topic?

[03:46] Marcus: I’ve been talking about the occult invasion of America since the seventies when I was in high school, so this is not a new thing. That’s why I said, actually, for my generation, what we’re really talking about is the normalization of the occult in America.

And that is, you’re right, we did get this invasion a long time ago. One of the classic illustrations from my generation, when we thought of a witch, we thought of The Wizard of Oz, somebody green with warts. And in your generation, a witch looks like Selena Gomez, right? It was all of a sudden trendy and hip and cool to be a witch. The stigma has gone out of it. That’s why I said this isn’t even as much about the invasion as it is about the normalization of things.

[04:40] Stephanie: Well, and it’s a reverse stigma because now it’s not just weird or bad to be a witch, it’s cool.

[04:47] Marcus: Yes, exactly. The occult has become cool. And the other thing is that, when I was first starting into ministry, I remember telling some pastors how Star Wars had occult themes in it and how Indiana Jones had occult themes in it.

And I would get pastors saying, “What are you talking about? Indiana Jones?” One pastor said, “Isn’t it cool that Hollywood’s finally making a Christian movie?” because they’re so used to being secular, that the fact that the Ark of the Covenant actually had power, they took it as biblical because it wasn’t secular.

When you grow up, like in my generation, everything was very atheistic, very secular, but one of the things I used to teach when I was at Bethel was that secularity and atheism is never a final destination. It is the devil’s strategy like a vacuum cleaner that sucks out all of the Christian spirituality, creates this vacuum, so that the devil can now insert a new kind of spirituality.

Because, let’s face it, the devil doesn’t want us worshiping nobody. The devil wants us worshipping him. That’s why in the book of Revelation, three times we read, “The whole world will worship the dragon.” He wants to be worshipped. So the devil has no interest in a world that is atheist. He uses atheism to clear out Christian spirituality so he can invade with his own kind.

So back to Indiana Jones, the Ark of the Covenant was called, in the movie, an occult object, and everybody seems to have missed that. The idea is that, in the occult you’ve got white magic and you have black magic, and so Disney has picked up on this. The only solution to black magic in these films is white magic.

And so the ark can do good things or it can do bad things, depending on who’s using it. Well, this is not a new idea. This is what the occult is based on. This is particularly what we call animism.

Animism is this idea that there is a spiritual force in the world that is something like electricity, and that there are specialists that we would call witch doctors or shaman or priests or whatever, who know how to manipulate this electricity for good or for evil.

And so this idea out there, that spirituality is neutral and can be manipulated for good or for bad, leads to this idea of white witchcraft versus black witchcraft. I can’t tell you how many times there have been Christians out there who accuse ministries like ours of practicing white witchcraft?

And I’m like, “Yeah, you don’t understand anything. If that’s what you’re saying, then you don’t understand at all, because we’ve been exposing, from the beginning, that white witchcraft isn’t Christian.” The question here is, where is the source of the power coming from? If the power is not coming from God, then it’s occult.

So if there is a supernatural power that is at work and it is not coming from the Creator of the universe, then that power is occult, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s for good or for evil, whether it’s pretending to be for good or not, it’s still bad.

And so we’ve had a whole generation now that has been raised with this idea that the antidote to black magic is white magic. No, no, no, they’re both coming from the wrong source.

[08:10] Stephanie: It just strikes me. I’m a fantasy writer, and I deal with a lot of magic in that genre. Even beyond fantasy, as a family, we talk all the time about, “If they just knew Jesus in that movie, this wouldn’t be an issue.”

I do think that when you have a world that is devoid of Creator God, of Jesus, that you have to have a solution, and it has to be something. And when Jesus isn’t your solution, you go reaching for other things and it’s just built in.

So if you’re creating a world that doesn’t have Jesus in it in a fictional world, then you’re gonna have to look for a different solution, and that’s where you get into trouble also.

[08:54] Marcus: Very true. If you go back far enough, back into the inter testamental literature, Enoch, some of these other books, one of the things that Enoch claims is that the occult was one of the things that the fallen angels taught.

They were very specific that they taught warfare and the making of weapons to increase violence. They taught seduction and how women can beautify themselves in order to bring immorality more into the world. And they taught the occult to people.

According to the Book of Enoch, those are the three main things that the fallen angels brought into the world to us. Whether that’s literally true or not, you can clearly see the demonic wisdom involved in those things.

What we find is that the appeal of the occult is that I can have power and control over my life. And this is why for generations of occult organizations have tended to reach out primarily to two groups of people.

One is those who are outcasts and feel like “people walk over me all the time. I wish I had a way to make them pay.” That’s one group of people. The other group of people are the power hungry people who just want to be in control and they want as much power as they can possibly get.

