The Folly of Atheism & the Occult
Two Opposite Paths, One Common End
The Folly of Pride
My main problem contributing to my suicidal impulses (when I was in high school), that later contributed to my homelessness was pride. You see, Atheism exalts your intellect above the knowledge of God. It is, without question, the most foolish belief system, automatically negating all knowledge except for the most recently discovered (so-called) knowledge. I say so-called, because we have been indoctrinated in the West to surrender timeless truths for fleeting fads in all fields of study including science, historical interpretation, religion, and everything else. Our secular culture has been trained to give no reverence toward ancient knowledge, namely that which is found in the Bible; therefore, our culture disregards those things which are eternal and true.
Failure to Understand that the Ancient Is Often Eternal
The confluence of the ancient and eternal sounds almost contradictory because we in the modern West have been deceptively trained in school to believe that ancient knowledge is not eternal and is inevitably replaced and made irrelevant through progressive knowledge, but this is not true. While knowledge of our ancient God can be forgotten by individuals, it is eternal because God is eternal. His title: “The Ancient of Days” displays His “firstness” and reveals that He is the origination point of all things. Yet, we know also that He abides for all eternity. Therefore, we could say that He is the Ancient of Ancients, as well as the Forever of Forevers, which Jesus summarizes about His own nature when He refers to Himself as “The Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last” in Revelation 22:13.
“Progress” Redefines the Origin Point of Truth
Atheism is by far the most ignorant, closed-minded, and intellectually stunted belief system. Atheism is a common intellectual handicap among those who think they are smarter than everybody else. It is rooted in a progressive belief regarding how knowledge is obtained.
When I was an atheist, I convinced myself that I could be certain that my knowledge could not be negated by the past, even though I knew nothing of the past (by which I mean, I have never experienced space/time prior to my existence). Meanwhile, I also pretended that my finite knowledge would remain true until the end of days, as if my knowledge would progressively build upon itself from that point on. I understand now that it makes no sense to attempt to make myself the origin point of all true knowledge.
This is what progressivism is: the moving of the goalposts of truth to begin defining truth at the present moment or epoch, rather than at the time of God’s preeminence before the existence of all created things. It sounds rather funny when you look at it like that, doesn’t it? Progressives define truth to be something that people only grasp now. To progressives, truth exists as time moves along, and people before now could only ever grasp at it a little closer as time moved along. Yet, for those of us who understand the ancientness and eternality of God, we understand that Truth has carried on unchanged for unfathomably long and will continue without regression for unfathomably long. If we are to grasp it, we ought not to redefine its origin, which is fixed in time regardless of our changeable desires and beliefs.
Satan was the First One to Redefine the Origin Point of Truth
Ezekiel 28:14-19
You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings. By your many sins and dishonest trade you have desecrated your sanctuaries. So I made a fire come out from you, and it consumed you, and I reduced you to ashes on the ground in the sight of all who were watching. All the nations who knew you are appalled at you; you have come to a horrible end and will be no more.’ ”
Unfortunately for me, from the handicap of atheism, I eventually wandered into the darkness of the occult and came to exalt myself as god. Any form of this belief, which goes by many names: (new age, gnosticism, esoteric religion, secret religion, theosophy, Brahmanism, etc.)… any form of this belief that man is god, is satanism. This is the satanic gospel: that a person can rule himself without God. Satanism says that a person should not be under the authority of any other being, but should instead be totally liberated to live in such a way as fully maximizes his own power. There are degrees to both atheism and satanism; but what they have in common is that, if pushed to their logical conclusions, they eventually permit absolute lawlessness.
No Mortal Being Can Be Ultimate - There Is No Ultimacy in Mortality
Ezekiel 28:1-2
“ ‘In the pride of your heart you say, “I am a god; I sit on the throne of a god in the heart of the seas.” But you are a mere mortal and not a god, though you think you are as wise as a god.
Either way, there is no accountability to a higher authority. In atheism, there is no God so you might as well live like you are your own god, and in the occult, you straight up declare that you are god. Atheism and the occult wrongly suppose the inherent ultimacy and independence of created and dependent beings. The greatest achievement, in their view, is freedom from God; albeit, one (atheism) through the means of negating the entire spiritual world and one (occultism) through a sort of enslavement and manipulation of the spiritual world. Both have something to do with Satan’s deceptive “promise” to Eve that if she ate the forbidden fruit of knowledge of good and evil, that she and Adam would become “like God”. Implicit in Satan’s tempting is this lie that God is scared of us becoming “like Him”, as if becoming so would enable us to somehow overpower or usurp Him, just as Satan tried to do. Clearly, Adam and Eve should have known that God was never scared of this, otherwise, He would have never kept the forbidden fruit within their reach, undefended. Therefore, I make clear that, taking hold of this kind of fruit is utterly illogical and reckless, whether through atheism or the occult. God is not in danger of usurpation. God cannot be dethroned. Nothing can move Him. Nothing is before Him.
