Occultism: Not Superstitions, But Deceptions Part 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Like the serpent that beguiled Eve, satanic substitutes for God look good, very good.

Though popular, the occult's teachings are the doctrines of demons. As believers, it's vital for us to understand what the Bible calls sound doctrine. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line.

Pastor Lutzer, we're coming to the end of a series on seven snares of the enemy. Help us focus on the sound doctrines that are so crucial. Well Dave, you know, in this world of confusion, it's very easy to tell people, oh, just stick with the scriptures. And of course we should. But even sometimes those who may be biblically grounded can be led astray.

And that's why doctrine is so incredibly important. And you know, speaking of this series of messages, which was preached here from the pulpit of Moody Church, we're making that available to our audience. If you've listened to these messages and they've been a blessing and a help and given direction in your life, they can be yours for a gift of any amount. Here's what you do. Go to RTWOffer.com.

That's RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Ask for the series of messages, seven snares of the enemy, breaking free from the devil's grip. And now let us listen once again as we expound the scriptures pointing out the dangers that we face in today's culture. Now what I'd like to do in the next few moments is to tell you what the doctrines of demons are so that you can recognize them.

What are the underlying things that you will find? Now yesterday I had something to do in a shopping mall, and so I decided to go into the bookstore. And because I was preaching on this, I went over to the New Age spirituality shelf.

Shelves, plural. Dozens and dozens, shall I say without exaggeration, hundreds of books on the occult and all under the guise of New Age spirituality. So I pulled a few off the shelf and just began to read. Found exactly what I knew was there. You don't even have to buy one of those books without knowing in advance the doctrines of demons that are going to be in those books.

What are they? And here I'm going to take a single phrase from Satan in the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve, and that single phrase will become the basis for the doctrines. First, a wrong pantheistic view of God.

Remember what Satan said to Adam and Eve or to Eve at least? You shall be like God. How in the world can you be like God in the sense that you can be the creator of the sun, the moon, the stars?

Unthinkable. So pantheism comes along and says God is all and all is God, and therefore I am God too because everything is God. God is, in pantheistic literature, the great universal spirit into which you can plug in in many, many different ways. He's out there to be manipulated, to be used for your benefit. He's a God who is both good and evil so that you don't know exactly what he is. He is the force. Call him whatever it is that you wish, but somehow he's out there to be accessed by anyone at any time in different ways.

Catch this. I know that I could have stayed there for hours. I didn't. I was just there a few moments, but I could have stayed there for hours and read every book on the shelf and not one of them would have told me that God is so holy that he is unapproachable unless you come with a right sacrifice and through the right person. There is no holiness of God. There's no fear of God before their eyes, the Bible says.

Why? Because it's the pantheistic God. It's the universal spirit.

There's so much more that could be said. First of all, a wrong view of God underlies it all. Secondly, a wrong view of man. The devil says you shall be like God. Basically, people are good. Oh, I know that in witchcraft there are evil people who need to be eliminated, but in witchcraft when you have the power, you know, to cast spells, you have the responsibility to punish those who are evil and to reward those who are good and you have that power, you see, because you can put those spells on people, those curses. Now, I want you to know that nowhere there is there a concept really of sin. There is evil, but the evil exists outside of people. And furthermore, if there is any evil, the human race is divided on the good people from the bad people. There is no understanding that evil resides in every one of our hearts. And while the bad people may be put out, the good people, they live and they are rewarded and they are rewarded with good health, with beauty, with lots of sex, with all kinds of material blessings that come their way.

And that's the world, you see, in which they live. At the end of the day, pick up those books and read them. Don't buy them.

Don't actually invest your money in them. But at the end of the day, what you'll find on every page is self-worship. I just read from Isaiah a moment ago, you who say there is me and none beside me. Yeah. Narcissism. It all exists for me.

You have to do what is right for you with a human understanding of what that means. A wrong view of God, a wrong view of man. Nowhere will they tell you, you know, we are so sinful that unless God were to redeem us, we would be damned. Never found that in any book. Let me give also a wrong view of death.

Totally wrong. You know, remember that Satan said to Adam and Eve, I always jokingly, you've heard me say this before, I always think that actually he was speaking to Shirley MacLaine there in the garden because he said, you Shirley shall not die, he told Adam and Eve that. But you'll notice that now, what do you mean you don't die? Reincarnation. Reincarnation says nobody dies.

You just keep being recycled until eventually you go around and you're recycled enough times and if you've been good in this life, why then indeed you will have a better life to come. It is a heartless cruel, unbelievably cruel doctrine of karma. Imagine looking into the eyes of a little boy who has been burned by an angry, abusive father and you look into his eyes and you say, you know what you're getting now is what you deserve because you were bad in a previous life that you cannot remember because a veil of forgetfulness divides you from your past, but you're getting what you deserve. Heartless cruel at the end of the day. So there's a wrong view of death.

