Witchcraft

Ray Exum
Crystal Lake Church of Christ
Crystal Lake, Illinois, USA
Dec. 12, 2000

Let us look at a request that one of our members has made. His request is based on a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune earlier this year, and I would like to read the letter that was published in the Tribune. The title of the letter is "Smug Christians".

There were two letters, February 26, over the Scotland County, North Carolina firing of a teacher for allegedly being a wiccan. Both of these letters made illusions to "wholesome" religion, and "good versus evil" in their support of the school board which fired a teacher for choice of religion. It seems that a person's choice to be a wiccan is exactly the same as a person's choice to be a Christian, and both choices are protected in this country. The school board of Scotland County, North Carolina, and the writers in these letters seem to be unaware of their own presumption in this case, that Christianity is superior to every other ideology and deserves special treatment. This is the ultimate arrogance and exactly why we need our freedom of religion, and why we should insist that it be applied uniformly to everyone in our diverse culture.

So here was a woman who was teaching school in North Carolina, and she was fired from her job for being a wiccan, a woman practicing witchcraft. I think we all know that we have all kinds of people who are teaching in our public school systems, and really the question of whether or not she should have been fired is a political question. I don't think preachers ought to get involved in political questions like that, so I am not going to touch that particular issue. But the request was, "What do you know about wicca?" This evening, therefore, let us consider together this subject of witchcraft and witches and wizards.

How widespread is witchcraft in the United States today? It is rather difficult to come up with precise figures because so much of that movement is more or less secret, and yet, let me refer to some articles that give us an idea concerning how widespread witchcraft is. The Chicago Tribune in May of 1998 had an article on neopaganism, which is another term for witchcraft and sorcery and the black arts. The Chicago Tribune said that neopaganism is the fastest growing religion in North America today, and that the Internet is the prime means of proselytizing. This article went on to say that witchcraft or neopaganism is doubling today in size approximately every eighteen months. There's been another article in The Los Angeles Times and they estimated that there are today about 70,000 witches in the United States, and that the entire movement in witchcraft numbers approximately 3,000,000.

It is interesting that the United States Army is dealing today with the subject of witchcraft. I want to read from an article that I saved from U.S. News and World Report, published June 14, 1999. This is what the article said: "In August, 1997, Fort Hood, near Austin, Texas, became the first military outpost to sanction the practice of the wicca religion. Since then at least five other installations have followed suit. Among them Fort Polk, Louisiana; Fort Wainwright, Arkansas; and Kadina Base in Okinawa. Fort Hood's wicca group, called Open Circle, is sponsored by the San Antonio based Sacred Well Congregation of Texas. Although the mention of wicca, the largest of the neopagan groups, conjures up images of black-clad people chanting magical incantations, members consider themselves practitioners of a nature based, positive religion that seeks to capture the spirit of the ancient beliefs. The Fort Hood witches, whose numbers range from 40 to 200, conduct their monthly rituals at a Boy Scout camp on base." It is obvious, therefore, that the practice of witchcraft in our country is growing.

There is something else that was very ominous recently. On October 4^th of this year the Dallas city council began its regular meeting with a prayer as it always does, and yet they allowed a wizard to lead that prayer, that is a male witch was allowed to lead that prayer. It caused a lot of controversy; nevertheless, this was the final decision of the city council in Dallas, Texas. Somebody might say, "Well, that's Texas, and these other examples are all in other parts of the country. What does this have to do with us?" The largest organization of witches in the United States today has its headquarters in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. Mount Horeb is just a few miles west of Madison, Wisconsin, so it does involve our part of the country. Crystal Lake now has its own witch and wizard as reported in the Northwest Herald. I'll have to agree with the comments of the Chicago Tribune, and that is that neopaganism, particularly in the form of witchcraft, is probably the fastest growing religion in the United States today.

