Magic in the Modern Church

'The time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths' (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

That remarkable verse about sums up the major crisis in the modern church. {Side note: we are aware that godly, Bible teaching churches exist today; when we say the 'church' we refer to the majority of churches, not necessarily all of them.) Some of our most prominent 'teachers' have been quoted as saying: 'We need to make the modern church relevant to our times.' The danger here lies in modern man's desire to shape reality around his will. Atheism, New Thought, Charismatic, Word of Faith, and Theoretical Physicists all support this line of thought. They all claim or at least deductively suggest that man has power within himself to create his reality.

Revealingly, this hokum comes from the Law of Positive Attraction, which states that to create a particular reality one must put out energy of a similar sort (positive energy), and the Law of Words of Power, which states that certain words are able to alter internal and external realities of those uttering them (according to one prominent preacher/author the words 'I Am' can change your reality). THESE PRINCIPLES ARE LAWS OF MAGIC! That's right, they come from magician Isaac Bonewits' book of magic Authentic Thaumaturgy.

A long time ago man decided to shape reality, to make a name for himself (birth of pride?). We got together and tried to reach heaven on our terms. How did God react? He understood that if man achieved real power, his pride would always lead him to making the wrong choices, so He confused man's language, and scattered mankind. This was the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, btw.

The point is that mankind does not possess the wisdom or authority to decide what is right and wrong. When we attempt to take this authority (always without the wisdom) our efforts lead to division and strife. This is why we cannot agree on the rights of abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research, wars, etc. Only God has the right, only God has the wisdom. What His WORD says, we should follow. As the Bible is the only divinely inspired document in the world, we should look therein for guidance. Our attempts to modernize the church are being guided by our desire to hear new things, different things, easy things that are not always biblical things. The more we modernize the church, the more we compromise our faith in His WORD and the further we distance ourselves from Him. Reality (change in the church) ought to be shaped by the Word of God. Sin is still sin. Tolerance for sin may increase church attendance, but it diminishes the Kingdom.

'Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!' (Matthew 7:23).