It seems to me that we live in the midst of a most paradoxical and unusual generation.

Recent polls have given us some statistics that say that 85% of all Americans believe in God, whatever that means to them. Over 50% are regular churchgoers, again, whatever regular means to them.

And roughly 40% claim a born-again experience.

Now that would seem to indicate that we're in the midst of a genuine revival.

And yet, over alongside those kinds of facts, you need to somehow take account of a growing and pervasive secularism, A divorce rate that is very quickly approaching 50%. Sociologists and anthropologists such as Margaret Mead predicting the abolition of the family as we know it within a generation.

Government seems endlessly filled with corruption. Immorality flourishes. One wonders what kind of a revival this is. That it would be having so little effect, so little impact on our common life together.

There's one element of this that we seldom talk about. I wonder if you've taken it seriously up to this point. Our scripture this morning brings it to our attention. And that is the astonishing resurgence of interest in and involvement with the occult.

I put it in this context, it's just one of many features of a society which seems somehow to be able to ignore this tremendously high rate of personal commitment to Christ. The occult. Beliefs and practices so long suppressed that our parents and certainly our grandparents would have thought them groundless and silly. now finding adherence among the young especially by the tens of thousands.

Parlor games such as table tapping and Ouija, I Ching, Tarot, the reading of horoscopes, the visiting of mediums, dabbling with seances, magic and witchcraft, and even outright Satanism. I wonder how many of you are aware of the fact that during at least the first half of this present decade, The fastest growing church, the fastest growing religion in New England was Satanism. Outright worship of the devil.

Centering in Cambridge in what was called the Process Church of the Last Judgment. It was their teaching and their belief structure which most dramatically impacted Charles Manson. Which led to the Tate Bianca killings and had a whole lot of notoriety a while back. Process Church of the Last Judgment, one of their little pamphlets begins this way. Jesus said, love your enemies.

The enemy of God is Satan. Therefore, commitment to Jesus means love of Satan.

Interesting.

Well, you have a spectrum then of interest, of belief, of teaching, of practice from the very casual. people who don't really take it seriously at all but nonetheless open up their morning paper and read their horoscope all the way from that into some of the most vile and abominable kinds of teaching leading to some very dangerous kinds of actions in the history of the world.

How do you account for that? What shall we make of that resurgence of the occult?

Oz Guinness, former associate of Francis Schaeffer, wrote a book called The Dust of Death. I'd commend it to you. It's available in our bookstore. It's an incisive analysis of what is happening culturally and intellectually in the middle of the 20th century. And at one point he makes the comment that just as jungle animals are driven back into the wilderness by the blazing fire of a camp, So also, these occult teachings and practices were driven out by the blazing truth of Christianity.

But as that truth has been allowed to die down and grow dim, just as those animals come creeping back, we find ourselves once again encircled by these ancient practices and beliefs. I wonder if it could be that we've simply failed to take the darkness seriously.

that somehow we've turned Christianity into a private, internal blessing

and have completely neglected the life and death warfare with the power of evil that Jesus Himself said it was. He said, if I, by the power of God, cast out Satan, then will you know the kingdom has come among you.

And we see from that reading in Mark's Gospel, first chapter all the way through, that Jesus is in a blood and guts struggle with the power of the evil one.

So I want to make three rather strong statements this morning and would ask you to do some searching and some praying and some considering of them very seriously. The first is that the occult is not nonsense.

Secondly, that it's not neutral. And thirdly, that it's not necessary.

First, that it's not nonsense. C.S. Lewis once said that the devil's favorite strategy is to make people think he doesn't exist. It occurs to me that the church itself and many of its leading theologians have been great allies to him in recent generations.

some of our liberal theologians have said that all the biblical references to supernatural evil are simply metaphorical that demon possession for instance is just a primitive way of speaking about schizophrenia that charms, curses, incantations work only on the psychological level through the power of fear

that Satan himself is merely the personification of human wrongdoing

I think we've got to be very chary about putting our own opinion above that of Christ. He said the student is not above his teacher. The disciple is not above his Lord. We find throughout the Gospel accounts Jesus speaking to demons and they speak back and they cower before Him.