This evening, let us first look at the basic beliefs of witchcraft, and then what the Bible says on this subject, and finally, how people get caught up in this movement. In the first place what are the basic beliefs of witchcraft today? There are many different forms of witchcraft. You can go on the Internet and there are dozens and dozens and dozens of sights that are supporting witchcraft. What I am going to say may not apply to all people who call themselves witches and wizards; however, most of these principles will apply to most of the people in the witchcraft movement. Somebody might say, "Well, I know somebody that claims to be a witch and she doesn't believe in what you said." That may be the case, but these are, I believe, some general beliefs that most of them will hold in common. That is, when they form a coven of 13 witches, then these four beliefs, basically, I think, will be found in most of those covens.

Number one, there is a belief in the goddess of the universe, rather than in God the Father which we believe in as Christians. Wicca, or witchcraft, originated in the ancient world as a reaction to God the Father. There was a belief in the mother goddess of the Earth. We see this throughout the Old Testament. How many times do we read about the Asherath? It's spelled various ways as you go through the Old Testament, but when you see any word like the Asherath or the Asherah, that is a reference to the mother goddess, the consort of Baal. Therefore, witchcraft began as a worship of a mother goddess and as a rejection of the point of view which the Bible presents, and that is a masculine god. Witchcraft, therefore, continues today in the form of the worship of the mother goddess. The Greeks and the Romans, for example, believed in Aphrodite. Many times today we hear people refer to Mother Nature. Well, who is Mother Nature? There is not such a being as Mother Nature. It is God the Father that created the natural world. This is another result of the influence of the worship of the mother goddess of the universe. Therefore we see that human nature has not changed very much over 3,000 years. We go back in the Old Testament. It was a problem then. It remains a problem today.

In some forms of witchcraft there is a male god of the universe in the form of Baal in the Old Testament. Today there is what they sometimes refer to as the horned god who is the companion of the mother goddess. He is the god of hunting and death and afterlife, but really it is a belief that rejects the idea of God the Father. Recently I heard a witch being interviewed on the radio, and about every third or fourth sentence she would say, "blessed be." I wondered, where is the origin of that expression? It must be a standard way of greeting one another within the wicca movement. I found out, in preparing for this lesson, that it is a satirical takeoff upon the name of God, Yahweh, that is, a god who exists, a god who is, a god of being. So they don't say, "blessed be God." They just say, "blessed be," and this again is to ridicule the Yhwh, the background to the word that is translated God or Yahweh, or Jehovah in our modern translations. Therefore, number one, it is a worship of a Mother Goddess of the Universe.

Number two, generally speaking, the witchcraft movement does not believe in Satan. They do not believe in the existence of a devil. This may be a surprise to many people. There are other branches of neopaganism in which they worship Satan, but at least in witchcraft and wicca they do not accept the existence of Satan. In fact, they do not accept the concept of sin. Nothing is finally right or wrong according to witches. Therefore, anything is allowed as long as it does not harm other people. In fact, that is one of their slogans, "let there be no harm." Allow me please to read from the writings of one of the leading witches in the United States today. She has said this, "You are responsible for your own actions and their effect on others, not an external religion where you can throw your responsibility off on someone holier or higher than you. Witches embrace many practices the Bible calls sin and look at life as a learning experience that cannot possibly happen in one lifetime." So they reject the concept of Satan and also the concept of sin.

Number three, generally speaking, they do believe in reincarnation. On the Internet you will find many stories of witches today who say that they are this way because they were witches in a previous life. They come back now as a witch and have some memory of that supposedly.

And finally, their worship consists of casting spells based upon the power of the mother goddess. Currently in witchcraft they say they only cast positive spells. For example, a spell to help a lady find a husband. Or maybe a person who wants to be successful in business will go to a witch and the incantation or the spell will be that the person will be successful. Or maybe someone wants to purge his or her life of negative energy, and this might all seem silly to us, and I guess it is silly, but nevertheless, their worship does consist of casting these various spells.