So on that side of it, for example, the BBC came up with an article about ten years ago now in which they said that there was an African nation in which over 300 cases had been filed in court that said that companies, corporations had paid for human sacrifice to take place, so they were hiring witch doctors to perform human sacrifices on their property.

Why? Because these powerful organizations wanted more power. They wanted the spiritual power to protect themselves against the curses coming from their rivals and also to curse their rivals and to give them victory. It goes back to all the ancient pagan stuff of like, “Oh, we wouldn’t think of going into battle without a sacrifice to our god.”

So on the one hand, you’ve got these powerful people who are looking for more power, and on the other hand, you’ve got people who feel run over by the world saying, “Well, if I had this kind of power, they wouldn’t run over me.”

It reminds me of reading an article about the impact of Harry Potter. I get asked all the time, “Is it a sin to read Harry Potter? Is it a sin to watch the movies?” No, not really. I say, that’s not the point. Some people are in a better position to deal with that than others.

But there is no question that the impact of Harry Potter on our society and on our culture has been to raise in esteem witchcraft. There’s no question that thousands and thousands of people have sought out witchcraft and sought to become witches and warlocks because of Harry Potter that wouldn’t have happened without it.

So what? One of the kids, his statements was very telling, “I wish I was like Harry, because if I had those kinds of powers, the other kids would treat me better.” That’s a very common theme. It’s a very common feeling. “If I had that kind of power, people wouldn’t mess with me.”

That’s why it tends to appeal to those two kinds of groups, people who are already powerful and want more power and people who feel disenfranchised and think, “Well, this will give me control over my life.” Because what you think you’re doing is that you’re becoming the electrician who can handle this spiritual electricity, and now you’re the one in control.

They don’t realize that actually it’s all just the devil hunting. He’s using bait, and he’s putting stuff out there that we want, and there’s something good about the bait, which is what makes us take it.

[13:03] Stephanie: It’s desensitizing, the normalization of it. And so many times there is so much good associated with it that we just have to be careful, because like you said, there are a lot of things in the world that we can watch and enjoy or interact with with discernment. And there are other things that she’s like, nope.

[13:28] Marcus: Yes, because I’ve enjoyed a lot of movies that have worldviews I wouldn’t agree with. Star Wars is basically Buddhist, and you’ve just got to understand that going in, and learn to think critically about this.

Again, Disney is very white magic, black magic. You’ve gotta try to help people learn to watch things critically and understand what it is that they’re seeing. The danger comes with what we call syncretism.

Syncretism is the unnatural blending of worldviews. When you get a Christian worldview and you get a pagan worldview or an occult worldview and you bring them together, that’s when it gets really dangerous.

Because now Christians don’t recognize when they are doing occult things because their worldview has become so syncretistic. It’s like a worldview buffet. I’ll take a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

I’ll take a little bit of this from the Bible and a little bit of that from Hinduism and a little bit of this from paganism, and a little bit of this from atheism, and I’ll mix it all together and I’ll come up with my own thing.

That’s basically what postmodernism tells us to do, so it’s no wonder that it’s growing and becoming normalized in our culture.

[14:44] Stephanie: Well, that’s one of the reasons why we want to help people go deeper in their walk with God. And that includes biblical literacy and an understanding of your worldview. That is a biblical worldview, because we can interact with the world, but we need to understand who is discipling it.

We need to be cognizant of that and who is shaping us and speaking into our thoughts. Can we pause real quick? And could you give a definition of the occult? Because I don’t think we did that.

[15:15] Marcus: Sure. Looking at it from one direction, the occult is the idea that there is supernatural power available to us that we can control. What makes it occult is that that power is not coming from the God of the Bible.

It is also related to the Latin word for hidden or secret. There is this secretness to the occult. That’s where you get into the idea that there are secrets that the witch doctors learn about how to control the power. There are secrets that witches learn as they go higher and higher up about how to control this power.

That tends to go into two categories, and that is secret knowledge and secret power. Secret knowledge is about how do I learn things from the spirit realm? Because as we know now, knowledge is power. If I know what’s going to happen, then it gives me a distinct advantage.

Classically, secret knowledge looks like astrology and horoscopes. It looks like divination, which the popular ones in our culture are tarot cards, Ouija boards, anything where I’m reading omens and I’m looking for like, “Oh, this is an omen that’s telling me what is going to happen.”

So it’s giving me an inside track to the secret spiritual knowledge whether it is the stars, or the other would be like seances and spirit guides and things like this.

Now, when it comes to secret power, that’s more like casting spells and doing rituals and performing sacrifices, because you are asking for supernatural power to be unleashed.

