From Witches to Stitches

Did you ever mess with Ouija boards?  Don't do it - it's a "gateway drug" to the occult.  Do witches kill black cats for kicks?  What can we say about the Salem witch trials that led to hangings (1692).  During the Salem witch trials of 1692, twenty four accused witches died, 19 were hanged, one was pressed to death, and four died in prison.  You may find a list of the victims here.  A number of the victims had to deal with "spectral evidence" which was testimony involving alleged appearances threatening harm in a dream or a vision.

 

One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime or offense they may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. (Dt. 19:15)

 

More than 50 men in Ipswich, Topsfield and Salem Village signed petitions challenging spectral evidence regarding John Proctor and his wife who were thought to be witches.  One group of Boston ministers was led by Increase Mather (d. 1723) to oppose spectral evidence.

 

Samuel Sewall (d. 1730) was one of the judges in the Salem trials.  He recanted his support of the trials in a public apology in 1697.[1]  In 1700, The Selling of Joseph - A Memorial by Sewall was the first anti-slavery tract published in New England.   

 

Marvin Olasky (b. 1950), former editor of World Mag, gives a good summary of the Salem ballyhoo:

 

From 1663 through 1691, trials of witches in New England led to 20 acquittals and only one execution. ...  Leading Puritan ministers such as Increase Mather and his 29-year-old son Cotton Mather had long argued that acceptance of spectral evidence was an unbiblical practice that could lead to abuses and general hysteria. ...  Increase Mather wrote a pamphlet, Cases of Conscience, that attacked the use of spectral evidence and self-incrimination ... esteemed historian Perry Miller has noted, "Increase Mather - and he alone - brought the murders to an end."

 

We must turn from the dangerous path of witchcraft and the occult:

 

Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God. (Lev. 19:31)

When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.  There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead. (Dt. 18:9-11)

 

Recall that Elymas the Sorcerer, who opposed Paul and Barnabas, was judged with blindness (Acts 13:6-12).

 

One victim of the Salem trials was pressed to death.  Let's contrast that with a more recent event.  Do you remember the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 and "Tank Man," the man in a white shirt and black pants carrying shopping bags who stopped the tanks.  Some estimate that many thousands of the pro-democracy protestors were killed.  During June 3rd and 4th the Chinese soldiers bayoneted and shot protesters.  Tanks drove straight into crowds crushing tons of people.  The Tiananmen Square Massacre is a taboo subject in Communist China.  Websites that mention the "June 4 Incident" are banned.

 

Shaking hands with the Devil may lead to death-defying and mind boggling experiences.  Do you recall the film Altered States?  John Lilly (Center of the Cyclone), who worked with dolphins, is a true New Ager:

 

In my own far-out experiences in the isolation tank with LSD and in my close brushes with death I have come upon the two guides. . . . They may be entities in other spaces, other universes than our consensus reality. . . . They may be representatives of an esoteric hidden school. . . . They may be members of a civilization a hundred thousand years or so ahead of ours. They may be a tuning in on two networks of communication of a civilization way beyond ours, which is radiating information throughout the galaxy. [2]

 

Dabbling with the occult and striving towards a new kind of consciousness is harmful to your soul and may lead to death.  Am I really "god" as some New Agers think?  Did I create the cosmos?  Did Lilly encounter demons?  Some of the stranger things that happen during "closed encounters" with UFO's and supposed Aliens may involve the demonic.  Some, of course, may deal with secret military technology.

 

Now to the stitches.  I thank the Lord that I've pretty much lived a charmed life and have not broken any bones.  Recently, I had an accident and sliced the tips of two of my fingers on my left hand (YES, I'm a southpaw).  I had to have stitches, but they're pretty much healed now, thank God.  What about people who wound themselves intentionally?  How about that verse about tattoos?  "Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord"  (Lev. 19:28).  I don't have an issue with tatts - maybe that could be the debate for a future post.  Satan wants to steal, kill and destroy (Jn. 10:10).  Could premeditated self-mutilation have a demonic influence behind it?

 

Stephen Schwartz, who composed music for The Prince of Egypt (2017),  connects cancel culture with the Salem witch trials:

 

Schwartz is the former president of the Directors Guild of America said ... “What’s also strange is that if you write a character who is bigoted, people now assume you hold those views yourself.”  Noting that it’s a “weird time” for the arts, Schwartz underscores how the mob is mimicking the behavior of the Salem Witch trials, where “accusation is everything” and people are condemned and vilified for opinions they had 20 years ago.

 

Most of the accused in the Salem witch trials were women.  How are ladies treated in China?  In China's re-education camps, Uighur women have been systematically raped, sexually abused, and tortured.  As for witches, they are still persecuted in many areas.  According to the UN, murders of supposed witches may reach thousands each year and beatings or banishments may reach millions.  In 2011, Saudi Arabia beheaded a man and a woman for sorcery.  In 2013, they sentenced two Asian housemaids to a thousand lashes and ten years in prison for casting spells against their bosses.  A Lebanese television psychic, Ali Hussain Sibat, was arrested in 2008, while on pilgrimage to Medina, by the Saudi religious police.  Ali makes predictions, prescribes love potions and spells.  Amnesty International along with others petitioned the Saudi courts and Ali's execution was circumvented.  He was sentenced to a 15-year prison term.  The Voice of the Martyrs documents Christian persecution around the globe.  The "Day of the Christian Martyr" is June 29th, 2022.

