Society under Siege: The Paranormal Paradigm Shift
Pastor Marty Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 1:55PM Acts 16:16-19; Ephesians 6:10-12; Revelation 9:20-21. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on October 23, 2016.
It is interesting that as drug abuse has sky-rocketed, so has alternative spirituality and paranormal activities. Historically drugs have been used to make it easier to connect with the spirit world. However, America’s fascination with the paranormal began long before the 1950’s. In the 1800’s a large influx of eastern mysticism came to the United States and spawned groups that sought to explore the spirit world. Séances and contacting spirit guides began to catch fire among certain groups. Contrary to popular conception, we are not becoming more and more anti-supernatural in our society. Actually more and more people are adopting a spiritual world view that is alternative to the biblical view. These alternative views typically teach that all things are connected and that the living can tap into this cosmic connection or force in order to obtain information. They do not believe in a personal God that will judge our life. Rather, they believe that we are all part of God, along with everything else in the universe. This paranormal paradigm shift that is happening in America is really a going back to the ancient world views. I do not mean that there are huge numbers of people worshipping Zeus. However, they are reaching out to entities and conversing with “ascended masters,” whether they go by the name Zeus or not. In many cases American Christians are not prepared for the reality of where this is headed.
It is past time for Christians to get acquainted with what the Bible has to say on this issue and be ready to give an answer for the reason for the hope that we hold.
The Early Church Had A Supernatural World View
In Acts 16:16-19, we join the Apostle Paul in the Greek city of Philippi. Now a large percentage of the modern Church has rejected the supernatural element of the Bible. Yes, they will acknowledge that there is a God, but the idea of angels and demons interacting with the world is just too much for them. Miracles are too much for them. Thus they explain away the miracles and supernatural events of the Bible. We will see in our passage today that this is completely foreign to the first Christians. Such a “belief” is not true Christianity. It is something else entirely.
To set up this encounter in Acts 16, we need to understand that the Bible presents the reality of spiritual beings. Just as there is a hierarchy among the peoples of the earth, so there is a heavenly hierarchy within the spirit world. The Bible presents a cosmic problem. A rebellion against the Creator has begun in the spirit world and mankind has been caught up in it. There are good and evil spirit beings that are of lesser or greater power. There are holy and fallen angels. Now when Paul entered Philippi, he had come to preach the Gospel of Jesus to those who would listen. At some point a young girl began to follow him around loudly proclaiming that Paul was a servant of the Most High God and people should listen to him. This went on for several days. No doubt Paul was praying about what motivated this girl and what he should do. We are told that the girl was possessed with a spirit of divination and was used by her master to make him money by telling fortunes. The word translated “divination” is literally python. She had a python spirit. This snake spirit was connected to the god Apollo and was supposed to be responsible for the amazingly accurate prophecies given by the oracles of Apollo. Now this is not a story of Greek mythology. Paul meets a real slave girl who is apparently good enough at fortune telling to make her masters money. Notice that this spirit that possesses the girl operates in a “benign” way in order to give her information. This is quite the opposite of the spirits that possessed the Gadarene demoniac that Jesus met on the sea of Galilee (Luke 8). Those spirits manifested in a raging and insane manner that scared the daylights out of anyone who met him. Thus some spirits are predatory in a malignant and dysfunctional way. But, other spirits are predatory in a seemingly benign and somewhat functional way. The ancient world was afraid of the spirits. This fear and yet desire to know how to be safe in this world is how Satan kept the ancient world under his sway. The early Christians knew that demons and deceiving spirits existed. Any fortunes that this girl was ever able to give were part of a deceptive game plan to keep the Philippians under the control of the evil spirits.
Notice how Paul responds. He is annoyed by what the girl is doing. However, his problem is not with her. He knows that the real problem is that python spirit that possessed her. Early Christians knew that their warfare was not against people, kings, or nations. They knew that their warfare was against spiritual entities that Satan used to manipulate the people. This girl was not just a slave of men. She was a slave to a predatory, evil spirit.
Look at Ephesians 10-13 for a moment. This is the famous armor of God passage. Notice that this is about spiritual warfare against spiritual entities. The armor of God is also spiritual. They are to arm themselves with: Truth, Righteousness, The Gospel of Peace, Faith, Salvation, The Word of God, Prayer, and a Watchful Disposition. He says in verse 10 that these things are needed to stand up to the schemes of the Devil. Do not let yourself be deceived. Our real enemies are the spiritual powers that hold the world under their sway. Our job as Christians is to labor to set people free by the Truth and Power of Jesus Christ. Of course, most people in Philippi were not possessed by an evil spirit. Most of them were only “possessed” by the teachings of these evil spirits. The devil doesn’t have to have everyone possessed. He only has to manipulate and influence the larger masses to do all his bidding. This young girl was set free by the Apostle Paul because he first recognized it and then called upon the authority of Jesus to set the girl free. She needed an exorcism first and then the truth. But most people Paul ran into needed simply needed the truth of God to cut through the blindness that they had embraced. We don’t have to look for evil spirits. Paul wasn’t doing that. Rather, he was doing what Jesus had sent him to do. He was looking for people who would listen to the Truth. Those evil spirits that had dominion over the city didn’t like it and that is why this manifestation occurred. So focus on people and their need for the truth. As you are successful at counteracting the lies that these spirits promote in our society, you will start to run into opposition and perhaps even a person who is possessed. Remember, they don’t all look like the foaming at the mouth girl in “The Exorcist.”
