What is the Occult?

Did you ever wonder who they’re hiding their secret practices from?

The word occult means hidden.  And it has become a blanket term for all of the practices forbidden in the Bible: fortunetelling, witchcraft, horoscopes, spirit mediumship, etc.

The reason these practices are forbidden by God is because even casually dabbling in any of them can invite demons into your life, and maybe even into your physical body[1].

Demons were the soulless Nephilim produced by the ungodly union of fallen angels and human women (see Genesis 6 and also the Book of Enoch[2]).  Being soulless, the Nephilim raped and killed and indulged themselves without any conscience at all.  When the Nephilim died they became disembodied spirits.  Having enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh (food, sex, intoxication, etc.), they are now desperate to have a body to inhabit again—even if it’s shared with a human being.  When they possess a person’s body, they have varying degrees of control.

This morning as I have continued my reading in Job, I suddenly understood this: the occult practices are not hidden so much to hide them from us (other human beings).  These occultic practices are hidden in order to hide them from God.  The idea of hiding occultic practices from God is so that He won’t stop or interfere with them.  This is why occultic people do ceremonies to invite the spirits (demons).  They believe that the demons can hide their activities from God.

But here’s the thing: can they really hide anything from God?  Psalm 139 indicates that nothing is hidden from God:

I can never escape from Your Spirit!  I can never get away from Your presence!  If I go up to Heaven, You are there; if I go down to the grave, You are there.  If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there Your hand will guide me, and Your strength will support me.  I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night—but even in darkness I cannot hide from You.  To You the night shines as bright as day.  Darkness and light are the same to You, (Psalm 139:7-12, emphasis mine).

The Psalm goes on to say that even in the womb, God is there (verses 13-15).  And God sees and knows every day of our lives before we’ve lived a single one of them (verse 16).

As I read Job chapter 18 today, I began to ponder these things.  Because throughout most of the book, Job’s “miserable comforters[3]” take turns pointing out how God punishes the wicked, not allowing them to thrive.  Generally speaking, it’s true that the wicked do not thrive.  The reason, I believe, is because demons are untrustworthy and love to create chaos and mayhem in peoples’ lives because they hate humans.

And while it is generally true that the wicked do not thrive, it is not a universal truth because some of the most wicked people do seem to literally get away with murder.  Josef Mengele[4], the Nazi Angel of Death, for example, died on vacation in Brazil at the age of 67.  He never spent a single day in prison for his horrendous war crimes.  In fact, the CIA brought Mengele to Canada under Operation Paperclip to work on the MK Ultra brainwashing and mind control experiments[5].

How is it that someone as deeply wicked as Mengele got to live out his life in peace and prosperity?  Where is God’s justice?  I have a couple of guesses: first, the demons had free reign in the life of Mengele (and others like him), and through him they were able to kill and damage a whole lot of people.  So Mengele was a useful tool in their war upon humanity and therefore against God who so loves humanity that He sent His only Son to die for us[6].

Second, God allows evil to run its course.  He steps in only when invited to do so in prayer.  This is why prayer is so important.  We’re the ones who handed the deed to earth over to the defeated enemy, so we’re the ones who must invite God’s intervention in prayer.  Even though Jesus now holds the keys, He is not going to come charging in.  He wants us to turn to Him through our own free will, and not because we saw Him kick down the door and throw the squatters out.

So my best estimate is this: nobody was praying about bringing Mengele to justice.  And I suspect that there is no adequate human justice that would suffice for such a beast as Mengele.  Divine justice will not let the wicked pass into a dreamless eternal sleep.  Nor will it allow an unrepentant person into the presence of God in Heaven (except for that moment when he’s condemned to everlasting judgment).

So the occultists believe that they can hide their wicked practices from God because God doesn’t interfere with them.  But they’re wrong.  God sees it all.  Since it’s largely hidden from people outside of the secret societies, God is not invited into the situations in prayer.

And this, I believe, is where I come in as God’s Secret Weapon[7].  I have a special discernment for witchcraft, and when I see it, I reflexively pray against it.  Once the activity is opened up for God’s intervention, the demonic spiritual atmosphere changes and cannot be reconstructed without a whole lot of satanic invocations.

Perhaps the occultic people will see this and realize that there is a power much higher than their familiar spirits (demons).  And perhaps this will cause them to seek God.  I never thought of this work as evangelistic, but it could be an important first step to open occultic people to the love of God.  God is good!

[1] Demons cannot enter the body of a born-again Christian.  But they can certainly oppress and harass Christians.

[2] The Book of Enoch is a Biblically-endorsed extra-Biblical text.  Since it is referenced in the Bible (see Jude 1:14), the Book of Enoch is trustworthy (only the first Book of Enoch, since the second is of dubious origin).  But since the Book of Enoch didn’t make it into the Bible, it is not to be taken as Holy Scripture.

[3] Job 16:2.

[4] Mengele (and all the rest of the people high up in the Nazi chain of command) was a practitioner in the occult.  And his post-war activities were also occultic (see the footnote below).

[5] Which is something that you can read for yourself in the Freedom of Information Act documents.  See Josef Mengele Part of CIA’s Trauma Brainwashing and Nazi-Occult and Mind Control.

[6] John 3:16.

[7] And of course I’m not the only Secret Weapon in God’s arsenal.