The Occult Weakens

Anyone who thinks the occult brings help is deceived. According to the Bible, the occult weakens those who practise it. God made that plain to the children of Israel.

The Lord warned the nation of Israel in in Deuteronomy 18:9-12: "When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or 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."

God made it quite clear to the people of Israel that the ruin and downfall of the Canaanites were the result of their involvement in the occult. "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."

The Canaanites had appeared to be a formidable people to the Israelites. In fact, an entire generation of Israelites ended up perishing in the wilderness instead of going up against the Canaanites because of fear. As a preparation for advancing into Canaan, Moses had sent out spies to obtain intelligence about the condition of the land and the people. Most of the spies returned with a frightening report. "And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, 'the land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight'" (Numbers 13:32-33). The report paralyzed the people of Israel with fear and they refused to go up against the Canaanites.

Now a generation after, the Israelites were about to embark on the conquest of Canaan and the general atmosphere in their midst was one of immense confidence and optimism. And already the Lord was instructing them about their conduct of life when they would occupy the land of Canaan. So victory was divinely assured.

However, it was important for the Israelites to know the basis on which they would over-run the Canaanites. It was not any superior military resources or strategies on their part. God was exposing to them the interestingly insidious destructive element which had already undermined the strength of the Canaanites. It had permeated the cultural sinews of the Canaanite society deceitfully weakening the people before the advancing Israelites. What had become the Canaanites' dominant traditions and culture, what the Canaanites had come to regard as instruments of mysterious power, were subtly a debilitating poison which had weakened them against their imminent conquerors. The occult was a dominant culture in Canaan but it had generated the Canaanites' eventual domination by a foreign nation.

And so, the Lord was solemnly admonishing the Israelites about the pervasive danger of such a culture and how important it was for them to keep extremely far from it, if they were to maintain their position of strength in the land they would conquer. "When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations.... 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."

It is today a tragic reality that in our modern enlightened era this over 3, 000 year-old warning about the occult is as relevant as it was then. Many are today turning to the occult deceived, like the Canaanites were, that it is just culture and it provides power, protection, and fortune. But the fact is the occult remains a subtle infectious custom that will weaken and destroy any individual or people who get involved in its practices.