counterfeits:

The Truth About Harry Potter

A Temcat study

The Truth About 'Magic'

‘Magic’; the very word seems to mean fun and games and excitement to children of today. This week we want to take a closer look at what it means, and how Satan is using it to trick so many adults and children into chasing after something that is not at all real.

I don’t think there is anybody who has not at sometime said or thought that they wish they could just snap their fingers or wave their hands and something would instantly happen. One of the reasons we wish this, is because people are naturally lazy, and would rather not work if they can get out of it. This is one of the things that Jesus changes in our hearts when we give them over to Him; He starts teaching us that work is really a blessing.

Notice in Genesis 3 that God said man would have to live by the sweat of his face. That is, he would have to work, and work hard to live. Was this just a punishment to man for having sinned? No, it was to be a blessing to him.

When we look at another verse in the Bible we see more about this. “Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her…” Ezekiel 16:49. Sodom had what so many of us think we would like to have, lots of free time, and plenty to eat, and lots of luxuries.

But what happened to Sodom as a result of this life of laziness and pleasure? The people became so wicked and so bad, that God finally rained fire down and burned up the whole city! He had to do this, or the wickedness there would spread to the whole world and destroy it all.

So you see that work is a blessing, not a punishment. But like I said, everyone has times when they wish they could do magic and get whatever they wanted to happen instantly.

So what if you could really do this? Would it make you happy? We think it would; but just imagine this scene. Your Daddy comes home one day with a wonderful present for you. It is a building set that you can use to build the most wonderful toy houses and cars and things. You can’t wait to sit down with it and build something.

But your Daddy asks you what you want from the instruction book. You take a look and decide you would like to try a car first. So your Daddy says, “Sit down over there and watch while I build the car.” So he builds and you watch. When he is done he hands you the car.

Well, that is sort of nice, but now you hope you can get a turn to build. But no, again he tells you to sit and watch, and he builds another thing and hands it to you. After a while you would start to feel very bad that you could not find out what it felt like to make a toy yourself.

This is what God knew about us, He knew that most of the fun in something is in the doing of it. He knew that there is great happiness in working hard to do something, and finally getting it all done, and seeing the result of our work. In fact the Bible in Proverbs, the very last verse, says the way to reward a hard working wife and mother, is to let her enjoy the work of her hands.

It also says that the people who get to go to heaven, will enjoy the work of their hands. (Isaiah 65:22) What? Work in heaven? For sure! Because God knows that honest work brings the greatest happiness to us.

So you see, Satan likes to give us the idea that what God gave to us as a blessing, is a curse, and he tells us if we could have magic and be able to make things appear or get done instantly, then we would be happier.

He gets people into trying magic spells, which really are ways of worshipping him, and then sometimes he has his angels make something happen for the person. For example, they may try a spell to make a table float to the ceiling. They do all the things the spell says, and sure enough, the table floats to the ceiling. The person thinks HE has found some wonderful secret and that HE has some power that other people don’t have. This is the bait on the trap and now Satan lures him into more and more ‘magic’. By the way, silly, useless things like this are mostly what magic does for you-remember; a table isn’t much use on the ceiling!

But what I want you to know is this; and please, never forget it! Those ‘spells’ and secret words and secret potions and mysterious motions; or crystals and wands, magic symbols or things supposed to have some power in them; are just worthless! It is all a bunch of meaningless garbage.

There is only one way that any one these things work- Satan or his angels do the work and make the person think it was his power or special knowledge that made it happen. You can see what a trap this is if you think about it for a while. Satan can finally lead people to do the most horrible, cruel things, because the person is so sure that if he only does it-he will then have a special power and he wants that power so badly that he will even kill for to get it.

Yes, boys and girls, we have even had people write to us in emails, without giving their names and tell us they have committed murder. They are not even sorry about it-they are proud of it. These people can become so tricked by Satan’s lies that they think that even Satan himself, has to obey them. That is what the head of the ‘Church of Satan’; Anton LeVey believed. Satan sure must laugh about that one!

There is an old folk tale from Russia that also shows the foolishness of seeking for Magic thinking it will make us happy. There was a little girl in a village in Russia, and her job was to cook porridge in a great big pot for the people to eat.

