In Revelation 10:1-11:14 we see that the church is given a prophetic witness to the church, a message which has power even over kings and nations. But has it lived up to that calling in the last 18 months?
Tag: bible
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Revelation 7: A fearless church…?
Fear has been one of the biggest factors over the past 18 months. Revelation 7 describes why we can be fearless even in the face of adversity. How does the church measure up to it?
New podcast!
As I mention in the video, the videos are now available also as a podcast if you would prefer that format. (I know YouTube doesn’t work for everyone!) You can find it here.
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Finding Rest – summer reflection
If you’re anything like me, it’s been difficult to find rest over the last few months. In this video we look at where we can find rest this summer.
Links
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The four horsemen of the apocalypse – Revelation 6
This passage is the origin of the “four horsemen of the apocalypse”. But what does it actually mean?
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Revelation 5 – who can make sense of it all?
In this part of Revelation, we find out the identity of the only one who can make sense of human history. What’s it all about?
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Are vaccine passports the Mark of the Beast?
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve heard a few times people making the comparison between vaccine passports and the Mark of the Beast. Is it appropriate to draw that comparison? In this video I look at the mark of the beast from the book of Revelation and how it relates to what’s happening with covid.
I quoted from Ian Paul’s commentary on Revelation, which is very helpful if you want to study Revelation (which is not the easiest of books to understand!).
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Covid and Biblical Principles: Truth
In my previous post I looked at the Biblical principles of safety. In this post we’re going to look at another principle which is very relevant to the current situation: truth. I want to outline a few Biblical principles for truth, and then if there’s space at the end talk a little about how we’re doing with the current situation.
Biblical principles of truth
God’s existence is the basis of all truth
I’ve just been reading the Francis Schaeffer Trilogy. In the first book, “The God who is there”, Schaeffer basically says that the whole concept of truth depends on God’s existence. If God doesn’t exist, anything goes: we can’t trust our senses, we can’t trust our intellects – eliminating God ultimately undermines any basis we have for rationality. On the other hand, if God does exist, that is the God of the Bible, then truth exists: he created the universe in this way and not that way. He gave us minds and he wants us to use them. The ultimate foundation of all truth in the universe is God.
As a side note – I wrote a post on Understand the Bible last week: Why you should read Schaeffer – True Spirituality. If you’ve never read his writings, they’re well worth reading.
The whole scientific method ultimately depends on God’s existence. This is why science flourished in a Western, Christian society – and many of the early scientists were Christians. Science requires a belief that there is a world out there and that we can discover something true about it. Only God, the Christian God, can provide the foundation of that belief. (If you’d like to know more about that, check out Part One of the session I posted last week about Genesis and Science).
The fundamental, take-away point here is that (to borrow from the X-Files) the truth is out there. It’s never pointless to try to find out the truth. The truth is not political, or determined by those who have the most power. It’s out there, and we can discover it. And, what’s more, it is the truth whether or not people believe it or not. My daughters like to listen to an artist called Colin Buchanan, and his song Truth is still true says truth is still true even if you don’t believe it. This is fundamental to science.
God is truthful
God is not just the fount of truth, he is also truthful. That means he is truthful in what he says. You can see this many places in the Bible. For example, Titus 1:2 talks about God “who does not lie”. One of the conditions for testing whether a prophet was truly from God or not was whether what they prophesied came true or not (Deuteronomy 18:22). The Psalms often associate God with truth, e.g. his laws are true (Psalm 119:142).
Jesus himself said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32). Jesus claimed to be the truth (John 14:6), and that anyone who followed him would be living in the truth which brings freedom.
So God is not just the foundation stone of truth, but he speaks truth to us. When we listen to God, we listen to the truth. In particular, this means that the Bible is true and trustworthy: when we listen to the Bible, we are listening to God’s words – words which are true.
Satan is the father of lies and enemy of truth
“You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
John 8:44If God is the foundation of truth and always truthful, by contrast Satan is the Father of lies. It is, in fact, his “native language”. You can see that from the beginning – when he deceived Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden (Genesis chapter 3).
God is truth, anything less than the truth does not come from him but from the evil one. I think it’s important to make the point that there are forces of evil out there who are seeking to lie and suppress the truth. Romans 1:18 says we human beings “suppress the truth” – we don’t want to know the truth about God, so we suppress it. We exchange the truth about God for a lie (Romans 1:25).
