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Pennsylvania Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

The Rise of Spiritualism and the Occult

Eric Walsh

All right, so again, as the pastor Christian just said, this is heavy material for us for this week, and we're gonna approach it biblically and kind of methodically.

So as a preamble to the week, today's message is kind of an overview and an Adventist deep dive.

I presented something similar in Australia recently and a relatively high ranking pastor that was also presenting at those meetings but came to 1 of my sessions.

He came to me afterwards and said, man, I haven't heard anybody preach on any of this stuff in such a long time.

Spiritualism is antithetical to the development of the character of Christ.

We're gonna talk about music 1 day, Hollywood 1 day, and probably on Friday, as a follow-up to tonight's message in the big meetings we're going to talk about the political nature of spiritualism now.

This is 1 of the most fascinating ways As we go through these talks on spiritualism, you realize spiritualism is the glue in Revelation 16.

There are 3 unclean spirits like frogs that come out of the mouth of the dragon, the false prophet, and the beast.

And we are told as Adventists that they represent apostate Protestantism, Catholicism, and spiritualism.

But what connects the 3 things, what allows them to work together is spiritualism.

And so as we go through this, remember that this is the glue for end-time opposition to the cause of Christ.

So it has to be discussed, we have to understand it.

We do not idolize it or elevate it or make it the center of who we are obviously, but we are warned as you will see that we must address this issue.

So our scripture reading for this seminar will come from 1st John chapter 4.

The Bible says, beloved believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

Beloved believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

Our message for today, the rise of spiritualism and occult, which is our theme for the rest of the week during these mid-morning and mid-afternoon sessions.

Father God, now I ask that your Holy Spirit be poured out.

Instead, we need to hear a word from you.

Bind Satan now, Lord, and cast him far from this place.

So as we study the Word of God, the scriptures, and the spirit of prophecy, Lord, help us, Lord, to be able to be attentive to your truth.

Let the Lord be able to help others who are bound in these things.

All right, so to get to this, we have to go back to Genesis chapter 3.

We're going to do this, this session is really to lay the groundwork for the rest of the week.

We're gonna deal with some relative modern occurrences in this part of the country, the Northeast.

Though you may not be aware, but it was the Northeastern section of the country where a lot of the modern-day Spiritualism actually sprang up.

And we're gonna talk about my home state, how it's relevant in this Spiritualism movement, the state of Connecticut, the state of New York.

So while the church was doing well during these time periods, the enemy was also working very hard laying a groundwork that would affect us today and it goes all the way back to Genesis so Genesis chapter 3 in verse 1 now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made and he said unto the woman yea have God said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden.

And the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree, which is in the midst of the garden, God has said you shall not eat of it neither shall you touch it lest you die and here is the interjection we'll go to Revelation 12 in a minute but this is where the rebellion the revolution that Satan starts in heaven we're gonna talk about revolution tonight at the main meeting tonight The revolution and rebellion that Satan started in heaven, this is where it is begun on earth.

It starts with an animal that is a beautiful animal.

I don't like snakes, I don't know about you.

I was a missionary in Guam for a year and I found out maybe 2 weeks before I left that Guam per capita has the most snakes per square foot anywhere in the world.

I would never have taken the call to go to Guam had I known that, so God let me find that out on my way out rather than on my way in.

I never even saw a snake except in pictures while I was there.

They're nocturnal I heard, which is good because I don't like snakes.

In fact, when you look at the world, and I don't know, maybe we'll get into it a little more later in the week.

When you look at the world's mythology, 1 creature that is consistent is the idea of a dragon.

And I'm doing a series on evolution and it's interesting because 1 of the missing links that they say proves evolution, which is this missing link has been, you know, disproved now, is a half reptile, half bird.

They say would basically prove, they were trying to prove evolution with it.

In the, in the essence that there is a deceptive beast and that's this 1, this deceptive creature, I should say.

And the first thing he does is he questions the Word of God.

You shall not eat of every tree of the garden.

The woman understood what God taught her.

That's why this is in the Bible, to show you that she understood.

And it says, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden God has said you shall not eat of it neither shall you touch it what?

So she understood some argue this neither shall you touch it really wasn't supposed to be there.

