If you have a Ouija board, burn it!

Steve Brown:
If you have a Ouija board, burn it. Let’s talk about it, on this edition of Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
That was Steve Brown. He’s an author, seminary professor and our teacher on Key Life, a program all about God’s radical grace. We’re committed to bringing you Bible teaching that’s honest, straight-forward, and street-smart. Keep listening to hear truth, that’ll make you free.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. If you are just joining us, we’re looking at Acts and we’re looking at verses 11 through 20 or so, and we’re looking at a teaching that is pretty clear on the reality of the dark side of demons and Satan and evil spirits. I don’t like it either, but the Bible is very clear about this sort of thing. And you and I need to be aware of these sort of things. Now, I’m not going to read the text to you, but if you’ve been listening and some of you weren’t, you never listen to me. We have seen the reality of Satan. We have seen the danger of playing with God in the supernatural nature of the Christian faith. And then one other thing, and I think I mentioned this last week, but we’re going to talk about it a little bit more. And that is the danger of playing with the occult. You ever want to go to a medium sometime, or a seance? Boy, I have, you know, you see it on television sometimes, and you see it sometimes in movies. And I’d like to just go and be a fly on the wall and watch and see what’s going on. Houdini, who’s one of my heroes, by the way, spent much of his professional life debunking mediums in the silliness of it, but in fact, a lot of it is just plain silly and it’s a con game, but some of it is supernatural and some of it is real. And that picks my curiosity. Does it you? It does all of us. Would you like to watch an exorcism of a demon? I would. Would you like to, and of course, everybody knows it’s silly, get a Ouija board and ask it some questions and see what happens. I did that when I was a kid. And I never knew the danger of it, but Jesus did and he knew my name and he protected me and our friends when we were playing with a Ouija board. But let me tell you what the Bible says. The Bible says be very, very careful, in Acts 19:19.

And a number of those who practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all.

Now, those were books on the occult, on the dark side of religion, Isaiah 8:19.

And when they say to you, “Consult the mediums and the wizards who chirp and mutter,”

Don’t you like that phrase?

chirp and mutter,” should not a people consult their God?

Leviticus 19:28

You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you, I am the Lord.

And God there is talking about the occult. Leviticus 19:31.

Do not turn to mediums or wizards; do not seek them out to be defied by them. I am the Lord your God.

Leviticus 20:6

If a person turns to mediums and wizards, playing the harlot after them, I will set my face against that person and will cut them off from among my people.

Jeremiah and you know, I’ve got to quit, but there’s a lot of Scripture. Jeremiah 27:9

Do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your dreamers, your soothsayers or your sorcerers.

Isaiah 47:12 through 13

Stand fast in your enchantments and your many sorceries, with which you have labored from your youth; perhaps you may be able to succeed; perhaps you may inspire terror. You are wearied with many counsels; let them stand forth and save you, those who divide the heavens, who gaze at the stars, who at the new moons predict what shall befall you. Behold, they are like stubble and the fire consumes them.

I could go on and on, so don’t ever say nobody told me. And what I said at the beginning of the program, if you have a Ouija board, get rid of it. Don’t play with those things. Most of it, I’ve got to say, is just silly nonsense and superstition. But God says, don’t do that. And the reason he says don’t do that is because behind, and Carl Jung, who was wrong about a lot of things as a psychotherapist, got this part right, he said.

When you move into that kind of world, there is evil and there is good, and you have to be very, very careful.

And so, if you’re reading books on the occult because you’re curious, I get that. If you are playing with the Ouija board just to see what happens, I get that. If you have a deck of tarot cards and you have a friend who can predict the future with those, I get that. That’s kind of fun and interesting and arresting. But don’t do that because behind all of that, there is a power that hates you, a power that wants to destroy you, a power that has a purpose of getting you. But Jesus has prayed for you, so stay away from that stuff. It’s just not worth the effort. And it can be, though not always, it can be very dangerous. Now, I’m tired of this subject. I don’t like talking, did I tell you about the time when I was working on a book for new Christians? It was during the Jesus movement, and man, we had so many kids coming into our church, unwashed, crazy, didn’t know anything except Jesus. And they were so caught up in the joy and the reality of it that it blew me away. In those days I wore a robe and I wore clerics and a clerical collar and purple sashes and all the stuff, and we did liturgy. And these kids came into our church, took over the Sunday school, became the volunteers for everything, and did it with great joy, and it was a great time. If you haven’t seen the movie Jesus Revolution, you ought to see that movie. So, I’m dealing with all these kids and there’s so many of them, I don’t know what to do with them and I can’t get to them, and they need to be taught Biblical doctrine. So, I wrote a book in those days called, So Now You’re a Christian. Now, that’s been reprinted under some other titles later on. One of them is Welcome to the Family, but it’s the same book and it was used by a lot of churches in those days to help new Christians, and there were a lot of new Christians, to help new Christians understand some basic Biblical doctrine. At any rate, there was a chapter in that book, and it was on Satan, and I was writing on it. It was a typewriter in those days, we didn’t have computers. And I was typing this chapter on Satan, quoting Bible verses and doing some teaching on the dark side, and a cup of coffee came off a shelf above me and dumped coffee all over the typewriter and all over me. And I remember thinking nobody touched that cup of coffee. It was well back on the shelf. Something here is pretty scary. And I was kind of new at Orthodox Christianity. Before that, I thought I was an intellectual. When I referred to Satan, it was the metaphorical personification of evil. But God had gotten me and caught me, and I was growing with those kids. And growing to know Christ, and I knew something was going on in that study that was pretty scary. And then, and we’re going to talk about it a little bit tomorrow. I’m going to give you a lesson and dualism. A lot of Christians are dualists and you say, what in the world is that? Well, I looked it up and it means there are two equal powers. It’s the Yin yang thing, the two teardrops you see in the circle, one black and one white. And it is a philosophy that says there is evil in the world, it’s personal and mean, and there is good in the world, and that’s God and he’s good, and they’re constantly in a battle, and the outcome is yet to be decided. In fact, there are people who have said this and they should not have. The devil cast a vote against you, Jesus cast a vote for you, and you cast the deciding vote. No you don’t. That’s not true. That’s dualism because it makes Satan, it makes Satan equal with God, and the outcome is not decided. Tomorrow we’re going to see that it is decided. It’s over. But the tail of the dragon still switches. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
And thank you Steve. Demons, dark spirits. Ugh. Dark stuff, but real and real dangerous. Such a good and wise warning for us today. We’ll continue our exploration of Acts tomorrow, and we sure hope you will join us again for that. Speaking of the devil, there’s a great line from a Neo-noir crime film back in the mid nineties, it goes.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

Well listen, way before that movie came out, Steve spoke on this same subject in a sermon called God and the Devil, it’s based on Ephesians 6. In this message, Steve explains the reasons for the existence of Satan and how to arm yourself against him using the seven weapons in the Christians’ arsenal. Grab your copy of this classic sermon on CD for free right now by calling us at 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also e-mail [email protected] to ask for that CD. Or to mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses. Just ask for your free copy of the CD titled God and the Devil. Finally, would you partner in the work of Key Life through your giving? Giving is easy. Just charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. Or simply pick up your phone and text Key Life to 28950 that’s Key Life, one word, two words. It doesn’t matter. Just text that to 28950 and then follow the instructions. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And we are a listener supported production of Key Life Network.