The Failure of Scientific Materialism
The West has come under a world view that is sometimes called Scientific Materialism. It teaches that there is no spirit world and that all things can be explained through natural processes. If there is something that can’t be explained we are given a kind of promissory note that promises that science will eventually figure it out. This materialism points to the supernatural beliefs of the past and labels them all ignorance. This itself is ignorant, but let’s press on. It is partially true that the ancient supernatural beliefs were because of man’s ignorance. However, because it rejects a spirit world, materialists do not recognize that much of the ignorance was because of meddling, evil spirits.
Materialism has problems though. If humans are just biological machines and our thoughts are merely the random firing of synapses (i.e. just natural processes), then there is no right and wrong and there is no purpose or free will. A crushing hopelessness lies at the end of such a belief. It also runs into a logical contradiction. If there is only material then the material had to either bring itself into existence or it is eternal. Yet, if it has always been (if we can eternally go back to an earlier time) then time would never have gotten to us. You cannot have an infinite regression of a material thing (space, time, matter). This adds to the weight that few humans can actually follow such a world view. It is too cruel and too inhuman. Something in us cries for something beyond. The weakness of scientific materialism has given rise to a new wave of the old spiritual ideas and paranormal activity like Paul encountered in Philippi.
As I said earlier, this began in the 1800’s as gurus and Tibetan masters interacted with the West. The mystical world view of the East promoted a mushy spiritual paradigm. Everything is God and we can learn to tap into it and the collective wisdom of all the spirits. Thus séances, channeling, the occult, and many other vehicles became popular ways to connect to the spirit world. Now surely there were charlatans who were out to make a buck off of the superstitions of suckers. But, some activity could not be explained with this. Early debunkers were not entirely successful. Of course they didn’t have the scientific know how that we do today, right? But then explain why even modern debunkers have trouble explaining away every experience and story that comes along. Explain why our colleges and military still conduct experiments in the paranormal.
This alternate spiritual world view was different than the biblical world view. However, during the 1800’s many Christian denominations began to give up the idea of the supernatural and miraculous. Thus the Church was seduced to embrace scientific materialism and create a hybrid that allowed for a God, Jesus and not much else. Jesus became a mere example and most of what is said about him never happened. These moralists on one side and a harsh scientific materialism on the other side became a perfect dichotomy for funneling people toward something more and something spiritual.
The alternative spiritual world view offered something that was new and exciting to many in America and the Western countries. Thus many unwittingly opened themselves up to evil spirit with malignant designs. The Bible warned us about them, but we have been set up to disregard what the biblical prophets had to say. These spirits are deceivers and they cannot be trusted. This is why God forbids and warns against attempts to contact spirits. Christians are to pray only to God Himself. We interact with only His Holy Spirit. Don’t get me wrong. The “wisdom” of these spirit beings can be powerful and seductive. But like Satan with Eve, they only seek to steal from us what we have.
So What Should Christians Do?
First we need to quit running away from the Bible and start believing it. You do not have to reject the reality of science in order to embrace the Bible. You might have to reject the world view that some scientists have. But, many scientists are Christians too. Some of them do not have a biblical world view, but some of them do. So what is the biblical world view? God created both the spiritual and material world. A rebellion in the spirit world came into the material world, when Satan tricked mankind into disobeying God. God then gave mankind over to the desires of their heart and they became enslaved to these spiritual beings, or false gods. Yet, in His mercy, God provided a way for humans to be saved from this slavery and His eternal judgment. Christians have been sent into the entire world to set people free from the rule of these false gods and their demonic spirits.
In fact, Revelation 9 reveals that in the last days before Christ returns, a spiritual prison called the bottomless pit will be opened up and the earth will be inundated with malevolent spirits who will angrily attack mankind because they know their time is short. The earth is not becoming less spiritual. We are headed towards a time of great spiritual deception and attack. Revelation 9:20-21 says, “The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.” This is where we are headed.
We should also be busy warning people about these deceiving spirits and the deceptions they have promoted in our society. Many are enslaved by the teachings and ideas that come from these evil spirits. Science is not our enemy. Our enemy is using science and a deceptive interpretation of its findings to deceive mankind. He wants us to be caught off-guard by his true intentions.
Lastly, Christians must walk in the authority of Jesus Christ. Paul said to the demon, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” A little girl was set free that day because Paul knew that these evil spirits cannot stand up to Jesus. We have been sent on a mission from God to tell people about Jesus. If you read the entire chapter of Acts 16, you see that Paul got his first convert by preaching by the river where people gathered to pray. Lydia believed in Jesus and asked Paul to stay and teach her more. The world would call Paul a cultural murderer. But, He knew he was operating under the authority of Jesus who is Lord of all Lords and King of all kings, both on earth and in the heavens above. Let’s trust Him and be about our Father’s business.