At the end of the day she knew she wasn't supposed to.

She knew she wasn't supposed to mess with the truth.

Then verse 4, and the serpent said unto the woman, you shall not surely die.

For God hath thus known that in the day thereof then your eyes shall be open and you shall be as gods knowing good and evil.

That if you disobey God you will be elevated spiritually to the level of divinity.

So that's the second line built into the text.

And a woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make 1 wise.

She took the fruit thereof and did eat and gave also to her husband with her and he did eat.

And so he lies you shall not surely die which is the underpinning of spiritualism as we'll see.

And then there's this call almost to her being divine.

You start to see how it all works together.

And verse 6 gives this summation of the temptation, how it actually worked.

She was able to take part a, part b, part c, and put the pieces together to come to the conclusion to disobey God.

I want to submit to you Satan still does temptation this way.

He often introduces you to what would repulse you and then slowly convinces you to fall into sin.

And so she sees appetiters involved, she sees it's good for food, it's pretty, it's good to look at.

Now you gotta imagine, all of the fruit must have been beautiful.

I mean, yet there was something about this fruit and this snake talking to her that convinced her and then verse 7 says and the eyes of them both Adam and Eve were open and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.

And so they eat of the fruit, their eyes are opened, all of a sudden they realize, wait a minute, we are, we're not covered.

In the Bible, to be naked is also a way to say that shame has been introduced.

And so here now Adam and Eve experienced nakedness, spiritual nakedness or shame.

They violated God's will and instantly they want to hide, cover themselves, because that's what sin does.

It drives you to a place where you do not want to be seen by God.

Now, the SDA Bible commentary, I talked about it earlier this morning in another session, says ye shall be as gods.

The same word translated in the King James Version, God's, Elohim, is rendered God in verse 1, 3, and 5.

The translators of the King James Version here followed the Septuagint and the Vulgate.

The current rendering, look at this, the current, the correct rendering is, ye shall be as God.

Age of Deception

So, Father God, now as we study your Word, I pray for your Holy Spirit and I pray, Lord, that you lead us in this, Lord.

And I pray, Lord, as we dig deep again into the end-time events and spiritualism, that, Father God, we see that you win this war and that if we stand with Jesus Christ, we are already on the winning side.

Help us to understand this now, Lord, so that we can share the hope of the gospel more effectively with others.

All right, Ephesians chapter 5, the verses we just read, says this, Let no man deceive you with vain words, for because of these things come at the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.

For you were sometimes darkness, but now are you light in the Lord.

Walk as children of the light." The title of this message is the Age of Deception, and I'm going to show you that we truly live in a time of great deception, where it's very easy to fool people.

In Ephesians, Paul tells the church at Ephesus to let no man deceive you with vain words.

Ephesians 5 9 says, for the fruit of the Spirit and all goodness and righteousness and truth, proving, what are we supposed to do?

Then Paul says this in Ephesians 5.11, and have no fellowship, How much fellowship?

No fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather do what?

And there are too many of us as Christians who play with the works of darkness.

I mean I know Christians of all denominations who will literally watch horror movies in their house.

That is playing with the works of darkness in a very tangible and obvious way.

Verse 12, For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.

First John 4 says this, Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets are going out into the world.

We're not supposed to just believe, we are to try the spirits.

2 Peter 119, we have also a more sure word of what?

Where unto ye do well that ye take heed as unto a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts.

We have, church, especially at Seventh-day Adventist, we have a more sure word of prophecy.

If you read 2 Peter chapter 1 and you read the verses just before this, Peter tells the story of the transfiguration on the mount.

He says that he was an eyewitness to this and yet he says prophecy is a more sure word and isn't it sad that you'll go to many a church and they don't even preach or talk about prophecy anymore so let's go to the great the greatest of all prophets Matthew chapter 24 and verse 1 and Jesus went out and departed from the temple and his disciples came to him to show him the buildings of the temple.

And the reason they did this is because in Matthew 23, Jesus leaves the temple and he says, I leave your house unto you desolate.

Verse 2, and Jesus said unto them, see not all these things, verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here 1 stone upon another that shall not be what?

