Episode Transcript
Speaker 2 00:00:07 Welcome to sermon QA. My name is Craig Jarvis. I'm here with pastor Peter and pastor Michael, and we are discussing a topic today that we covered on September 19th, 2021 on dark magic. The first question this morning goes to pastor Michael, and here's the question you're ready for it. Yeah. What is the worst that can happen if a Christian dabbles in dark magic?
Speaker 0 00:00:29 So when I, when I preached this sermon, I had a handful of people come up to me afterwards, identifying that they were believers and they were, they had engaged some of them in the past year or two in different dark magic things. And all of them had said, I just didn't know I was unaware. So what I, what I want to set off on the front end and say is it's actually a real thing that, uh, believers who have never been taught, kind of the truth of this stuff, um, have had experiences and dabble in this. And so,
Speaker 2 00:00:55 And not only believers, but probably just about anybody on the plane.
Speaker 0 00:01:00 So some people will say, well, are they really a true Christian? If they're dabbling in dark magic? And I just don't think that's a fair category. Now I do have concerns. If you are a true Christian and you know what the word of God says, and you know, the weight of these issues, like if you sat in either of our sermons and you heard us preach, if you heard Peter's story at Bartlett, and then you still decided that you were going to go dabble, that's where I could be like, okay, I think we have some major problems or we didn't
Speaker 2 00:01:28 Communicate well enough, which could
Speaker 0 00:01:30 Be true, which also could very well be true. And so what is the worst thing that could happen? Well, the worst thing that could happen is not possession because if you're truly a Christian, you cannot be possessed. I want to read you a passage from first Kings 11 verses seven to eight. And this is the story of king Solomon. And the kind of debate in Jewish and Christian history is whether or not, when you get to heaven, king, Solomon's going to be there. So you got to remember king Solomon was given wisdom by God. There was favor on him. And, but here's how his life ended. Then Solomon built a high place for chem, the abomination of Moab and for Malec the abomination of the Ammonites on the mountain east of Jerusalem. And so he did for all his foreign wives. He didn't just do one for every foreign wife. He's building these altars who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods. Uh, our pastor grabbed just take a minute. Tell us Malec what happened with molec.
Speaker 2 00:02:29 Malik was one of the worst, a God that was already in the land. When the children of Israel got there and shocked these Israelites to the courts. The first one that God mentions as to how they sacrificed to, because of the way that you sacrificed a Malek was you burned his hands. His hands were out, or there was a hole in his stomach. You heated up the metal to a certain degree, and then you place your baby. They're alive, alive until the baby died. That was your sacrifice to Mala
Speaker 0 00:02:54 The worst. Imagine, imagine you come from Egypt and you've seen evil, but you never seen to this degree. And then you watch as moms and dads listen to the cries of their children being burned a lot. This is the kind of evil and debauchery that they're, that they're watching. And so here's what we have. We have this, we have this guy Solomon, and he has slowly over the latter, half of his life, um, practice sin, knowing willful sin after knowing willful sin. And we don't know how long it took him to get to the point where his brain justified spending money, time and energy building, not just one, but one of these altars for all of his wives. That's an insane thought. And so what is the worst that can happen? I'll give you two categories. Number one is that God will give you over to this sin.
Speaker 0 00:03:42 With these things, uh, comes judgment. And we, we don't know how far the Lord might let you go. And again, I'm questioning if you keep doing this and you know, it's wrong, do you actually have the spirit of God? But let's say you have, you have a baby Christian, didn't grow up in a good church that came to Christ. They believed the gospel, but they have had no further training. Let's say they go to a church where they actually just don't talk about this stuff. And, and, uh, there's really, nobody come alongside of them. And, and they grew up in spiritism. They grew up in wicked. They grew up in a witchcraft and you imagine their whole lives. They don't, they don't know it's wrong. Maybe they even have a sense from the spirit of Tron, but nobody's ever trained them. Nobody's ever taught them.