The story goes that she kept wishing she knew of some magic that would make the pot do the cooking all by itself. One day she found a spell and used it. Sure enough, the pot began to make porridge. The people were thrilled; they had all they wanted to eat. People came from other places and ate porridge too, but the pot kept cooking more and more, until finally so much porridge poured from the pot that the whole village was buried and perished.

A silly story indeed, but it shows how silly the idea of magic is. If you only had to snap your fingers to get what you want, or to do your work, it would get very boring and nothing would really mean anything to you anymore.

No, boys and girls, God’s ways are always happiest for us. The only real ‘Magic’ worth learning in this world, is the magic of skill and hard work, so that when the task is finished, you can have that happy joy that comes from a job well done.

Continued =^..^=

COUNTERFEITS - 4

Believers or Unbelievers

There are several mistakes people make about miracles, or supernatural events. One is the most common; these folks just say they don’t believe any miracles or supernatural things ever happen. They think it is all a trick. These are also the folks that tend to say books like Harry Potter are ‘Just Pretend’ and so perfectly all right to read.

Now these people are easiest for Satan to fool, because all he needs is to do something or tell them something that they think nobody else knows about, and right away they are convinced.

The sad thing about these people is that when they are convinced, they go right into believing whatever the ‘occult’ teacher or psychic counselor told them. They do not question it, or go to the Bible and see what the warnings are. This is because when they didn’t believe in anything, they didn’t believe in God or the Bible either. Now they end up believing whatever Satan feels like telling them; Very sad indeed!

Now another group believes that all miracles and supernatural things don’t come from God or the devil; but they are sure that it is just some law of science that hasn’t been discovered yet. They don’t believe in either God or the devil, and laugh at people who do believe. They think they are ‘very scientific’ and they often get involved in learning ‘magic’ or ‘new age’ stuff because they think it is the way to explore ‘unknown science.’

These people are the ones that tell you, that man only uses just a tiny part of his brain (maybe that is all they do use) and all these ‘miracle powers’ are really just abilities in our brains that we can learn to use. They think we have a lot of abilities in there from the animals we evolved from.

Most of them think our ‘mind’ or ‘soul’ cannot die, and so they are open to being fooled by Satan’s angels into talking with famous ‘dead people’ who are just evil angels in disguise. They will believe whatever these tricky demons tell them. Some, who don’t talk to ‘dead people’, talk to ‘aliens’ from outer space, which are Satan’s angels also.

These folks are also the ones that think the universe is full of ‘powers’ that we can learn to tap into, by linking our brain somehow to them. These people are spiritualists, but will get very mad at you if you tell them that. They are so sure it is just some kind of science they are involved in. Satan can fool them very easily, and really, science is the god they worship.

Now I want to mention another little group; this group was very common back when the missionaries first went into the heathen lands. These people believe in devils!! They KNOW there is such a thing as devils, and they live their whole lives in fear of offending the demons.

They often believe that every stone and tree and animal has a demon spirit in it and so they practice all kinds of things to try and make sure the demons don’t get mad at them. Often they have to make costly sacrifices, and offer what little food they may have to the devil-gods. They also believe that dead people’s spirits walk the earth.

These people are ruled over by witch-doctors or devil-devil people, who often get rich by keeping the poor people so afraid to offend them. These people worship all these spirit-gods, and live a sad life of fear. When our missionaries first told them that God up in Heaven loved them and could protect them from devils, it seemed too good to be true. Many believed and were able to break free of the devils and live in the love of Jesus.

There is another little group in our world, who know the truth about Lucifer, and yet they worship him willingly, because they are fooled into believing that he will win the fight against God; and he will make them rich and famous. Often he does make them rich and famous; but Satan can’t give anybody life-and when they are dead, being rich and famous is no use at all! Some of these people help to make books and movies about things like Harry Potter, because by doing this, they know it helps their master Satan, to fool more people.

Now many Christians fall into a different trap. They say they believe in God; but they don’t believe in Satan and his angels. When they do this they don’t really believe God or the Bible, because they are calling God and Jesus a liar. Satan and his angels are talked about in God’s Word and Jesus talked about Satan when He was on earth.

