The Modern Revival of Spirit Worship

Spiritistic science is experimenting with the principle of electronic spirit communi­cations, which will dispense with the need for mediums. Ardent psychics believe these psychic communications herald the advent of a glorious millennial age when terres­trial society will be united with celestial society. Psychic scientists and spiritualists will join hands. Psychoanalyzed spirits will give evidence of their independent person­ality. The galvanometer will record the emotional differences between spirit con­trols and mediums. It will establish their extraordinarily different emotional reac­tions. Erelong psychic science will sup­posedly have established the reality of man's intercommunication with the spirits of the dead.

Ghosts That Live

There are ghosts that live. They outcon­jure the conjurers. Their phenomena are persuasive. Their paranormal perform­ances astound the psychic scientists. They demand recognition by orthodoxy. They masquerade as the apostles. They profess to be bringing apostolic communications to modern man to enlighten him with ad­vanced information regarding the here­after. They hide their fake impersonations under the mystery of their paranormal wonders. Their bodily materializations are lifelike. Materialized spirits have been ex­amined by physicians. Their blood pres­sure has been taken, their heartbeat lis­tened to. Various other medical tests have given evidence of their anatomical com­pleteness. Many psychical scientists have emerged from their tests of these spirit entities quite convinced that they do ac­tually exist. On the basis of such spirit dem­onstration learned men will erroneously conclude that spirit survival must be a dem­onstrated fact in modern spiritualism.

Both science and religion will be forced to admit that the spirit world is in contact with man. Because of the manner and means by which these facts have been ar­rived at, it will be concluded that these entities could not be the spirits of evil, or the spirits of demons. Many of the unin­formed will doubtless mistake spiritualism as a providential leading vindicating their faith in immortality. Spirit realities are not solely confined to conjured ectoplasmic simulacrums.

Spirit Healers

Psychic healing performed by spirit en­tities constitute a subtle enticement to ac­cept spiritualism. Spirit healing induces spirit control. Healing bribes to make men sensitive to the influence of the agencies of the spirit world are definitely on the in­crease. Psychic healing has brought a re­vival of the spirit healings of ancient pa­ganism, reminiscent of the pagan goddesses who dictated remedies while their patients were in hypnotic sleep, and who made vis­ible appearances in performing their heal­ing rites. It all harks back to the days when priestcraft was the nurse of civilization, and demonology and sorcery were utilized in the occult practices of medicine.

Centuries ago man utilized occult arts in the cure of diseases. Unorthodox para­normal healings apparently are becoming a modern fetishism—a reversion to the retarded mentality of an archaic age. Psy­chic regression ultimately constitutes a re­treat from civilized and rational society. In the thinking and practice of many, spirit-centered healing has replaced both medical and God-centered healing. Magical healing tends to become a form of idolatry taking pre-eminence over the worship of God. It substitutes the faradic currents of the spirits of the fallen angels for the Christ-imparted, life-giving healing power of God. Men are being influenced by the hyp­notic spells of abnormal suggestibility. Sub­tle psychological changes are taking place. Concepts of the moral code are being re­vised. A subtle hypnotic conditioning of the human mind is becoming the earmark of the continued spirit invasion.

Hypnotism

Hypnotism and posthypnotic suggestion could become a conditioning factor in the hands of evil spirits should man become ad­dicted to autohypnosis. Such surrendering of the control of one's mind dangerously opens the door to invading influences. The close relationship between the deep hypnotic state and the spiritualistic trance reveals the danger inherent in inducing voluntary trance conditions. The subcon­scious mind under hypnosis is so suscepti­ble to outward suggestion that it could readily fall a victim to some astral inter­loper of the spirit world. Spirit entities could intrude upon the subconscious in its hypnotic trance state. What is to prohibit them from the same psychic invasion of the individual who practices autohypnosis as they achieve in the medium who becomes the hypnotized agent of the spirit? Should discarnate entities thus invade the auric atmosphere of an entranced individual, untold damage could be done.

Individuals under hypnosis have imag­ined themselves to be other personalities, and in communion with the spirit world. Spirit-induced hypnosis by a spirit control hypnotist is a probability. Spirits them­selves have claimed that they control the mediums through hypnosis. The spiritistic trend in psychotherapy and hypnother­apy is most significant. The hypnotic at­mosphere of mass healing performances indicates that the spirit world can use hypnotic healing procedures as well as self-produced hypnotic trance conditions to condition the human mind. Inhibitions can be removed by certain spiritistic pseudo therapies. Man has not yet become fully aware of the occult tendencies of hypno­tism. The study of psychic healing in an­tiquity could alert modern man to these dangers.