These are the two basic ways in which the occult takes place. When we’re talking about the occult, we’re talking about people who are seeking after this secret knowledge and secret power, using these classic methods that have been around for millennia.

[17:14] Stephanie: What are some of the biggest things that you’re seeing in this occult invasion or normalization?

[17:24] Marcus: Well, I think, throw out a few examples. FIFA World cup in a western European country, which you think of historically either as Christian or atheist, they brought in South American witch doctors to bless every stadium. When did that become normal, that this is something we’re going to do?

I was talking to somebody who said almost every hospital in their metropolitan area, this major city in the United States, had a witch doctor, a shaman, on staff at the hospital. That’s normalization.

Yoga is part of a major part of the normalization of a Hindu practice. It is a Hindu religious practice. It was never intended to help people with their trauma and their steadiness. Now, it has a few elements in what they do in yoga that can be helpful.

[18:20] Stephanie: There are many Christians who practice yoga, so you should probably camp out there for just half a second.

[18:25] Marcus: All right, so yoga means yoked. The purpose of yoga is to yoke yourself to the universal consciousness, which is, by definition, not Christian. Transcendental meditation, same thing. The idea is twofold, to detach from this world and to attach to spirituality and spiritual forces in the other world.

Even if you take that out and say, “Well, I don’t believe in any of that, I’m still going to do it.” One of the things we learned to know about spiritual warfare is that demons are legalists who are trying to look for any loophole they can to get access to you.

And so if you are engaging in a Hindu ritual that is designed to summon pagan gods and yoke you with them, are demons gonna sit back and go, “Ah, well, you know, they don’t realize what they’re doing. I’ll stay out of it?” I don’t think so.

So I’m not saying that every person who does yoga automatically gets a demon, but you’re going down a path that is occult. That’s not something you want to camp out in.

[19:41] Stephanie: So what about for people who have felt a lot of healing, physical or mental, or they’ve had breakthroughs by practicing yoga? What would your recommendation be?

[19:52] Marcus: Well, I think that we understand what it is that’s good about it. The parts of it that are good are deep breathing. Nothing sinister about deep breathing.

The whole idea behind deep breathing is that when we are anxious and when we’re overwhelmed, our breathing gets shallow and rapid, and so we’re trying to take control of our body. Deep breath and settled. Nothing sinister about that.

So there’s also nothing sinister about quieting and just being still. The Bible says, “Be still [and know that I am God].” And there’s nothing wrong with stretching.

[20:34] Stephanie: I was gonna say, there’s nothing wrong with physically stretching and physical fitness.

[20:35] Marcus: But the problem here is when I am following a specific religious structure, I’ve not verified all this, but I’ve seen non-Christian instructors say every position in yoga is dedicated to a different Hindu god.

If the gods of the nations are demons, then every position is dedicated to a different demon. So why would you walk yourself through that specific sequence? You know, if you accidentally find yourself in a position, that’s different than intentionally getting yourself into a position, because that’s what the religion says to do.

So I am obviously pretty strong on this. I’m going to offend some people. Why? Find a different way to do this. Just to find a different method to accomplish the good things that there are here. That would be my advice.

[21:39] Stephanie: Okay.

[21:40] Marcus: The other big normalizer, honestly, is the secular rock music industry. As long as I’m going to step on people’s toes and get all over this stuff. I mean, and there’s no secret about this. A lot of this started with the Beatles getting into eastern mysticism and bringing some of this stuff and mainstreaming it.

Not only did it come in, but now there has been this normalization. You can’t even watch some of the Super Bowl halftime shows anymore without getting a whole lot of occult overtones and images in this stuff.

Then the movie industry has really normalized this. I talked to the former president of a major motion picture company. Everybody would know the name if I said it. And he said, “You know, it used to be that we put out one horror movie every quarter at the most.”

He says, “Now we’re putting out 16 a year.” And that was 20 years ago.

Now they’re putting out even more because horror has been normalized. The heart of most horror is an occult idea that you are up against a force that is not human, that is greater than anything can really happen.

And the priests, you know, poor saps in all these movies, right?

[23:01] Stephanie: They are in over their heads.

[23:04] Marcus: They’re in over their heads, and they’re up against something they’re never really going to fully defeat. And that’s just all lies. So when I talk about the normalization of it, I didn’t see this specifically, somebody told me they went to a major food chain that was giving away, like, happy meals or that kind of toys, and they had tarot cards.

I’m like, really? That feels a little extreme to me. I just look at all this, and what we’re seeing is an increase in normalization and spirituality that does not involve Jesus.