Whenever truth is honoured in a society, God is honoured, because God is truth. Jesus said “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me” (John 18:37). Whenever truth is not honoured in a society, it is not God who is honoured but Satan.
Christians should be concerned with the truth
Because God is truthful, Christians should also be concerned with the truth. I like to read a Psalm every day, and recently I’ve been struck by how many of them speak of our truthfulness. For example, Psalm 52:3 says of wicked people: “You love evil rather than good, falsehood rather than speaking the truth.” By contrast, Psalm 15 says that God loves someone of integrity, who “speaks the truth from their heart”.
When God rebukes the people of Israel through Jeremiah, he says “Friend deceives friend, and no one speaks the truth. They have taught their tongues to lie; they weary themselves with sinning.” (Jeremiah 9:5). The people routinely lying to each other was evidence of how depraved they had become. The people of God are to be different – Ephesians 4:15 says we should speak the truth in love to one another.
The ninth commandment forbids us from bearing false witness against our neighbour. This is how the Heidelberg Catechism interprets it:
I must not give false testimony against anyone, twist no one’s words, not gossip or slander, nor condemn or join in condemning anyone rashly and unheard. Rather, I must avoid all lying and deceit as the devil’s own works, under penalty of God’s heavy wrath. In court and everywhere else, I must love the truth, speak and confess it honestly, and do what I can to defend and promote my neighbour’s honour and reputation.
If you’re interested in learning more, you might enjoy the Understand the Bible session on Commandment #9 here.
Those who fear the Lord, who know that what he says is truth, should be concerned about truth – not just the Bible, but all truth. All truth is God’s truth. There is no sacred / secular divide when it comes to truth – if something is true, then it is God’s truth. We should stand up for and defend the truth wherever it is necessary.
Truth is sometimes difficult
The final point I want to make is that truth is not always welcome. As Jesus said in John 8:45, “Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!” Because truth is godly, there will always be ungodly people who want to lie or distort the truth. The truth can be hard for us to hear.
This is why Proverbs 27:6 says, “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.” The path of wisdom is recognising that sometimes telling the truth wounds us – yet it is good for us. This is why we should trust and appreciate friends who love us enough to tell us the truth. People who want to manipulate us will never tell us the truth. They will only ever want to tell us what we want to hear. The people who love us enough to tell the truth should be prized.
This doesn’t mean we should seek to be offensive in telling the truth! It’s possible to tell the truth in a nasty way. The film The Invention of Lying is interesting about that – just because something is true doesn’t mean you have to just come out with it! If the truth is going to be offensive, we might as well try to make sure that it’s the truth causing the offence, not the way that we say it.
So, how are we doing with covid?
One of the interesting things about the covid-19 situation is the way that truth has become politicised in the extreme. I wrote a little about this in my previous post about political truth. Let me expand on that a little.
Whenever I post up something on Facebook which is from a more ‘lockdown sceptical’ perspective (the whole fact that there are sides to begin with is a bad sign), it usually gets jumped on. The thing is, most of the time people don’t respond to the actual scientific or logical points being made. Instead, people often focus on the people. (In football speak, the play the man – not the ball).
For example, a few weeks ago in a discussion someone pointed me to this piece on the Byline Times. It largely focusses on the politics of people who question the science of lockdowns. There are very few facts or logical arguments. So, for example, Carl Heneghan and the Oxford University Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine come under fire because it receives money from a close Trump supporter. Karol Sikora, who has been outspoken about the lockdowns, comes under fire not because of science but because he has campaigned for conservative political issues.
Social media “fact-checkers” have got in on the act. For example, Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson’s piece (they are both from the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine) has been labelled as “false information”. Even though I don’t find any false information in it! And scientists who question the lockdown have received some horrendous abuse online, for example Sunetra Gupta (one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration).
It is as if truth no longer matters – the only thing that matters is agreeing with the establishment.
Why the truth matters
A recent editorial in the BMJ (the British Medical Journal – a prestigious medical journal) said: “When good science is suppressed by the medical-political complex, people die”. This is why the truth matters, especially with covid. The stakes are too high – it is literally people’s lives. But not just people who are dying from covid, but all the other factors e.g. the mental health cost of lockdown as well as the people who have died (or will die) due to not receiving the treatment the need. I talked about this in my post about the risk of lockdown.