No God to fear. Why when you die, Betty Eadie says you'll see a Jesus whom you are worthy to embrace. A Jesus that will not judge you, a Jesus who will accept you and everybody in the end wins. Doctrine of demons. The Bible says that when you die, it is appointed unto men once to die and after death, the judgment. Let me say also, there's a wrong view of redemption. More specifically, there is no need for redemption. I've already mentioned that if there is any salvation it comes through self-discovery, self-affirmation and self-worship. You see, the doctrine of demons is directly opposite to the Bible. In the Bible, man fell and God redeems us. In New Age literature, it is the opposite way. God fell.

So how can that be? Let me take a moment to explain. Originally, matter and spirit were one.

They were unified. But then God broke apart into matter and spirit and now it is up to us to redeem God by bringing him together through transcendental meditation, which incidentally is an awesome doorway into the occult. And so what you do is, you see, you do it like Kazen Zakis, the author of The Last Temptation of Christ said, God does not save us, and this is a quote now, so listen carefully, God does not save us, but we save God by transmuting matter into spirit.

We are the saviors. And in occult literature, Eve is prized for having eaten the fruit of the tree because now she has knowledge and the serpent is worshipped and prized. All of that is the doctrine of demons. Now I must hurriedly get to the most important point of the message, and that is, how do you get free from the occult? Some of you have gone into the occult, sometimes unknowingly, and just because it's unknowing, that does not mean that you might not be affected. Neil Anderson in one of his books tells the story of a missionary that went into a pagan Buddhist temple, took off his shoes in reverence, and that night, spirits mocked him as he tried to sleep.

When I was in Japan, I refused to go into those temples where tourists go. It's enough for me to see it from a distance, because remember, if there is spirituality that is not based on the Bible or Christ, it is occultism. What do you do when you have those strongholds of the devil? Let me suggest very quickly, number one, you have to be absolutely convinced of the power and the victory of Jesus. Let me share that versus scripture I shared with a man who told me that he lived in the occult capital of the Midwest, witches, covens, animal mutilations, all kinds of things happening. Revelation chapter 3 verse 9, Jesus is speaking, I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan who claim to be Jews and they are not but liars. Now listen, I will make them, I like the new American standard here, it says I will cause them.

I will cause them to come and fold down at your feet and acknowledge that I've loved you. Oh, I love that verse. Here is Jesus who has ascended and he says I've opened a door for you that nobody can shut and if I ever shut a door, nobody can open it and I will cause those who are of the synagogue of Satan to acknowledge the truth. Are you convinced that when Jesus died and rose that his triumph over the devil was complete? There is nothing left to be done except that the sentence still has to be commuted but Satan is out on bail and he's enjoying his time supposedly, though I don't think it's an enjoyment at all and all of the work has already been done and the victory has been purchased and now Jesus invites us to stand there and say, participate with me in the victory. They overcame him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimonies and like we often sing, the blood has never lost its power. Secondly, we have to repent. You have to repent of that involvement. Jesus said if you are not with me, he said you are against me and what that repentance means is an acknowledgement.

I have been into the following. Now, in counseling people who are in the occult, most of them have no idea all the things that they've been involved in until you read the list. They say, oh yeah, yeah, I forgot I was, yeah, that's right. I remember, yeah, we did do some levitation or yes, we were into Ouija boards or yes, as a matter of fact, I did go to a fortune teller or I am into dream analysis, whatever and they begin to realize that they've been misled and so what you need to do is to confess that this is Satan's territory. These are the doorways into the occult and you need to say, oh God, I am guilty of. What I've noticed in counseling people is that if you pray with them over a long period of time and you're not in a hurry and you have periods of silence, God will often bring to mind things that they were into that they had forgotten about.

Those must be confessed and forsaken and acknowledged as being occultic. Next, identify the lie that brought you into the trap. What was the lie? Was it a desire for knowledge? Knowledge that is hidden from us and that only God knows and you wanted to get into this hidden knowledge? Was it power? Did you want to have some kind of power of a witch to zap somebody? What was it? Was it this great desire for health and health was more important to you than whether or not it was done God's way? Is that what got you in?

Confess it. Was it money? Whatever the mind can believe, the mind can achieve which incidentally is nonsense. You know, the little engine that went up the hill that said, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can? It had a much better chance making it to the top of the hill by its optimism than if it were a pessimist, no doubt about it.

But if when it got to the top of the hill, the tracks were washed out, it wouldn't matter how often it said, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. It's not true that whatever the mind can believe, the mind can achieve. What's the lie that brought you into it? Let me give you another point and that is you must forgive those who have wronged you. You know, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2 verses 11 and 12, he says, you must forgive the person and there must be no bitterness lest he says Satan deceive you and we are not ignorant of his devices.

You see, if we retain sins in our lives like bitterness and other kinds of avenues, it always gives Satan this right, strictly speaking it's not a right because he doesn't have the rights, but it always gives him this doorway to harass us and to keep bringing us down. Then of course there has to be submission, we're on point number five now, submission to God. It says in the book of James, dearly beloved, submit yourselves to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you, but also the body of Christ. You know, there are some people who say, well, you know, I'm only accountable to God. Most people who say they're only accountable to God and they are not submissive to the leadership of the body of Christ are really taking their place with Satan who fell because of pride and so what we must do is sometimes we need the body.