What does the Bible have to say on this subject? I'd like to ask you to look with me at four different passages. Please look first of all in the Old Testament at the book of Deuteronomy. Let's turn to Deuteronomy 18, one of a number of scriptures in the Old Testament concerning the evils of witchcraft and sorcery. Again we see not much has changed over the last 3,000 years. In Deuteronomy 18 please notice verses 10-13. "There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord; and because of these detestable things, the Lord your God will drive them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God."

We find, therefore, that at the very beginning of the law of Moses, they were plagued with witchcraft. We find in this passage and in a number of other passages that the witches either were to be killed or they were to be allowed to leave the country. One way or another, God wanted them out from among the children of Israel. We know that witches, though, continued living among the Israelites. You remember when King Saul went to consult the woman that we generally refer to as the Witch of Endor -- you can read about this in I Samuel 28 -- and there is a passage in I Chronicles 10:13 which tells us why Saul died. The reason was that he had consulted a witch. It was absolutely, therefore, forbidden for a child of God to consult a witch.

You may remember during the reign of the king Manasseh that he encouraged witchcraft in the nation of Israel. He himself consulted witches on a number of occasions. When Manasseh's grandson Josiah became king, the first thing he did was to remove the witches from the land. In fact from the Old Testament the following books have passages that condemn witchcraft: Exodus, Leviticus, Isaiah, Micah and Malachi.

In the New Testament we see that witchcraft continued to be a sin. You remember in Acts 8 when Simon the sorceror was trying to buy the magic powers of the apostles, he was severely condemned for thinking that he could buy the power of God to be used in a magical way. On Paul's first missionary journey, he stopped and he talked to a man named Sergius Paulus, and there was a magician there that held some kind of spell over Sergius Paulus. You may remember from Acts 13:4-12, that Paul struck this magician, Elymas, blind because of his involvement in sorcery. In Acts 19 when Paul preached at Ephesus, they burned their books of magic, and those books included topics such as sorcery, which certainly would have been a term that would include witchcraft.

Could you turn with me please in the New Testament to Galatians 5. The umbrella term sorcery is mentioned here, and tells us how serious this sin is. Notice the works of the flesh beginning in verse 19. Notice the company that sorcery keeps and what the Bible says about those who practice it. "Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you just as I have forewarned you that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." What a list there, sort of a who's who of the sins of the world, and notice in that list Paul included sorcery.

Could you turn with me please over a few pages to Ephesians. Ephesians 6 concerns the Christian armor, and what are we to fight as we put on the Christian armor? Notice please Ephesians 6:10-13: "Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm." Notice please verse 12, "the world forces of this darkness, the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places." That includes a lot there, certainly it includes the subject of sorcery or witchcraft.

Would you look with me at one more passage, in Revelation 21, the next to the last chapter in the Bible. There is a list there of people who will not be in heaven. Notice please Revelation 21:8, "But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." Notice there that the word sorcery or the sorcerers there would include all of the various black arts, but certainly it would include witchcraft at the top of the list.

Somebody might say, "Well, how do people get caught up in the religion of wicca or witchcraft?" It is just incredible when you think about our society today, that there are people who are going back to paganism. It is incredible to think that this may indeed be the fastest growing religion in America. We have all of these college educated people everywhere, and yet, we still have people that believe in the Bermuda Triangle. We still have people that believe in UFOs for which there is no evidence. In this age of science and technology and the Internet and the transmission of information around the world in less than a second, we still have people believing in these things. Certainly most amazing is, that in our sophisticated age, witchcraft might be the fastest growing religion in our country.

We say, "Well, why?" The answer is, when a society abandons the Bible then what can we expect? If the Bible is not the word of God, then why shouldn't people get involved with using crystals to heal others? Why shouldn't they get involved in the worship of nature and the practice of witchcraft? People, therefore, get caught up in this because of a lack of knowledge of the Bible.

There's also another reason, and that is that many times they see hypocrisy in the form of organized religion. On the Internet you will find many stories of women who are witches today, but who started out, as they tell their story, in some kind of organized religion. They saw hypocrites there, and they abandoned that church and they began dabbling in the subject of witchcraft.