The stakes are high for any course of action we take. Which is why it is so important that we base our decisions on the truth. The truth IS out there when it comes to covid. Christians especially have a duty to expose and live by the truth, even when it is swimming against the tide in our society.
Proclaiming Christ the truth must mean that we are concerned with truth everywhere – not just ‘gospel’ truth or Biblical truth but truth in the world as well. And, if we seek the truth, perhaps people will listen:
“the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
John 18:37Postscript: Truth issues around covid
I didn’t want to go into too much detail in my post about issues around the truth and covid. It’s easy to get bogged down. My problem is that there is so little truth in this whole situation. Let me give a few pointers, you could just go on and on about this. I suggest Toby Young’s website Lockdown Sceptics for a starting point.
Why is so much of the government’s response reliant on PCR tests? We know there are problems with the tests – for example, there is a false positive rate. There are also problems with tests being run by people with very little training. See, for example, the recent Channel 4 Dispatches programme about covid testing. In other words, when a test comes back positive, if the person in question has no symptoms, how do we know it’s a “case”? Dr John Lee wrote about this back in October. Here’s a good video from Dr Clare Craig talking about the problem with testing:
How can we be confident that the number of covid deaths is accurate? A covid death is currently defined as someone dying within 28 days of a positive test. Regardless of whether the cause of death was actually covid or not. I have personally heard of two stories from people I know (clergy) who have done funerals recently: one died of a heart attack, one of a road traffic accident. Both of these were listed as covid deaths – even though covid had nothing to do with the cause of death. From what I hear on social media, this kind of thing is happening enough to get noticed. Why are we not actually looking at people who are actually ill? The ZOE app from Kings College London, for example, tracks people with actual symptoms rather than just test results. That tells a somewhat different story.
Why are the official statistics unclear? Just this morning I read an interesting thread about excess non-covid deaths. Why are these not being picked up on? And why do the government rarely ever put deaths in context, e.g. comparing the number of actual deaths against the number we usually expect at this time of year?
Do lockdowns have any positive effect at all? There are lots of scientific studies on lockdowns now, and they show that lockdowns make little (if any) difference to mortality, and they have huge harmful effects. Ivor Cummins has a summary on his website. (Check out the rest of his YouTube channel for lots of analysis of the data).
You could carry on and on. So much of what most people seem to believe about covid is scientifically disputable, or at least, more complicated than what we are led to believe.
A final plea…
Please don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not trying to say the very existence of all these opinions makes them right. However, as I said, the stakes here are too high. Why are these things not being discussed or addressed by the government? Why does the establishment narrative not get questioned with the rigor it deserves? As the BMJ said, when truth is suppressed, when it becomes political, then people die. I want to seek the truth wherever it lies, not whatever is politically convenient.
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Covid and Biblical Principles: Safety
Over the last few months, I’ve seen a lot of talk about safety. It’s important to keep everybody safe. We especially need to keep those in vulnerable groups safe. But not many people have been thinking about what safety actually is, or putting it in context. I thought it might be helpful to think a little about safety from a Christian perspective, and then look at how that might apply in our churches and communities.
Biblical principles of safety
We should take safety seriously
When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof.
Deuteronomy 22:8The book of Deuteronomy contains various practical laws, such as this one. Obviously it was written for a people who lived in a hot climate, where flat roofs were the norm! But I think the principle here is a good one. If you are building a house, then you should consider safety. If you don’t, then if something bad happens the guilt will be yours. And that’s no small matter – you would be guilty of bloodshed.
The point to take away from this it’s not just right but essential to take reasonable precautions. They flow from the second greatest commandment – to love our neighbour. Loving our neighbour means protecting them where possible. Failing in this duty is a serious business.
We should quarantine the sick
‘Anyone with such a defiling disease must wear torn clothes, let their hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of their face and cry out, “Unclean! Unclean!” As long as they have the disease they remain unclean. They must live alone; they must live outside the camp.
Leviticus 13:45-46
Another law from the Old Testament. There is a whole section in Leviticus about ‘defiling diseases’, diseases which could spread through a community. If someone caught one of these, they were to isolate. (The ancient Israelites were doing self-isolation before self-isolation was cool.) In fact, quarantining those who are sick with an infectious disease is just common sense.
