It is to be expected that Christians generally will be ignorant – naïve – with regard to such matters as sorcery and witchcraft. And that’s as it should be. However – and it’s a
big however! – there are times coming upon the church (they are already here, actually) when we shall need to be acquainted with the matter or else they shall intrude upon us from the world’s culture, and we shall be unprepared to deal with them. If John and Paul the apostles had not spoken of these things perhaps we could let it go, but they did, and so it is part of “the whole counsel of God”.
There have been objections to my denominating the word (and its cognates) almost universally translated in Bible versions as “sorcery” as pertaining to a certain class of drugs and their use (NIV has “practicing magic arts” and “magic spell”). I believe these objections come from wise caution, but even more from unfamiliarity. I mean, who knows much about sorcery if one has lead either a sheltered or a godly life – or both?
But there are some among us who have been deeply involved in such, and have been delivered from their extreme dangers. I refer to the use of hallucinogenic or psychedelic drugs. The work I mentioned in my previous post by Os Guinness has a good examination and analysis of the history of such substances from ancient times until their popular use in the 1960’s in America, and then throughout the world.
When one looks in standard dictionaries, even the queen of them, the
OED (New Edition), one gets spare definitions such as: “Sorcery: the use of magic or enchantment; the practice of magic arts; witchcraft” (OED). To those of us who lived in the counterculture of the sixties – or even in various offshoots of the ‘70’s to the present – those brief definitions are alive and poignant with meaning. But to the uninitiated they’re kind of academic and distant.
That’s why the Scripture is of such tremendous value to us of today, for in the original Greek it goes into explicit, precise definition, and, by virtue of the almost universal consensus of the English translators, unloads this into one word: sorcery. We do not well to interpret the Greek by rather vague and inconclusive definitions of the target language, English, as it ought to be the other way around: the precision and clarity of the Greek original should inform the English. In other words, we will get our understanding of the translated word from its meanings and nuances in the Greek.
The days are coming – I noted developments in California earlier, where there is a referendum coming in November as to whether 1 oz. or less of pot should be legalized and taxed – when drugs will no longer carry the stigma of earlier days, and in some cases will be legally available (of course they are widely and easily available now, though illegal). I noted in the OP a NY Times online article stating that researchers and practitioners in the therapeutic profession are again using LSD to cure patients of various mental illnesses. It’s getting some good press.
We who came out of the sixties – and others who have partaken – are full aware that “the use of magic or enchantment; the practice of magic arts; witchcraft” are easily comprehended in the experience of getting high on acid or mescaline, and also the stronger strains of modern grass, smoked or eaten. Before we were illumined by the Lord Jesus and His Spirit, we thought such consciousness was holy and sacred, even though there were some occasions when demonic presences showed us it was not always as we thought: there were different realms and living entities in the spirit world we had to reckon with.
The primary delusion we were all taken by was that our psychedelic experiences were sacred; if we entered into demonic realms it was due to “bad environment” or our own “inner demons”; the normative state was benign, nay, the very path to spiritual illumination. It eventually became clear that it was not as it at first seemed. There were depths of wickedness in others we tripped with we could not even plumb; and we saw such terrible depths in our own selves. And then the spirits. Some purported to be divine, helpers of the human race. We see the industry of channelers that came of such encounters. Others sought to ravage us, and many, many took their lives to try to flee such horrors, or ended up in mental institutions.
We were a generation of novice sorcerers thrown into a realm way over our heads. Our teachers lied to us. They had been deceived by demons. Some lines from a poem,
Howl II,
Most of the poets who were singing
when I came of age
– realizing then I knew nothing as I ought to know
for so the drugs they gave me taught me –
are gone
I listened to their voices
danced to their music
followed their visions
these who showed in the end they were lost and deluded
though dearly loved
when the blind follow the blind
– in this realm of sorcerers and seers –
they both fall into the abyss
archetypal regions of terror
beneath the lettered wasteland
The community of saints – Christ’s people – were spared the ravages of the onslaught from Hell through the opening made in human consciousness by the sorcerous drugs. If the Bible translators gave the name to this phenomenon (which is clear enough in the Greek),
sorcery, well, that’s the name we know it by. Christ’s people may have been spared the
direct onslaught, but the seismic shifting of the culture’s foundations spared no one, especially not the church, which now reaps the fruit of an age where the worldview is no longer influenced by God’s word, but by a zeitgeist of vast and deep deception, reinforced by the general consciousness of people in love with the world, and the things that are in the world. The former absolutes, which people at least gave lip service to, are now targeted for destruction, along with those “primitive throwbacks” who hold to them.
It has been argued that there is no specific meaning to the Greek
pharmakon and its cognates. But that’s not sound. As I have shown above, it was understood by the NT writers to refer strictly to curative medicine, or poison, or demonic potion, and in their usage in Revelation and Galatians 5:20 they meant it to signify the last category, activities which used these drugs for occult purposes. Inherent in the meaning of witchcraft and sorcery is the use of potions to facilitate intercourse with “powers” in the unseen realm. Special potions are part of the stock and trade – the very craft – of these practitioners, without which they are impotent.
I realize that many Christians live in a culture pretty much isolated from what is going on in the general culture around them. Only when drastic things occur do they take notice. We have few who devote themselves to – among other godly enterprises – gathering intelligence on what’s happening in the “general culture”. Drugs may or may not find a resurgence – though it is very likely grass will (and it’s more dangerous than ever) – but the main damage has already been done.
If grass does comes back in legal vogue will we have the Biblical authority to prohibit it to our people? If we don’t acknowledge it as sorcerous we’ll have no basis on which to forbid it. It’ll end up being just another “harmless” intoxicant to be used in moderation, while opening the saints to the satanic wavelength through “lack of knowledge”.
We should not downplay the profound impact of the sixties drug culture on both America and on the rest of the world. In the psychic realm it was equivalent to a massive nuclear event; the “fissionable material”? Demonic presence, power, and intelligence sent throughout the collective consciousness of humankind.
Downplay it at the risk of not understanding the times. And the meaning of parts of the Revelation of Jesus Christ through John the apostle to the church.
--------
Addendum: yes, the papacy and the pope were manifestations of the Babylonian spirit and also the antichrist, but not the final manifestations. This is partly why amendments to the Westminster Confession of Faith were retained by the OPC, reflecting the growing awareness of the church on some points in the light of Scripture. To limit the identification of Babylon and the antichrist to Rome during the Reformation would have blinded the church to further manifestations of these in the future, leaving her unprepared to meet the need of the hour.