If these people see a miracle or something supernatural, just right away think it comes from God. No matter how weird it is, or even if it doesn’t agree at all with the Bible, they are sure it comes from God. Many Catholics,and some people in all other churches as well, are like this. Most of these people also believe the ‘soul’ lives on after the body dies, and so Satan can have an easy time fooling them. Satan fools these people with weeping statues; pictures that bleed; appearances of the Virgin Mary, and all kind of things.

I want to especially tell you that there are other, more sneaky ways that he is fooling Christians today, even many Adventists! It is through ‘feelings and emotions’. People believe that if they are in a church or a church group, and they are talking about Jesus, and singing about Jesus, that Satan cannot fool them. So they think that whatever happens to them must come from God and the Holy Spirit!

It is happening often that people who get together to ‘pray for the Holy Spirit’, end up having some strange feeling or action come to them. Some get a wonderful excited, happy feeling and go dancing about or clapping or shouting. Others feel something like a shock or a blow and they fall down helpless to the floor, usually backwards.

On the floor they may roll around or cry or make noises or just be paralyzed. Some people in groups like this start laughing and they can’t stop; or they make noises like animals, pigs, lions, dogs or chickens. Some stagger around as if they were drunk.

Boys and girls, Satan is not afraid anymore to go to church! We are told that in the last days, and the last days are here now, that he will pretend to be ‘converted’ and appear as an 'angel of light'. Many ministers claiming to work for God are really just working for Satan, some of them know it, but most of them don’t know it, and really think it is God guiding them!

There are many danger signs that you can watch for. If a person or a group does not like to spend time reading or learning from the Bible, but would just rather talk, or sit around ‘meditating’ or praying in groups for the ‘spirit’; If they ever make fun of the Bible, saying it is boring; especially the King James Version, or the writings of Ellen White; if they like to talk a lot about ‘feelings’ and loving everybody and do a lot of hugging and kissing; if instead of Bible and Spirit of Prophecy they use sentimental stories or jokes; if they want to use music that has a strong Rock and Roll beat, or makes you feel like clapping and swaying; if they make fun of ‘old fashioned hymns’ or they don’t want to be around older folks in the church; if they think that young people should only have their own meetings or groups, and not have any older people to guide them; if they act or talk as if they do not have to worry about sin or obeying God, but “just do our own thing”; these are all danger signals!!

Another danger signal is a person that tells you they have a special ‘gift’ from the Holy Spirit, and you should come to them for counsel. Or they may want to lay hands on you, so you can have the gift too. If you are invited to go to a meeting and you have heard there are strange things happening, people falling down, or even “healings” taking place; do not go there, as you are walking into Satan’s ground, and you can be fooled and harmed by him if you do. If you go to a meeting or group and you didn’t know before that strange things were happening, but the people start talking about them, or doing them, or telling you how to get some ‘wonderful feelings or power’ from the Holy Spirit; or any of the danger signals are there, get up and leave quickly, warn the others they better leave too, but get out, even if they won’t come with you, or even if they laugh at you.

Satan is coming to church, boys and girls, and you don’t want to be fooled by him! He is counterfeiting the real blessings that Jesus wants His children to have.

There is only one group of people that are going to stay faithful to Jesus and go to heaven with Him; they will be those who give all their heart to Jesus and choose to obey Him. They will read and study the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy until they know it well, and obey it, even if they have to do it alone! They will not just hang around in groups, but will study on their own. They will put away all wrong entertainment out of their lives. They will pray for the power of Jesus and the Holy Spirit in their lives, not to give them funny feelings or make them do strange things, or so they can boast about being ‘someone special’, but to overcome sin and serve the Lord.

These people will have real guidance and power in their lives, but they will not be boastful or pretend to have some ‘special gift’ that other people can’t have; Oh, No, they will be humble and quiet, and will talk more about God and the Bible than they talk about themselves or other people. They will not act silly or go after parties or entertainment. Also they will not excuse sin! They will learn to ‘walk with God’ as Enoch did long ago. You too CAN CHOOSE to be like this if you will seek to know Jesus and obey Him.

Continued =^..^=

RETURN