“Bethel Church of Redding, CA is known for both the pastor’s wife and youth from the church doing what they call “grave soaking” meaning they lay on graves and try to get some kind of impartation from dead people Benny Hinn has the keys to Aimee Semple Macpherson’s grave site and also visits Kathryn Kuhlman’s grave where he has stated he gets a special impartation from their graves.”
(Sandy Simpson – Deception in the Church) The Bible is quite clear about occult practices. Neither Israel nor the Church is to have anything to do with the way the world tries to gain secret knowledge. The Gnostics were and are known for promoting new revelation that is either loosely tied to Scripture taken out of context or not at all. The Israelites seeking information from the dead or in omens were judged harshly by the Lord who had warned them numerous times to stay away from that stuff.
Yet due to the influences of heretical teachers in the New Apostolic Reformation, Word of Faith, Emergent Church, and the New Age many have been successful in getting lots of churches and denominations into occult practices that have been thinly disguised as “Christian”. Many of those who follow these people, I’m sure, have no idea how far they have strayed into the occult.
First I want to give the dictionary definitions and then Biblical warnings against these practices. Then I will give examples in the churches taken mainly from the ElijahList e-newsletter.
List of Practices Detestable To God
Deuteronomy 18:9-12 “When you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to imitate the detestable things of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord; and because of these detestable things the Lord your God will drive them out before you.
Isaiah 8:19 When they say to you, “Consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter,” should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living?
Deception In the Church Title: Occult Practices in the Churches
CRN has compiled a list of false teachers and several other professing Christians we’ve warned you about over the years. The list also contains those we must keep an eye on plus movements, organizations and “frauds, phonies and money-grubbing religious quacks” to mark and avoid as per Romans 16:17-18.