So they say, look, Jesus, look at how beautiful the temple is.

Jesus, as he walks, casually says, listen, not 1 of these stones is going to be left standing on another.

Now they thought of Jesus as the next king.

They saw that he would sit in the in the seat of David.

That's what the role of Jesus was to them.

How could he fulfill that role if he first he said he leaves the house unto the desolate, the temple, and secondly now says the temple's gonna be destroyed.

Their whole worldview begins to collapse in these verses.

Verse 3, and as he sat upon the Mount of Olives the disciples came unto him privately saying, tell us when shall these things be And what shall be the sign of your coming and of the end of the world?

This is the question people are asking now.

When the war broke out in Israel and Gaza, my realtor, great guy, atheist, He was once an Orthodox Jew, he's Jewish.

He called me and said, I need to ask you what's going on?

He knows we're Christians, so he's saying, wait a minute, what's going on?

Maybe biblically, religiously, you can figure out why such a thing is happening in the world.

We are supposed to be able to give that answer.

And Jesus answered and said unto them, take heed that no man do what?

So before Jesus begins any prophecy he gives this warning.

It's a warning you have to heed well because we are living in an age of deception.

Now deception existed immediately and even during the ministry and life of Christ, but it exploded after he died and went to heaven.

It says, for many shall come in my name saying I am Christ and shall do what deceive many has this happened you remember a guy named Jim Jones Jim Jones had a socialist church in San Francisco brought all those people to Guyana and what happened?

Some of it was mass murder because they had guns pointed to them to drink the Kool-Aid.

And so when some of you younger people, that's where we get that phrase, you know, you have to drink, you know, you got you got to drink the Kool-Aid.

It means you have to believe even if you don't want to believe.

This world has been wrought with false Christs.

Then Jesus says, see that you be not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is what?

This is 1 of the words that I would tell people.

Matthew 24 and verse 6 is a word of encouragement to the believer that the world does not end by warfare.

It is not nuclear war, atomic war, it will not be a nuclear holocaust that ends the world.

When war breaks out in Ukraine and Russia, when a war breaks out in Israel and Gaza, when wars break out in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a war that has been a deadly war yet most of the world has not even paid attention to it.

The street wars we see in Haiti now, the gang wars on our own streets here in America, all of these wars will happen, but war is not how the world ends.

Jesus says don't listen, all of that's going to happen, that's not the end.

Because nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in diverse places.

There's gonna be a lot more that happens.

Then he gives this verse I mentioned earlier in the week, Matthew 24, 8.

This is 1 of the most important verses Jesus speaks.

When I read this, and I really look at verse 7 and 6, I quake when I think that I believe, and I'm gonna show you in a second, I believe verse 6 prophesies of the great world wars.

I believe verse 7, as I'm going to show you, prophesize of some of the great natural disasters that have happened.

If we could go back, this is 2024, if we were to go back 110 years to the beginning of World War I, It was called the Great War, the war to end all wars, and it didn't end all wars, did it?

You fast forward from 1914 to the late 1930s and into the 1940s, you go into World War II, and again you thought, okay, we can win this war, we defeat evil, and there's no more war.

If you were an adult during the Second World War, and you're a man in America, you're probably off fighting in the war.

If you're a woman, you're back here driving the war machine at home.

It must have, think about the pandemic, how long it seemed like that few years lasted.

And that was a simple thing like a pandemic.

As terrible as it is, it, in my opinion, it pales in comparison to a global war.

And yet they sat through this war for years and when you think about what that psychologically did to live through such a terrible time imagine that all of that prophecy has been fulfilled and Jesus says all of that is just the beginning now let's check the prophecies now 1 of my favorite things to preach out of these prophecies and of course Jesus' prophecy comes true first in AD 70, the fall of Jerusalem.

The Roman emperor Titus comes first in I think it was AD 66 they came and they came again.

The Dark Side of Hollywood

Alright, so this is 1 of the ones we've been waiting for.

At least I like this 1 and it is full of a lot of information.

If you have a notebook, you might want to take some notes.

And because it is long, we're going to jump right into this 1 and start right away.

The scripture reading for this 1 is taken from Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 11.