Now I’m not advocating someone letting their hair be unkempt and shouting out “unclean! unclean!” But the principle of quarantine is sound. If you have symptoms of an infectious disease such as the flu or covid, don’t go out. That’s a sensible precaution, and it’s for the benefit of the community.
There is just one thing to add here: the Bible does not talk about quarantining healthy people. I guess that’s because, if you don’t know who is sick, you would end up quarantining everyone! I think this is a sensible way of looking at things – maybe we can come back to this at a later date.
Safety must be proportionate to enjoying life
Recently in our midweek service, I preached through the book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is a fascinating book, if you want to get into it I can thoroughly recommend David Gibson’s book Destiny (“Learning to live by preparing to die”). I was really struck by Ecclesiastes 9:1-12 when it comes to safety.
That passage makes a few points which are relevant:
- “The race is not to the swift” – in other words, the fastest runner doesn’t always win the race. You could also say, the one who takes the most precautions isn’t always safest. “Time and chance happen to them all”
- “No one knows when their hour will come” – dark times can meet all of us, and we don’t know when. We can’t always protect against in, in fact very often we can’t. The hour of our own death is not in our hands.
- So – we should enjoy life: “Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do.” Death is inevitable, it will happen. Rather than trying to put it off at all costs, we should remember that ultimately it is in God’s hands and seek to enjoy life in the here and now as a gift from him.
The big take away from this passage for me is that it’s pointless to try to prolong our lives at the expense of enjoying our lives. A modern way of putting it would be to say quality of life matters as much or perhaps even more than quantity. Life is there to be enjoyed as a gift from God.
Safety is only found in God
In the Bible, safety is not defined as “no bad things happening”. Safety depends on our relationship with God, ultimately. Over the last few months I’ve been working my way through the Psalms in my Thought for the Week series on Understand the Bible. What struck me is how many of the Psalms were written because David (or whichever Psalmist is writing) is going through a hard time. Just this morning, for example, I read Psalm 3. That starts out:
Lord, how many are my foes!
How many rise up against me!Does that sound safe to you? It doesn’t to me! But then David goes on:
But you, Lord, are a shield around me,
my glory, the One who lifts my head high.For David, safety wasn’t about stopping bad things from happening. It was about a confidence and trust in God that he would protect him even through those times. There’s a line in Psalm 112 which I often think of: “They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord.” I like it because it assumes that we will get bad news from time to time – but we have no need to fear it. We can trust in the Lord despite everything.
At the end of the day, safety comes from God. Psalm 4:8, “In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.”
So – safety is something which transcends our circumstances. Safety is a secure trust that, whatever we do or wherever we go, God is in control and working for our good. Even if bad things happen, they will turn out for good. Even death itself is in God’s hands – all our days are numbered.
We shouldn’t worry
Bobby McFerrin: Definitely not Jesus! Jesus famously said in Matthew 6:27: “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” We can’t add any time to our lives by worrying. In fact, as Psalm 139 puts it: “all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” God has all our days in hand, virus or no virus. Those who believe and trust in Jesus have no need to worry. God will keep us safe. Alec Motyer once put it this way: “With God, there is no such thing as an untimely death.” This is our confidence – that God is the one who decides the day we die, not us or the safety precautions we’ve taken.
For Christians, at the end of the day death has no power over us, and we should not fear it. As Hebrews 2:14-15 puts it:
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
We no longer need to fear death or be held in slavery by it.
Better to fear God than be safe
‘I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
Luke 12:4-5Christians should fear God more than we fear death. Over the years, this has caused many Christians to act in very self-sacrificial and heroic ways. Hebrews 11:37-38 says about some of the heroic people of faith:
They were put to death by stoning; they were sawn in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and ill-treated – the world was not worthy of them.
These people obeyed God and did not fear death. They were more concerned to do the right thing then to remain safe. Throughout history, Christians have eschewed their own personal safety for acts of love, kindness, and bravery. In times of plague, for example, they might have been the only people who were willing to stay and help the victims. (Richard Turnbull’s lecture for the Christian Institute on plagues and Christian history is worth watching).
Disobedience to God is not safe
One thing which is explicitly named as not being safe in the Bible is disobeying God. For example:
However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you … The Lord will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish.
Deuteronomy 28:15, 21-22So plague is named as one of the things which God could bring upon the Israelites as a result of their disobedience. Several times in the Old Testament God sends a plague upon the people for their sin (e.g. Numbers 16).