 

Have you seen the TED animation on the Salem witch trials?  Beware! berware‼ of the dangers of groupthink and scapegoating.  What does this video remind you of?  The treatment of those attending the #StopTheSteal Rally from last year?  The bizarre atmosphere from the Corona hysteria?  Something else?

 

True salvation is not in witchery, but in the Lord Jesus Christ alone.  Here is our take on the Gospel.  We'd L♥VE to hear your feedback, pro, con or spooky >>

https://totalyouth.us/contact-us

 

Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. (Acts 19:13-20)

 

 

Notes:

1) The University Desk Encyclopedia (Elsevier, Lausanne, 1977), p. 904.

2) The Universe Next Door by Jame Sire, 3rd ed. (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 1997, orig. pub. 1976), p. 160.

 

#Devil #Satan #witches #Salem #hanging #sorcery #UFO #Aliens #demonic #Puritan #spectral #dream #vision #Ouija #JamesSire #JohnLilly #occult  #StephenSchwartz #PrinceOfEgypt #MarvinOlasky #CottonMather #Apologetics

 

Deep thoughts on Blue Letters

You may remember this gem from "Deep Thoughts" by the Handey-Man himself:

 

Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself.   "Mankind."  Basically, it's made up of two separate words - "mank" and "ind.”   What do these words mean?  It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.

      --  Jack Handey

 

I have read the Blue Letter Bible study helps to great benefit as well as their commentaries.  They have an article on the major Protestant theological systems

which they list as follows: Calvinism, Arminianism, Lutheranism, and Anglicanism.  What was Calvin's position on unity in the church?  Read it and weep:

 

Some fault may creep into the administration of either doctrine or sacraments, but this ought not to estrange us from communion with the church.  For not all the articles of true doctrine are of the same sort.  Some are so necessary to know that they should be certain and unquestioned by all men as the proper principles of religion.  Such are: God is one; Christ is God and the Son of God; our salvation rests in God’s mercy; and the like.  Among the churches there are other articles of doctrine disputed which do not break the unity of faith…. Does this not sufficiently indicate that a difference of opinion over these nonessential matters should in no wise be the basis of schism among Christians?

   -- John Calvin 

Jacobus Arminius, or Jacob Harmensen, died in 1609.  Jacob's father died early and he was adopted by Theodore Aemilius who later died in Jacob's teen years. 

When Arminius was around 15 years old, Rudolf Snellius (Snel van Roijen), a professor at Marburg, took on the fatherly role.  I did not meet my real biological father until I was sixteen years old and took on his name at that time.  So, in some Alt-History we might have several tags for Contra-Calvinism:

   Arminiusers

   Harmensenites

   Aemiliusism

   Snellists

   Roijenites.

Arminius made this fascinating statement:

 

In this state [man's fallen condition], the Free Will of man toward the True God is not only wounded, maimed, infirm, bent, and weakened; but it is also imprisoned, destroyed and lost.  And its powers are not only debilitated and useless unless they be assisted by grace, but it has no powers whatever except such as are excited by Divine grace.

   -- Jacob Arminius

 

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote Of Free Will: Discourses or Comparisons (De Libero Arbitrio Diatribe Sive Collatio) in 1524. It is mostly known as The Freedom of the Will.  Martin Luther's response is found in The Bondage of the Will where we read this:

 

You who make it out, that the human will is a something placed in a free medium ... you make both God and the devil to be at a distance, spectators only, as it were, of this mutable and “Free-will” ... it must either be, that the kingdom of Satan in man is nothing at all, and thus Christ will be made to lie; or, if his kingdom be such as Christ describes, “Free-will” must be nothing but a beast of burden, the captive of Satan, which cannot be liberated, unless the devil be first cast out by the finger of God.

   -- Martin Luther

Church of England rector John Charles Ryle (d. 1900 @ 83 yo) studied the  Classics and had aspirations of a political future.  Ryle became the first bishop of Liverpool thanks to a plug from Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.  Ryle had a firm opinion on God's sovereign grace:

 

We should observe ...the sovereignty of God in saving sinners.  We read that our Lord says to his Father, “You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children” [Lk. 10:21] ... The truth here is deep and mysterious.  ... We can merely acknowledge that the words of our Lord Jesus Christ supply the only answer which mortal man should give: “Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.”  Let us, however, never forget that God’s sovereignty does not destroy man’s responsibility.  That same God who does all things according to the counsel of his own will always addresses us as accountable creatures, as beings whose blood will be on our own heads if we are lost.

  -- JC Ryle

 

#Calvinism #Arminianism #Lutheranism #Anglicanism #JohnCalvin #JacobArminius #MartinLuther #JCRyle #Erasmus #FreeWill #SovereignGrace

#DeepThoughts #JackHandey #BlueLetterBible #ChurchOfEngland #Anglican