Modern spiritistic hypnotic healing would give the impression that there is a definite place where the scientific use of hypnotism ends and the occult use of the phenomena begins.

Creator Worship Versus Spirit Worship

The great cosmic struggle of the ages has ever been a warfare between Creator worship and spirit worship. All down through history men and women have had to choose between the various philosophies of spiritism, which exalt the creature more than the Creator, and the true worship of God as the Creator and Redeemer of man. The idols of the heathen nations were sym­bols of their spirit gods. The Septuagint version of Psalm 96:5 reads: "For all the gods of the nations are demons; but the Lord made the heavens." Jehovah fought with the demon gods of antiquity in the ancient pagan religions. When God deliv­ered Israel from Egypt He declared: "Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment" (Ex. 12:12).

Spiritism and all its practices were for­bidden under the ancient theocracy. All who "had a familiar spirit" were con­demned as associates with the powers of darkness (Lev. 20:27; Deut. 18:9-14). Great judgments were pronounced against an­cient Nineveh, the mistress of witchcrafts, against the Babylonian and Egyptian mys­tery religions. The prophet Isaiah de­clared God's judgment upon those who made a covenant with the dead by turning to the dead on behalf of the living (Isa. 28:15-18). Christianity's New Testament battle with the spirit gods of paganism demonstrated the power of God to expel the demons, and to triumph over all the spiritistic influences that had taken men captive (Matt. 8:16; Luke 8:30-33; Acts 16: 16-18). True religion and spiritistic magic have ever been mortal enemies. True re­ligion is founded upon divine revelation. Magic, with its essentially evil repute, is based upon spirit communications.

The demons who founded idolatry to satisfy their pride, and to secure the wor­ship of the human race, substantiate their philosophies with the miracles of spiritistic magic. The spread of spiritualism in an­cient times was almost beyond parallel in the history and development of religious delusion. Man's slavery to magic in many of the cultures of the past resulted in his increasing ethnic degeneracy. Spiritistic magic is a demonic parasite that stifles re­ligion. It robs man of his true relationship with God. It has ever been a handicap to rational judgment.

The synthetic religion of sun worship and spirit worship has been the persistent earmark of the false religions of pagan an­tiquity. Magical mystery religions of spir­itism are always a confusing mixture of good and evil. They invariably proclaim the pseudo self-immortality and self-deifica­tion of the creature.

Black and White Magic

Both black and white magic have had powerful influences over the human race.

Black magic, and avowed manifestation of the underworld of demons, has catered to sensuality and unholy ambitions. It offers satisfaction of selfish desires and pampers the lust for power. White magic has been more subtle and more convincing in its influence. The supposedly "white magic" by which man thought to gain control over the "black magic" of the evil spirit world turned out to be the cunning spiritistic de­vice of the spirit world itself to secure con­trol over the minds of men. This supposed power of white magic over black magic is the devil's own counterfeit of the great con­troversy between good and evil. So-called white magic, which was used by the an­cients as a means of protection against black magic, actually betrayed these peo­ples into the hands of evil spirits. Spir­itistic magic has built an infamous reputa­tion of defacing the image of God in man. Its devotees have been the disciples of de­ception.

The spiritistic séance itself had a very un­savory beginning in the annals of human history. Satan himself was the very first one to resort to paranormal phenomena, and the use of a medium through which he spoke to man. The satanic séance in Eden, with its talking snake, was spiritism's initial intrusion into human thinking (Gen. 3: 1-6). Spiritistic magic had its origin, not in primitive worship, but in the deliberate at­tempt of Satan to deceive the human race.

The attempt was successful because it was accompanied by paranormal physical and psychological phenomena.

All history testifies to the fact that it is not safe for the wisest of men to depend upon the rationalizations of the human mind when it comes to spiritistic perform­ances. The human senses of themselves are not adequate to cope with necromantic and spiritualist magic in their parade of super­normal phenomena. Modern man is also susceptible to the influence of magic. The development of civilization, instead of eliminating spirit worship, has merely pro­duced a more highly scientific form of spir­itistic phenomena.

In the easy way in which spiritism is per­suading modern Christendom to accept the greatest hoax in the history of civilization, we are witnessing the climactic delusion of the human race (2 Thess. 2:7-12; Rev. 16: 13, 14). So obvious is the psychology of credulity in this matter that one is amazed both at the great deceiver's "delight in deceiving" and in the pseudo thrill of the "aptness to be deceived" by the gullible public. This demonstration of world decep­tion is fast becoming the ultimate spiritistic manifestation of the devil in his prime.

Confronted by a serpent of such subtle mien, even the wisest will be deceived un­less they are safeguarded by the words of the Eternal, who is the source of all wisdom.

J. A. B.