And it says, "...and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

Our message, spiritualism and the dark side of Hollywood.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study your Word.

Now Lord, as we go into this, we know the devil will not be happy, so I ask first and foremost by the power of the blood of Jesus Christ that you bind Satan, bind his angels, and cast them far from this place, Lord.

Let us not hold on to things we like or want but as we go through this Lord let us see what it is we need to give up for the cause of Christ this is our prayer in Jesus's precious and holy name Amen 1 of the most important simple verses of Scripture is Philippians 2.5.

Philippians 2.5 says, let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.

The great controversy really boils down to a war for your mind.

Now I'm going to go back and do some slides from what I did the seminars a couple years ago to set the stage for what we're gonna go into.

So Revelation chapter 7 and 1 says, and after these things I saw 4 angels standing on the 4 corners of the earth, holding the 4 winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree." I don't have time to get into this, but this is telling us that God literally holds back the full weight of the consequences of sin from reaching this earth.

Verse 2 says, And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God.

And he cried with a loud voice to the 4 angels to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea.

This fifth angel cries out and says, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads I'll talk a little bit about what the seal of the Living God is in a second because that sets us up for tomorrow's message and Friday's message But what is important is that you are sealed in your forehead, and it does not mean simply an imprint on the front of your head.

Revelation 22 and verse 4 says it this way, "...and they shall see his face, and his name shall be in their foreheads.

This says, The first verse, you have this mind in you that was also in Christ Jesus, which means have the character of Christ.

The second 1 says you're gonna be sealed with the seal of the living God, also speaks to character.

The third 1 says God's name will be written in their foreheads.

The war that is going on in the world, the great controversy, really boils down to a war for your mind, for your character, for a specific part of the brain called the frontal lobe of the brain.

We may remember this from a couple years ago.

This is the part of the brain that makes us human.

The part of the brain affected when you smoke marijuana or drink alcohol even when you drink caffeine.

This is the part of the brain affected when people get into pornography.

It is the part of the brain the devil wants to destroy.

It is the part of the brain even affected by, you know, processed foods.

It is literally the part of the brain the devil wants to get at.

And we are unique as humans because the frontal lobe of the human is 33% of his brain.

The next smartest animal is a chimpanzee.

The frontal lobe is only 10%, sorry, 13% of the chimpanzee's brain.

The other smart animal is the porpoise, and the porpoise's brain is only 13% frontal lobe as well.

As you look at this, you realize when the Bible says that we were created in the image of God and that his name is to go into our frontal lobe, you realize whatever functions the frontal lobe has are in large part what makes us created in God's image.

I want you to follow this because what Satan wants to do is to keep you from being restored to God's image.

So the front lobe does these things and 1 of the key things is that it is in charge of reasoning.

It is in charge of social and sexual behavior, as we will see when we talk about some of these things in the next couple days.

Come now and let us reason together, Says the Lord.

Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.

Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as what?

The process of salvation is a process of reasoning.

It is the reasoning process that says, I am unworthy of God's mercy and grace.

It is the reasoning process that says, I cannot save myself.

And Hence, the frontal lobe of the brain must be sharp, because Satan will work to make you think you can save yourself.

He will work to make you think you do not need a Savior.

This is why the Bible over and over and over again says to be sober, to be vigilant, to watch.

Now, here's what Spirit of Prophets says.

What are you doing, brethren, in the great work of preparation?

Those who are uniting with the world are receiving the worldly mold and preparing for the mark of the beast.

I did not know this when I was a kid, but everything you do is preparing you for 1 thing or the other.

Either you're preparing to receive the seal of God or you're preparing to receive the mark of the beast.

Every television show, every song, even conversations, in general, are leaning you towards 1 or the other.

Now this frontal lobe that we talk about is if you lay out the body like the sanctuary and I've got to do a sermon on this because I get asked about it everywhere I go, but if you lay out the body like a sanctuary The mouth is like the entering into the courts and so you enter in the court with praises.

The stomach, the digestive system, would be like the brazen altar where sin is consumed or sin offering is consumed where no unclean things should be placed.

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The Rise of Spiritualism and the Occult

Social Justice, Politics and Spiritualism

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