Speaker 0 00:04:20 And I could see a world where somebody could plausibly live in this longer than maybe the three of us who are pastors and, and we've, we've been taught well. So I think one of them is you, you are given over to your sin and you're going to bear the consequences. The nature of the demonic, which we talked about at Bartlett was is that it doesn't matter if you know that it's demonic or if you know that it's an invitation, it doesn't matter. What you're aware of. It is objectively, always an invitation to the demonic realm to influence you. So, one, I would say the worst that can happen. Number one is you're given over to this number two is, is we just call it oppression. And here's the definition I gave him. My sermon oppression is demonic influence over one's mind, emotions, body, or soul. And we don't absolutely know how this happens, but with the mind, we know that there's some ability for evil thoughts to be either put into or somehow brought into the mind of a believer. And so believers will process these things and, and they'll be like, I just had this really evil desire to kill this person. And they don't know where it came from. They'd never had it before and really, really dark thoughts come into their brain. Can I,
Speaker 2 00:05:30 Can I just punch in their second? So we need to be clear that the devil is a created being, not omniscient, not all knowing, correct? Not all powerful. Yep. So he can not access the recesses of our brain to know our thoughts, but he's very intelligent and he can lay out a playing field because he knows what clicks, what triggers those thoughts in our brains, what will get us to the place he wants us.
Speaker 0 00:05:52 Yep. So one of the debates, uh, and I don't have an opinion on it for what it's worth is so a hundred percent agree. Don't disagree with anything you said, uh, he cannot read your mind. He can not go into the recesses of your brain. He can't know what he doesn't know, but one of the debates is in the spirit realm. Is that of the mind, our thoughts, inherently spiritual, physical, or a combination of both. So that if you're thinking them, like, for example, if I pray in my brain, uh, is there awareness of that prayer in the spirit right. In the spirit. And so he flashes a spirit
Speaker 2 00:06:27 Image
Speaker 0 00:06:27 In front of us, correct. Is your, does your solid soul? Nobody knows. And my point in saying that is, this is that there is some dynamic by which ideas can be brought into our brains consciously, like we're aware of them. And we have the thought, I don't know how it works. I'm not going to pretend to know. But that's where, when we've talked about oppression of the mind, somehow there is some ability to influence the actual measurable vocabulary of our thought life. I don't get that, but now we have control over that. We do not have to give them that, but if, if we're not regularly praying, and if we're not even aware of demonic oppression, then we're probably not even gonna cast out or cast away and out cast away whatever demonic influences it's doing, that you have your emotions. This is like feelings of darkness, gloom, lethargy overwhelmed again.
Speaker 0 00:07:19 Um, this is where somehow demonic influence is able to oppress our spirit and our, you remember the spirit in the physical are always interacting with each other to the point where we emotionally in the physical realm have an overflow of dark gloomy thoughts at times that's another one, your body, it could be physical ailments, headaches, uh, et cetera. Um, one of the best ways to distinguish whether or not something is spiritual, physical is you pray in Jesus' name over it and you pray persistently. And so if the thing goes away, it was spiritual and demonic. If it persists, it is likely physical in nature. And so it's a simple just mechanism to figure that out. And then you, you have this category of, of your soul and, um, and this would be like discouragement or attack or slander. Um, just the, the weight of those kind of things that happen on your soul when oppression comes from the outside.
Speaker 0 00:08:13 People like, for example, in your world right now, you have to have a whole bunch of armed security, you know, at your children's ministry because of ISIS and Uganda, trying to kidnap children in your orphanage. I know that sounds like waiting. Someone's just pulling in right now. They're like, what's he talking about? But, um, that level of external, um, attack, um, can be, can be, uh, uh, oppressive to your soul. It can wear on you, fear, burden, anxiety, et cetera. And so what's the worst. I would say. Number one, God gives you over to these things, which is terrible. Number two is real spiritual oppression. Um, yeah, it's it's yeah,
Speaker 2 00:08:49 It occurs to me when, sorry, when the children of Israel came into the promised land, the warnings God had a lot to do with the idols that were in the land. Don't marry with the people because you will succumb to the demands of those idols. You will become idol worshipers. Yes. And I think for the children of Israel that going into the land, they probably were a little bit innocent in knowing what they were about to encounter because to them, it was Egyptian magic, turned staffs into snakes, you know, duplicate the miracles of God. I mean that there wasn't the depth of depravity that they were about to find out when they entered into the land. And I can imagine when they got in there with their children, with their wives, with their families, they probably thought to themselves, we got to live here. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:09:30 But over time, as they saw this atrocity, they began to adopt them. Then they began to accept them. They began to, their children, began to play with other children that were living in them. They became acceptable, adapted into their lifestyle. They became accepted. And over time they began to be practiced. And this is, this is the same channel that sin takes in all of our lives. It becomes something that is intriguing. And then it ends up being something that we fight for. And we think to ourselves, we'll never get to that point. You can imagine the children of Israel when they went into the promise and they thought that they were, they were probably, you know, uh, poured by what they saw, but then given a couple of generations later, they're fighting for it until you get to Solomon. And now he's, he's promoting it among the
Speaker 0 00:10:13 Wow. So, uh, Peter, do you find in Uganda that there are Christians dabbling in this dark magic witchcraft with maybe they don't even know what they're doing? Um, is that something that you find semi-regular?