At the Fort Worth Lectureship two years ago, they entitled their lectureship Light Shineth in the Darkness," and they invited a speaker to come in, a member of the Church. She was the wife of one of the teachers of the Brown Trail School of Preaching. They invited her to prepare a lesson on witchcraft, so she gave her lesson to the women there one day in the women's class. That lesson has been published, and I have it in my office. I was reading it the other day, and she, in preparing for her presentation to the women at the lectureship, interviewed the leading witch in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, a lady who goes by the name Lady Phoenix. She began talking about what she learned in this interview. She learned that Lady Phoenix had been a member of the Lord's church earlier in her life. In fact, I want to read from the lecture that Sarah Fallis gave at the Fort Worth lectures in 1998.

"Lady Phoenix grew up in the church of Christ. Her father taught Bible classes, and she and her first husband were active in the church, helping with a struggling mission church, when he was stationed in Japan in 1964-1966. Why did she leave the church, and what did she find in wicca that was so attractive? She gave the same reasons for leaving the church that we have heard before. 1. Hypocrisy - People who could and did live any old way. As long as they were in services on Sunday they were okay. People whom she looked up to as a teenager, she found, had clay feet. 2. Lack of care and concern. She described a situation in which she needed emotional and spiritual help, and she got instead the admonition to 'be in services when the doors were open.' 3. Ministers and teachers who would not answer sincere questions she had as a teenager. When asked what she got from wicca that she did not get from Christianity, Lady Phoenix said, "I had come home. It was a good fit. It fit every part of my being." She noted its harmony with many things she had been taught and was already living; love of nature, reverence for the land, responsibility for her actions, and harming no one. She said, "I could be true and walk the path here without violating someone's conscience."

A very sad story there, to think that at one time she was a member of the Lord's church, and has given all of that up for the sake of being a witch. I think this would encourage us to answer questions. This has always been the policy in teaching the teenagers here, and the younger kids, and I hope in the adult class also. There is no such thing as a bad question. Whatever is asked, we can answer scripturally and honestly, and maybe prevent something such as the tragedy in this woman's life. She was rejected and she turned against the church because of hypocrisy and because they would not answer her questions as a teenager.

I would say finally there is certainly an influence of witchcraft today. When I was growing up there was Bewitched. I don't know how many remember those days, the comedy on TV from 1964-1972. Over the last 20 years there have been many movies about witches. There are certain board games that apparently lead some people into witchcraft. The Ouija board, for example, and Dungeons and Dragons. When we look in the scriptures, we never find the Bible joking about witches. We never find games being played about witchcraft. We don't find any cartoons about witches, and yet every day in the Chicago Tribune there is Broomhilda. I don't know how many read that cartoon strip, but it's about this sort of mischievous witch always pulling little funny things, little tricks on other people. We don't find that in the Bible. We don't find where they are treated in a humorous way. There are no jokes in the Bible about witchcraft. The Bible does not make fun of witchcraft as being a silly but innocent religion. Certainly we don't find where the first century Christians dressed their little children up as witches or wizards for a certain annual holiday. But rather, witchcraft is depicted in the Bible as a very, very, serious error, and it is deadly business that will cause a person to be lost eternally.

It would behoove us all, therefore, not to dabble in the new age movement, in witchcraft, in neopaganism, in reincarnation, astrology, or any other form of sorcery. The truth is that Christianity is an exclusive religion, and we do not apologize to the world for that. It was our Savior who said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me."

I appreciate so much the good member who asked this question and hope that this answered it in a scriptural and honest way. There may be those considering Jesus Christ this evening, and we would again say to you, there is no compromise with any other world religion. It is only through Christ that we find salvation. If you are ready to accept that, if you are ready to be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins into the body of Christ and to walk a holy life until he calls you home, please come to the front while we stand and sing the next song together.

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