Let’s have a look at some of the things that are in here. When the people of God went into the nations, they found them involved in idolatry and Spiritism. Let’s have a look at what it says (Deuteronomy 18:10 - 14): “There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, nor one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the LORD, and because of these abominations, the LORD your God drives them out from before you. You shall be blameless before the LORD your God. For these nations, which you will dispossess, listened to soothsayers and diviners; but as for you, the LORD your God has not appointed such for you.”
This list here is not comprehensive; it’s just a list of some of the things they were doing. Every culture has their own variations of this, and every one of them has a spirit power behind it. As we look at these, we see a number of things. The first one they talk about was offering their children to idols. There was a particular god called Molech. He was a big brass god with arms reaching out. They would ignite fire on it, and heat it up until it was very hot. Then there would be drums playing and people shouting, and they would throw their children into Molech, where they’d be burned up. You’d understand this is a horrendous thing in God’s eyes. It indicates the nature of the demonic spirit that operates behind it. The desire is to steal the children. The activity today most like that is abortion - the same spirit operates behind it.
Notice there’ll not be anyone who practises witchcraft, soothsayer, interprets omens, or a sorcerer. So people were involved in a number or range of activities. For example, many of them were into astrology – looking at star signs. Let me give you just a brief explanation of that. There’s a book that explains the background to this: The Witness of the Stars by E. W. Bullinger. Let me just explain the whole issue of astrology.
The Bible says: the heavens declare his glory. So in Psalm 19 it talks about the heavens, and it talks about the word of God. Before the word of God was written, God revealed or spoke to... maybe it was Enoch, and He showed him a pattern for recording God’s history by looking at the stars. So they divided the stars into 12 different constellations or groups. And they ascribed to various star groups, a particular picture so it’s easier to remember. The stars were all given names, and each section of this described a part of God’s redemptive plan.
Starting with the woman; and the serpent; and then the fall of man, going right through to the coming of Jesus Christ overcoming the serpent, and establishing a rule. So each of the constellations, and even the names of the stars in it, were given as a message of encouragement; and a way of understanding the bigger picture - from creation to the return of Christ. The question is, where do you start? You notice the Sphinx has a picture of the woman’s head, and lion’s body. The story starts with the woman, starts with Virgo, and goes right through to Leo. It describes in the stars, God’s story of history, and the coming of the Son of man to redeem His death on the cross - everything is in that story.
So the stars have no power over people. It’s just God gave a way for people to pass on to their generations, the hope of the coming redeemer. Of course, over time, it became corrupted; and people began to believe that stars influenced the course of our lives - it’s a corruption of the truth. The truth is: God laid out some patterns, so people could know His plan for redemption. The message of the stars is the most amazing message! Many of the names of the stars have been forgotten. But those that have remained, all in them have a message - the heavens declare.
So, the whole area of astrology opens the door for people into the occult realm. It becomes addictive, because people are looking to some spiritual source in order to direct their lives. They are attaching to the wrong thing. God directs our lives. It’s God who has a plan for our lives, not the stars. I encourage you to read up on that and become equipped, because it will quite stun you how the message of the gospel is in the stars. At Psalm 19, it starts off ‘the heavens’, now we have the Bible, ‘the Word’. So the Word now gives us the plan of salvation.
You notice here that it talks about the whole realm of all of these areas. Notice divination or fortune telling, and magic - various kinds of magic. Overall, you can summarise the occult activity into two groups. The first one is divination.
Let’s have a look in Acts 16:16-18. We read here an example of a woman involved in divination. “Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.” And this she did for many days. But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” - and he came out that very hour.”