Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8060. Tarot cards have moved a long way from the fairground. They are sold in high street shops, recommended as tools for self-reflection, and used by people who would be offended at the suggestion that anything occult is involved. That shift in packaging is the first thing worth noticing. Scripture forbids fortune-telling in every…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8059. Ouija boards are sold in toy shops and used at sleepovers, and that is precisely what makes them worth talking about. A thing packaged as a game is a thing nobody examines, and what this particular game attempts is the one activity Scripture singles out with the sharpest possible language. The danger is…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8058. Scripture forbids occult practices in the strongest language it uses about anything, and the reason is not that they are silly. The reason is that they are real. God does not warn His people away from empty superstitions with the word abomination, and He does not prescribe the death penalty for parlour games….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8057. Sleep paralysis is one of the most frightening experiences a person can have, and it is also one of the most misunderstood. You wake, you cannot move, you cannot speak, there is often a weight on the chest and a sense of a presence in the room, and it can last long enough…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8056. When people ask about ghosts and demons they are usually asking two questions at once. Do the spirits of the dead come back, and if not, what did I actually experience? Both deserve an answer, and the answers are different. My position is that Scripture rules out the return of the departed, that…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8055. The question of whether a haunted house is a real thing comes up more often than you might expect, and rarely from people looking for entertainment. It usually comes from someone who has experienced something in a building they cannot account for, and who is not at all sure they want to talk…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8054. Whether demons can attach to objects or places is a question I get asked after house moves, after clearing out a relative’s belongings, and by new Christians wondering what to do with things from a former life. It deserves a straight answer rather than either a shrug or a scare story. My short…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8053. Can Christians be demonically oppressed? I believe they can, and I want to say so carefully, because this is an area where careless answers do real damage in both directions. A believer cannot be owned or inhabited by an unclean spirit. A believer can certainly be harassed, pressed and worn down from outside….
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 8052. The words demonic possession, oppression and influence get used almost interchangeably in Christian conversation, and the confusion causes real harm. I have sat with people convinced they were possessed who were exhausted and unwell, and I have met others who dismissed every spiritual dimension of their trouble because they had only ever heard…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8051. Paul says something in 2 Corinthians 4 that explains a great deal of what we see in evangelism. The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. The enemy works to blind unbelievers, and he is…