Speaker 3 00:10:26 I think it's very common. Yes. Especially in, mostly in the religious sarcosine. Um, some of the people know because they hold it as a very culture, um, family practice and belief, and they, they hold their culture values and family values, dear, and, uh, and find it very hard to separate it from their spiritual life. And you, if any, within the church, you, um, you're battling with people in similar circumstances that are not willing to give up doors, oh, God
Speaker 2 00:11:08 Practice. Because they're
Speaker 3 00:11:09 A part of their families, part of the family and the family demands. And some of them are initiated from their childhood, given responsibilities within family, that this is your responsibility to take care of family alters. And so they'll come to church when they family, they caused happen, they won't give them up, they will go and participate into them and then come back again and hold some of those, um, um, articles within their homes as, um, as a continuous, uh, reference to what their cultural values or family values. Coulter.
Speaker 0 00:11:46 If you see that happen, how do you sit down with that person and say, Jesus demands you to burn these things, to get rid of them and how do they respond?
Speaker 3 00:11:55 Oh, first of all, it's a spiritual battle to even come to terms with it myself as a pastor, because these are people who have confessed with their mouth, but their confession is not linked to their heart. Wow. And, uh, and when the heart is not giving in, it's very difficult. It's uh, so we pray. Yeah. Uh, we encourage that, bring those things. It's bundle. We talk about it. Uh, but again, it, it is to the possum. Yeah. And, uh, and unfortunate, especially where we are, because there has been generations of witchcraft attachments right next to almost a church. There's a heel that was used as a, um, an orientation of witchcraft and initiations of witchcraft that people I've seen for generations generations. So then your church by that, we did to get out of people's minds, even with me, they're like, are you mad? You're going to die. How did that happen? You know, but the steel will given, uh, w Oprah is prayer, that there's a spiritual surgery of the heart for the people. And that's why we have a huge focus on the children, because with the outfits, it's very difficult. It's, it's almost hard unless the Lord comes in and does it, but the adults are so ingrained into it. So is it,
Speaker 2 00:13:28 Is it a fight to hang onto it or is it a fight to convince them that it's evil?
Speaker 3 00:13:35 Um, it's a, it's a fight to hang onto it. Okay. Cause the fi the pressures. Right. Uh, and then there's, uh, an ingrained fear in them that if you release it, you're going to die. They give you the ultimate of consequences that you will die if you don't, if you lose it because you already initiated into it until those people, uh, um, it's a constant. Yeah. And then the other money manifestations that come with it, that that's not necessarily practices, but, uh, physical, um, attacks, um, repetitions within the families that, uh, almost, um, you know, uh, results of what this practices,
Speaker 2 00:14:26 I mean, demonic attacks on the family,
Speaker 3 00:14:28 It demonic, um, physical, uh, drawbacks. I mean, for example, um, um, for example, I'm trying to find an example that is, uh, that you can share here that I can share here once I get one I'll share. But yeah, they, they owners problems in the family of these artists in fighting's that families, these hatred in the family, if I'm brother and brother hate each other and they don't greet each other and I'm like, Hey, you a blood brothers and your brothers in Christ. And, and there's always something happening that there's no peace within the family, because there's no release of that.
Speaker 0 00:15:13 What did genius abusive plot? If you leave you'll die, your brother will hate, you you'll have shame in your family, you'll lose your friendships and somebody might attack you do it. This
Speaker 2 00:15:29 Thing is the identity of your family. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:15:32 Don't get rid of that or getting rid of your last name. Well, can't, I have Christ and my last name and the culture that comes with it. And on the Sidious guys, we have a lot more to talk about on sermon QA. So I want to thank you for joining us. And our desire is that you would not follow the thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy only, but that you felt Jesus and in him is life and life abundant. And so our encouragement to you is put away all practices of dark magic for the sake of Jesus Christ, your body, your soul, and your future would love you. And we'll see you next time on sermon QA.