Whenever you have a spirituality that excludes Jesus, not only is it occult, but it is by definition antichrist.

Because it’s like, “Here, let us introduce a spirituality that has no root place in it for Jesus.” Well, that is anti-Jesus. And so we have a lot of this going on. So I say this partly for parents who are trying to help their kids, and that is, you’ve got to help your kids not just avoid things, but learn how to think about them and learn how to recognize them.

They need to understand what the occult is, and need to understand how to recognize core things in the occult. In our family when we were teaching you and Ben about this stuff, we started at a fairly early age, but some of the keys were, we didn’t introduce vocabulary you weren’t already using, and we didn’t introduce ideas you weren’t already exposed to.

So if you were watching a Disney show, we would talk about magic. I’m not going to talk about demons. If we were watching something else and somebody brings up, “Oh, what about these monsters and this stuff?” We’ll talk about monsters. I don’t want to overwhelm a child by introducing them to things they don’t need to be thinking about.

On the other hand, if they’re already being exposed to stuff, I want to help them think about it as critically as possible and to recognize, “Okay, well, this is safe and this is not safe and we don’t have to be afraid of this, but this is where we stand as Christians.”

[25:24] Stephanie: I think one of the biggest things for me that I definitely appreciated was I wanted to know why we believe what we believe and, and have the guardrails to understand. I don’t want to just be told, “No, don’t do that or don’t watch that. It’s no, sure, but we’re going to talk about it.

I felt equipped enough to understand a biblical worldview and how the world works, the seen realm and the unseen realm and all of that to have discernment. There are different levels of discernment, and different levels of – acceptance isn’t the right word – but just like engagement, when you’re in a culture and you’re having to engage in the culture and…

[26:20] Marcus: You’re being introduced to this stuff anyway. You can’t avoid it all.

[26:21] Stephanie: So you just have to strategically make sure that you are being discipled as a Christian and then engage from there, and not vice versa, because so many people are being discipled by the world and then engaging with Christianity.

We need to be discipled as Christians and then engage with the world, but we still need to engage with the world and do so in a loving and understanding way.

[26:43] Marcus: It doesn’t really help to just tell people how horrible everything they’re doing is. Even Paul says, “I’m not telling you that you shouldn’t associate with idolaters and adulterers and immoral people. Otherwise you’d have to leave the world.”

[26:59] Stephanie: And can you eat this food or not eat this food? There’s all this stuff. Yeah, you’re right.

[27:06] Marcus: You’re right. Part of what we’re doing, though, is it helps us know how to pray. We want to pray against the spirit of Antichrist. We want to pray for protection around our families, for a hedge of protection like Job did.

I sometimes encourage people to just plead the blood of Jesus over their families. Especially if you’re going into an environment where you know there’s going to be a lot of this.

I’ll give you one example. I had a businessman one time say he had to share an office with somebody he knew was in the occult. And so we went and we cleansed the office. And then we literally kind of drew an imaginary line down the middle of the office. It was like, nothing’s coming if this guy’s bringing something in with him.

First of all, we put the blood of Jesus around this and asked, “In the name of Jesus that no demon would be allowed into this office anymore. But if he’s given permission, then he cannot affect my stuff, cannot affect my side.” And we just kind of put up some boundaries.

It was interesting because later that year, his company won some prestigious award and he emailed me just to say, “I’m convinced that that had something to do with what we had done in the office by putting limits on what was going on.”

I even know people who were school bus drivers who used to pray a binding prayer that no demon would be allowed on the bus no matter what these kids have given permission to. The school bus had fewer problems.

I know school teachers doing the same thing. I know a lot of doctors doing this. I know nurses who told me about doing this. I know business people doing it because they’re aware of praying binding prayers, praying limiting prayers against the adversary, recognizing the occult and keeping it out, that they have actually seen an improvement in the environments that they’ve been working in.

[29:13] Stephanie: This is great. We’re going to talk about that sort of stuff even more when we get into our authority series. Can you give some next steps for people who want to know more about this topic, because we just stirred up a whole bunch of stuff and barely brushed the surface.

[29:31] Marcus: Well, there’s an old classic book on this that Neil Anderson wrote with a co-author, and honestly, it’s been just long enough, but it’s called The Seduction of our Children. It came out, I think, in the nineties or around 2000.

It’s a little bit dated, but it does a really nice job of laying out what was going on with the occult invasion of America 20 years ago. It still does a nice job of introducing all of these things. So if you’re looking for a book that’s got a lot of this in there, that’s the one I would go to.