As we saw following Adam and Eve’s consumption of the forbidden fruit, living according to the fruit of this tree subjects one’s own being to utter decay. The trap I fell into during my time in the occult is only the abject form of the curse that is already upon all of humanity. It is the curse that comes from eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I merely doubled down on what mankind is naturally inclined to do, and that is to pursue his own power, desires, and will. As I ate from the tree of forbidden knowledge in pursuit of personal power, I transformed into a slave of folly, weakness, and vice. While I was mentally degrading from the demonic attachments that readily spring up from such a plunge, I inevitably declared myself to be “god”.
Upon exalting myself as god, God promptly put me in my place for my own good. Within weeks of doing so, I lost my mind, dropped out of college, lost all my closest friends, separated from my family, and was kicked out of my house. I was not sleeping. I was barely eating. I was taking LSD nearly everyday and returned to smoking marijuana constantly, which further fueled my psychotic breaks.
Picture King Nebbuchadnezzer in Daniel 4 after he exalted himself. He was driven away from people to live with the animals and eat grass like an ox. His sanity was not restored until he looked to heaven and realized that God is sovereign over all things, including him. His sanity was finally restored when he gave glory to God and realized that whatever he is, is God-given rather than to his own glory. Though he was a great king, when the hand of God lifted off of him, he became less than the animals of the field.
Just as God did to Nebuchadnezzar, God revealed His total sovereignty to me when He humbled me completely. He supernaturally taught me complete dependence on Him at a time when I had nothing else to rely on. I could not have made it out of the things I was involved with without the hand of the almighty God.
The Occult Is Not a Fire to Sit By - Neither Is it a Fruit that Brings Life
Isaiah 47:8-15
“Now then, listen, you lover of pleasure lounging in your security and saying to yourself, ’I am, and there is none besides me. I will never be a widow or suffer the loss of children.’ Both of these will overtake you in a moment, on a single day: loss of children and widowhood. They will come upon you in full measure, in spite of your many sorceries and all your potent spells. You have trusted in your wickedness and have said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you when you say to yourself, ‘I am, and there is none besides me.’ Disaster will come upon you, and you will not know how to conjure it away. A calamity will fall upon you that you cannot ward off with a ransom; a catastrophe you cannot foresee will suddenly come upon you. “Keep on, then, with your magic spells and with your many sorceries, which you have labored at since childhood. Perhaps you will succeed, perhaps you will cause terror. All the counsel you have received has only worn you out! Let your astrologers come forward,
those stargazers who make predictions month by month, let them save you from what is coming upon you. Surely they are like stubble; the fire will burn them up. They cannot even save themselves from the power of the flame. These are not coals for warmth; this is not a fire to sit by. That is all they are to you— these you have dealt with and labored with since childhood. All of them go on in their error; there is not one that can save you.
The Difference Between Your Laws and Natural Law
I was going to talk more about the occult, but I feel a darkness while attempting to write about it, and I do not want to transmit that onto you, so I will not go into detail. Just know that all occult practices are demonic regardless of which cheery face is put forward. Satan does not care if he be worshipped directly, as long as he can lead us to worship ourselves, just as he did. Satan does not care if we are mostly ignorant that we have become his pawns in his rebellion. He wants humanity worshipping themselves - namely, living as our own gods by doing what is right in our own eyes; that is: rejecting God’s authority as we live as our own lawmakers and judges. If we live merely to our own self-imposed law as if our own self-imposed law is Natural Law itself, then we shall inevitably deviate from the laws of God, and esteem our deviations as Holy and True. Such deviations are rejections of inherent truths about God, and the reality that God created, in which we have the privilege of living.
If people live without dependence upon God, whether they do so consciously or unconsciously, then they deny God the reverence and glory that is due Him, which hurts God, not because it bruises His ego, but because God loves us and wants us to behold a good existence. God does not desire that we experience separation from Him. Satan desires our separation from God and tempts us accordingly. Satan knows it is impossible to live a good life without dependence on God, but if he can convince us that the good life is on the other side of God, then he can destroy us, because life without God is utter destruction. God loves humanity deeply, so deeply that He took the fullness of the curse of our depravity and evil upon Himself. God took upon Himself, the full weight of our suffering; and He takes no delight in the destruction of the wicked as Ezekiel 33:11 states: Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather delight that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?’
Metaphysically, We Are Literally Nothing Without God
Like you, I am nothing without God. This is something all creation shares. All existing things share this deep metaphysical truth in common: we are literally nothing without God; we have zero existence apart from Him. Existence utterly hinges upon His eternality and unchangingness. So do yourself a favor, and do not separate yourself from Him in any way. Jesus has given you a way to fellowship with Him through His supernatural power. He has made the mind of God available to you through His gift of His Holy Spirit. Receive the Holy Spirit through the doorway of the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb, our God, Jesus Christ. God died for your redemption to Him, for your return to Him; for your return to truth eternal. Exchange what is falsely called “knowledge” for the knowledge that will last. The knowledge that shall last was, is, and is to come. Please ask Jesus for His Holy Spirit and do not delay in doing so.