Jesus said regarding some demons, some do not come out except by prayer and fasting and you need the collective help of other people to bring you out from Satan's clutches. Finally, the armor of God. And as Pastor Worley pointed out to me one time, the armor of God is not just something that you put on every day and then you say, oh my goodness, I left a piece behind. I got dressed this morning and I left the shield of faith in the bedroom.

No, it's a whole lifestyle. You put on that armor and you live that way with a breastplate of righteousness so that Satan's attacks can never get through because the breastplate, the righteousness of Christ and your righteous life continues to ward off those attacks and there can't be any, what shall we say, any ground that is given to him because of something that is in us. Remember what Jesus said. He said the prince of this world comes and he says, but in me he has found nothing. So there's nothing he can do to me. And we live a lifestyle of faith and in the word and we put on the helmet of salvation.

All of that of course found in the sixth chapter of Ephesians. You know when bull, moose are in the wild, they fight to see who is going to be the leader of the herd. And once the battle is over, the conqueror is never challenged again.

It's just assumed he's won so it's over. That's what the devil likes to do. He likes to fall into those snares and we've talked about many of them in this series of messages and we're talking about the occult today, but you can put all the others right here. He wants us to fall in and then say to us, see there's no way that you can get out.

I have won it. I have you under my authority and you have to obey me. That is a lie. And Satan's got to be called on that as the liar and the author of lies. I like to tell the story of that painting where a man drew a chess game and the devil and a young man are playing chess. And the agreement is that whoever wins becomes the leader of the other person.

The loser becomes the servant. And the way the picture was painted is the devil just declared checkmate in three moves. And so the young man's face was painted pale. But Paul Morfey, who looked at that painting in a museum, stared at it. Great chess player, looked at it this way, this way, and this way, discovered something. That the painter had overlooked a move that the boy could make. It isn't checkmate. And I say to those of you today, harassed by Satan, there's a move that you can make.

There's a move that you can make. Having triumphed over principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it. And just as a serpent has been crushed into the dirt and you take your heel as you walk along and you've got really hard heels and the road is hard too and you grind him into the road that you're walking along, Satan has been ground into the dust. And Christ is triumphant.

Some of you have never received him as savior. And what you need to do is to realize he's the only way to God. Now, tell me one new age book that will tell you that, that apart from Jesus you're lost forever. That's what this book tells us. But the doctrine of demons has a myriad of ways of salvation.

This book, the Bible, has only one. And though this world with devils filled should threaten to unto us, we will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us. The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him. For lo, his rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure. One little word shall fill him. And that little word has six letters, C-H-R-I-S-T. We renounce him and we serve the king of kings and lord of lords.

Let us pray. And now, Father, we ask today that you shall take these thoughts. Oh, Lord, speak to those who are bound. Speak to young people tempted to get into occultism. Speak to those who walk past fortune tellers wondering what it would be like to have their fortune told.

Speak to those, Father, who are in environments, work environments where there are crystals and all kinds of ways to somehow get in contact with the spirit world. Speak to those, Father, who are in healthcare, who are tempted to go the direction of nonbiblical spirituality. And help us, Father, to discern the doctrines of demons from the lovely truths, the transforming truths of your word. And save those who need to be saved and deliver those who need to be delivered. We ask in Jesus' name.

Amen. Well my friend, this is Pastor Lutzer, and let me speak to your heart today. One of the things that I discover in the Church of Jesus Christ, and I'm even talking about evangelical churches, oftentimes the power of the gospel is denied. The impression is given that God does not deliver people from their addictions. Now of course we all acknowledge that there are struggles and there are continuous temptations, but the fact is that God has brought deliverance to us in Jesus Christ our Lord. And that's why I've written the book entitled Seven Snares of the Enemy, Breaking Free from the Devil's Grip. You can actually have this material either as a sermon series or as a book for a gift of any amount. And I can't help but think that there are many of you who are listening who know someone who desperately needs to listen to these messages or read this book and have this material. Because at the end of the day, God wants to deliver people from patterns that are destructive.

And we need to expand our own confidence in the gospel of Jesus Christ to deliver us from our sins, even repeated sins. So once again, let me encourage you to connect with us. Here's what you do. You go to RTWOffer.com. RTWOffer.com. By the way, this is one of the last opportunities you will have to receive this resource.

RTWOffer.com, or if you prefer, call us at 1-888-218-9337. Remember that Running to Win exists so that people might be encouraged, be given instruction, so that all of us might be able to make it to the finish line. Thanks in advance for standing with us, because together we're making a difference.

You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Jesus never intended for members of His body to live solitary lives. The local church is a place of help, service, teaching, and fellowship, and every Christian needs it. We're told to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together.

Still, many believers prefer to go it alone. Next time, we begin a series that aims to rekindle our love for the local assemblies we need so much. Don't miss A Passion for the Church, starting on our next program. Thanks for listening. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.