[30:03] Stephanie: Cool. Well, and even just Deeper Walk. If people want more about spiritual warfare or the occult, we’ve got a lot of different resources, including a free spiritual warfare conference that you can find at our website. I think it’s under the “free” tab.

[30:20] Marcus: That’s true. We have a lot of free things, and if you get our app, you get access to all of our free stuff, so that’s also a simple way. If you get the app, you get the podcast, and all our free stuff comes with it.

[30:31] Stephanie: So I don’t think we’ve ever talked about the app on the podcast before. Hey, guys, we have an app. Isn’t that cool? You can even stream some stuff on Roku. Yes. Oh, I had another thought, and I was just distracted by Roku. Hmm.

[30:44] Marcus: That’s all right. We were talking in terms of next steps for people if they want to know more specifically on a Christian view of the occult. That’s a book that’s easily available.

One of the books that first really opened my eyes to this was called The Beautiful Side of Evil by Johanna Michaelsen. It’s, again, an older book. It’s been around at least 20, 30 years, which may mean I need to get more up to date on my reading.

The occult hasn’t changed in millennia. All that’s changing is the packaging. And so if you understand the basics of it, it’s easier to recognize it when it comes up and that’s what we want. We want Christians to recognize this.

There’s a whole huge element of this I haven’t gotten into, and that is when there are heresies that have been around in the church since gnosticism, that have blended occult elements with them. Those things are still around in the church today, and I can’t identify every single one of them and lay out the whole list of them.

It’s better, in my take, just to be aware that syncretism happens, that it can affect our theology, can affect our practice, and that it’s good to understand how the occult works so you can recognize it. That’s been one of our goals here, as well as listening prayer.

I encourage people to go through The Steps to Freedom. Neil Anderson, in step one of The Steps to Freedom, has a list of about 50 different ways in which you can engage with the occult, and prayers for renouncing that.

And so I would just start there and say, get a copy of The Steps to Freedom. You can get it from our online store or get it from Freedom in Christ. It’s a real simple tool that can help jumpstart the whole process.

[32:33] Stephanie: And then, I’m sorry, I’m still on the interpersonal feelings right now. For people who are going to be having conversations with people that they don’t agree with, whether it’s, I like Harry Potter or I don’t like Harry Potter, you know, whatever. People are having a lot of heated conversations right now. Can you give some tips for remaining relational and acting like themselves?

[32:57] Marcus: Yes. One of the dangers when you give people information is that you can weaponize information. So any information can be weaponized, whether, like, you’re pro vaccine or anti vaccine. You can take your information and weaponize it. Whether you’re pro Harry Potter, anti Harry Potter, you can take that information and weaponize it. You can weaponize the Bible.

Plenty of people have been beat up with the Bible. So what we’re trying to encourage people is that there’s always a little bit of danger in getting information, because, as Paul said, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” Say that correctly.

How we use knowledge as Christians is very important.  We don’t want to just beat people up. So even when I’m talking about yoga, how I’m talking about it now is probably different than the way I would talk to somebody directly who’s telling me about it personally.

Because my goal in this setting is just information. I want to get the information out there about why people might want to think twice about this. When I’m talking to somebody directly, I will take their emotions much more into account and will try to be as relational as possible as I bring up things.

My ultimate goal isn’t to win and to prove something. My ultimate goal is simply to make them aware that there’s something that could be causing more harm than they think.

[34:19] Stephanie: Yes, that is very good. Well, we have had a longer special than typical. So I think I will just ask you for some closing thoughts and then we will continue talking about stuff like this both in the next series, and also we will always be coming back to spiritual warfare as a whole.

If you have questions, feel free to reach out through the On the Trail mailbox that you can find on Deeper Walk’s Instagram, in the links there, or in my Monday emails. If you want to reach out with further questions, feel free.

[34:56] Marcus: To the extent that the occult has been normalized in our country, what’s going to happen is you’re just going to run into it. When I was growing up, it was quite possible for people to not run into any of this stuff. That is harder and harder to do because it has been increasingly normalized in our country.

If you’re completely in a homeschool setting and you’re in a Christian subculture that’s somewhat inoculated, then maybe so. But for a lot of us out there, you’re going to run into the occult.

And so we just want to give you some knowledge about it and then some tools and hopefully some suggestions along the way. So that’s why we’ll circle back to this.

[35:43] Stephanie: Very good. All right. Well, those are your final thoughts?

[35:46] Marcus: Yes.

[35:47] Stephanie: All right. Well, hey, thank you.

Thank you, everybody, for joining us on the trail today. Deeper Walk exists to make heart focused discipleship the norm for Christians everywhere. If you’d like to support this cause, you can become a Deeper Walk Trailblazer with your monthly donation of $25 or more.

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