Paul at Ephesus
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cunning, when in the form of a serpent he deceived the mother of our
race, Satan employs this device to gain control of the minds of men.
The heathen oracles have their counterpart in the spiritualistic
mediums, the clairvoyants, and fortune-tellers of today. The mystic
voices that spoke at Endor and Ephesus, are still by their lying words
misleading the children of men. The mysteries of heathen worship are
replaced by the secret associations and seances, the obscurities and
wonders, of the sorcerers of our time. Their disclosures are eagerly
received by thousands who refuse to accept light from God’s word
or from his Spirit. While they speak with scorn of the magicians of
old, the great deceiver laughs in triumph as they yield to his arts in a
different form.
His agents still claim to cure disease. They profess to employ
electricity, magnetism, or the so-called “sympathetic remedies;” but in
truth the magnetic power of which they boast is directly attributable to
the sorcery of Satan. By this means he casts his spell over the bodies
and souls of men.
The sick, the bereaved, the curious, are communicating with evil
spirits. All who venture here are on dangerous ground. The word of
truth declares how God regards them. In ancient times he pronounced
judgments upon one who sent for counsel to a heathen oracle: “Is it
not because there is not a God in Israel that thou sendest to inquire of
Baal-zebub, the God of Ekron? therefore thou shalt not come down
from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die.”
[427]
The visible and the invisible world are in close contact. Could
the veil be lifted, we would see evil angels employing all their arts
to deceive and destroy. Wherever an influence is exerted to cause
men to forget God, there Satan is exercising his bewitching power.
All who venture into scenes of dissipation or irreligious pleasure, or
seek the society of the sensualist, the skeptic, or the blasphemer, by
personal intercourse or through the medium of the press, are tampering
with sorcery. Ere they are aware, the mind is bewildered and the soul
polluted. The apostle’s admonition to the Ephesian church should be
heeded by the people of God today: “Have no fellowship with the
unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”
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