You end up totally rewriting the Gospel if you begin to treat as metaphor what he took as reality. I want to just make a parenthetical remark at this point. A lot of people, if they begin to suddenly take seriously the possibility that demons or evil spirits could really exist, become very fearful about it, become very queasy about it. That is not an appropriate Christian response. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that taking them seriously could be, for many of us, an element of real hope.

That if you don't take seriously the possibility that there are, in fact, alien personalities who would infect our human relationships. Then, when you see in yourself a character trait, a syndrome, a personality defect, you're stuck with it. That's you.

you just got to accept it and move on but just suppose that that could be something quite distinct from you something alien to you which Jesus himself would treat by separating it from you liberating you from that and casting that out that's a tremendous note of encouragement I'm not stuck with it sometimes we say, I don't know what got into me.

Jesus knows what got into me. And He knows what to do about it.

I want to also amend that by suggesting to you that I suspect very few of us have ever really run into a case of solid biblical demon possession. Because most of the people so afflicted in our generation are locked up in mental institutions and being very, very heavily sedated most of the time. So that one of the great errors we could make is you begin finally to take this seriously and you begin seeing demons under every bush. That is not an appropriate Christian response.

But what I want to suggest, just very low key, is that it is not nonsense.

I want to recount to you the story of Bishop Pike. Some of you are familiar with that. Bishop Pike was one of our very liberal theologians in the Episcopal Church. I remember when I was in seminary hearing a sermon that he preached in which he went through the Nicene Creed and denied every clause of it. No virgin birth, no miracles, no resurrection, no life after death. Ended up by saying Jesus is not distinctly different from the rest of us.

He simply used what he had to better advantage. Bishop Pike at one point in a public debate said the Bible to me is nothing more than a handful of stones

shortly after that his son died

and a bizarre series of incidents began to afflict the Pike household clocks stopped for no apparent reason at precisely the moment of Jim Jr.'s death books and postcards flew around the room landing to form with each other the exact angle of the hands of the clock. Strange and in some cases frightening experiences began to afflict the members of the household. Hair being singed off in the middle of the night. Waking up feeling things prick into their fingers. Nobody there.

Pike finally came to the point of believing that somehow, though he couldn't account for it, Jim Jr. was trying to contact him from the other side. He finally participated in a series of nationally televised seances with Arthur Ford, a professional medium. Through his lips, a voice other than his own spoke of things that only Jim Jr. could have known about. And the Episcopal skeptic was transformed into a spiritualist believer.

I suspect that many people, though their experiences may be nowhere near as dramatic as that, have something like that happen to them. They begin by believing it's all nonsense. It's silly. It's a casual diversion. It's a way of passing the time. It's a parlor game.

And then, every now and then, something happens so real, so dramatic that they can't explain it away. And having previously been a total skeptic, they become a believer. They're literally converted.

Only they make exactly the same error that Bishop Pike did. If it's real, it must be good. If someone can give me guidance from the other side, then surely that must be from God, or at least godly. If there's a supernatural power there, then ipso facto, it has to be a power of good. If somehow I can tap hold of power to heal, then it must be good.

But how different the view of Christ and the Scripture. Jesus said, false messiahs and false prophets will come deceiving many, doing many mighty works, even in my name. Take no heed of them.

I have no doubt that the overwhelming majority of what purports to be occult is nothing more than fraud and superstition. But, every now and then, there does seem to be something more. Something that reverses the previous opinions of reasonable, sophisticated, scientific men and women.

In the last decade and a half since the repeal of the Witch Act in England, ancient, some would say superstitious, Witch Act, there have now, by the most conservative estimates, emerged something between 30,000 and 50,000 people actively engaged in witchcraft in that little country alone.

In the USA, between 5,000 and 10,000 astrologers crank out horoscopes for over 10 million Americans every day.

Law enforcement agencies, high-ranking officials of government, and even presidents of the United States, including Kennedy and Johnson,

have contacted and consulted psychics such as Peter Herkos and Gene Dixon for advice and counsel.

Thousands, probably millions, of Christians have mingled with their faith varying degrees of interest in and reliance on the writings of Edgar Cayce, transcendental meditation, Eastern mysticism in various forms, and theories of reincarnation. Even to the point of where those alternative authorities would disagree with the Scripture, they'll go with the alternatives.

Just as Bishop Pike did.

It's not nonsense. It's happening. It's infecting the church. We're encircled by the eyes of the occult.

