Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60054. Biblical numerology covers two quite different things, and a good deal of confusion comes from muddling them. One is the observation that certain numbers recur in Scripture with evident significance, which is plainly true and worth studying. The other is the practice of treating numbers as carriers of hidden meaning, calculating with names…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11097 The phrase alternative medicine covers such an enormous range of things that treating it as one subject is the first mistake most of us make. It stretches from a cup of peppermint tea for indigestion all the way to practices that involve summoning spirit guides, and lumping those together produces either needless panic…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08171. Every October somebody asks whether Christians celebrate Halloween or whether we should have nothing to do with it, and the question usually arrives with a costume already in the hallway and a knock expected at seven. I am going to give you principles rather than a rule, because Scripture gives principles here and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08132. The phrase familial spirits gets used in two quite different ways, and separating them is the first job, because one usage points to something Scripture genuinely condemns and the other points to a teaching I do not think Scripture supports at all. In older Bibles you will meet familiar spirits, which is occult…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08103 If you are carrying past occult involvement and wondering what to do about it, I want to say the most important thing at the very start. Jesus is enough. Whatever you did, however deeply you went in, the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin, and there is no category of sin marked…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 08102 The question of whether Christians should read occult books needs one distinction made before anything useful can be said. There is an enormous difference between a Christian book about the occult and an actual manual of occult practice, and a great deal of confusion disappears once we separate the two. Nobody sensible thinks…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 08101 Whether horror films can invite demonic activity is a question I get asked more often around the end of October than at any other time of year, and it deserves a better answer than either of the usual ones. Some Christians treat the genre as a spiritual open door. Others treat the whole…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08061 I get asked about reading horoscopes more often than you might expect, usually by someone who has done it for years without thinking twice and has suddenly started to wonder whether it matters. The question behind the question is nearly always the same. Is this a harmless bit of fun tucked between the…
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…