But it is not for the Christian neutral. We heard a few minutes ago from Deuteronomy 18.

There shall not be found among you anyone who practices divination, or a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer.

Those are kind of unfamiliar words. Let me put that into modern English. There shall not be found among you anyone who practices fortune-telling, or astrology, or magic, white or black, or hypnotism, or anyone who allows an alien spirit or personality to guide or speak through him or to him, or anyone who seeks spiritual guidance or power anywhere but from the Holy Spirit, or anyone who consults the dead.

Why?

Because these things are silly and superstitious? No!

Because they're alien. They're an abomination to the Lord and they're dangerous in the extreme.

I think you'd be amazed if you could sit in my office and discover for yourself the number of people who will come to the point of commitment to Christ and then say, something is preventing me. I can't believe. I can't make that step. of commitment.

And we'll talk for a while what that might be. And somewhere along the way, you would be absolutely astonished to find the number of people who have dabbled at one level or another, usually very innocently in their minds, and usually quite a while ago with some of these things.

But there's a bondage there. There's a spiritual paralysis because behind all of it, there is an alien personality. There is an alien force to that of Christ. There needs to be a breaking of that dominion, a repenting of it, a cleansing of it, and then we move on into a beautiful commitment to Christ.

The point is that supernatural power,

to the extent that it exists, again, I say, The overwhelming majority is simple fraud and superstition. But to the extent that it is not nonsense, what sort of sense is it? To the extent that there's a reality there, what sort of reality is it? And the biblical point of view is that supernatural power is not to be judged merely by how it's used.

It might be used with every good intention.

But it's also to be judged in terms of where it comes from.

And God says, if it does not come from me, then it's an abomination and a snare.

Entertain for just a moment. The possibility that there could be a devil and a horde of his minions. Do you think for a moment that they're going to present themselves to you in the Halloween guise that we associate with them? Who would ever have any truck with them if they did? But Scripture presents Satan as an angel of light, the most beautiful, the most beguiling, the most attractive personality you'd ever want to meet. And let me tell you, he'd be delighted to give you some guidance down at your friendly neighborhood seance if in the process he could begin to wean you away from a pure relationship with the one true God.

he'd be tickled pink to heal your body if in the process he could begin to get you to rely on the power by which he did it

the passage in Deuteronomy says that for these practices

the Lord is driving out the people of Canaan before you

we read in our Christmas scriptures about the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light and those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness on them has light shined you go back and check Isaiah 8 and 9 where that occurs it's quite explicitly talking about the darkness of occult practice and on them has the blazing light of Jesus Christ shined

and that brings us to the third point that it is not necessary

that anything that the occult promises to us Jesus himself delivers

only infinitely better it's a counterfeit wherever God is active Satan will try to raise up a counterfeit talk about the life in the spirit seminar talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Satan will duplicate that on a counterfeit level.

But it's not necessary. Why settle for a counterfeit when you can have the reality?

The occult promises guidance. And God says, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him pray to the Lord who gives generously and graciously to all. The occult promises healing. God says the prayer of faith will save the sick man. The Lord will raise him up. The occult promises some kind of assurance about our beloved departed. But God speaks of the communion of saints. And we who know him have the calm certainty that those who belong to Jesus will be with him when they die.

The occult promises hope for the future. We of all men can be hopeful and confident of the future. For we've got the last chapter. Read it. We win.

The occult is not necessary. It's not necessary as a diversion. It's not necessary as a source of guidance. It's not necessary as a healing power. It's a counterfeit.

And I would bid you this morning,

even if you're not yet persuaded, that out of obedience to the Lord Jesus, that if you have had anything whatsoever, no matter how casually, to do with the things of the occult, because He says it's sin, you would confess it as sin, renounce it, ask Him to forgive and cleanse you, and to fill you afresh with His Spirit.

And just watch the difference that God begins to make in your life. Let us pray together.

Heavenly Father, no doubt there are those within our fellowship here at Truro who have dabbled in things that You say are forbidden to us. We would ask Your forgiveness for that. We would bring them before You out of obedience to Christ. We would not presume to set our opinions above His.

What You have forbidden, we would renounce. We'd ask You to cleanse us and heal us and fill us with Your Holy Spirit for His name's sake. Amen.