Traditionally, plague has been seen by the church as a sign of God’s judgement and displeasure. The Book of Common Prayer, for example, contains this prayer to be said “in the time of any common plague or sickness”:
O ALMIGHTY God, who in thy wrath didst send a plague upon thine own people in the wilderness, for their obstinate rebellion against Moses and Aaron; and also, in the time of king David, didst slay with the plague of pestilence threescore and ten thousand, and yet remembering thy mercy didst save the rest: Have pity upon us miserable sinners, who now are visited with great sickness and mortality; that like as thou didst then accept of an atonement, and didst command the destroying Angel to cease from punishing, so it may now please thee to withdraw from us this plague and grievous sickness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Drawing it all together
Safety is a Biblical concept. I think it’s right to be concerned about it, as we saw with the laws from the Old Testament. We have a duty of care to each other. It’s also right to take sensible precautions like quarantining the sick. However, the precautions we take should not be so extreme they stop us from living and enjoying life in the way God wants us to.
Ultimately, safety is something that can only go so far: we may think we are safe and secure, but – like the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12) – our lives may be demanded of us. Our safety is found ultimately in Christ, and in fact however ‘safe’ we may be, it is never safe to be disobedient to God.
So, what should our response to covid be in society and in the church?
In society
We know that it’s important to take precautions. At the same time, we know it’s possible to be over-cautious. Quality of life is important. There is a sensible ‘middle ground’ which isn’t going too far either way.
Here’s the question: what IS being too cautious or too reckless? I’ve been going on too long now so that will have to wait for another time. But I think what we’ve seen here has laid the groundwork for an answer.
In the church
Safety is an important principle, but there are more important things. In particular, where safety conflicts with obedience to God then we must obey God. I would suggest the church needs to look carefully at what it means to sing, worship, have fellowship with each other, and so on. How important we see these things will determine how we should relate them to safety.
The next part of the series is on Truth.
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Laura Bates, teenage boys and misogyny
Earlier on I read an interesting interview with Laura Bates, the founder of the Everyday Sexism website. (The interview itself is behind a paywall but you can register with the Times to get free access to a limited number of articles per month). The interview itself is pretty shocking:
What I do not recognise from the 1980s, however, is a subgenre of sexism that Bates encounters again and again when she visits schools to talk to teenagers. It makes no difference if the school is private or state, co-ed or single sex, in the south or the north; everywhere she goes, boys say the same things. “Rape is a compliment, really,” they tell her. “It’s not rape if she enjoys it.” “It’s normal for girls to cry during sex.” “A girl has to have sex with you if you’re her boyfriend.” Why does Bates even bother talking about consent and assault, they demand, “when everyone knows so many women lie about it”?
I have difficulty believing that boys talk about rape in such casual terms, but it’s not surprising given the access that teenagers now have to pornography. The article explains further:
What happens between 11 and 13, of course, is that most children get smartphones — and by the age of 12, a quarter will have seen online porn. “When parents think about their children seeing porn, quite often they’re thinking about kids seeing an online version of an FHM centrefold or a Playboy spread.” In fact, if you type “porn” or “sex” into Google, “you’re likely to be presented with videos that are specifically about hurting women, degrading women, abusing women, raping women — very young women, schoolgirls; women who are subject to extreme racial stereotypes; women who are categorised as busty Asian sluts or virgin teens. It’s not something that you go looking for. This kind of really misogynistic, extreme stuff is what boys are seeing at the top of the pile. Then we wonder why they’re confused and have these ideas about what sex looks like.”
I quite agree – and this is one of the things I talk about on Friend Zone. I think young boys (and girls too) often have negative or damaging views about sex, which come – in part – from watching pornography. These is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that many teenagers are learning about sex from the internet – and, of course, learning all the wrong things.
So far, so depressing. What interested me about all this is that Laura Bates didn’t really seem to have any solutions. Feminism isn’t really working, because (she says) the boys are being got to by ‘alt-right’ ideological extremism. (She mentions Milo Yiannopoulos, although I wonder whether someone like Jordan Peterson might qualify as well. If you haven’t seen it, you should definitely watch his interview with Cathy Newman which has managed to rack up 14 million views to date – with good reason).
I wonder if the problem isn’t a bit more basic. The problem is the basic message in our society of sexual liberation: people basically want the freedom to have sex with whoever they want, whenever they want – the only real value is consent. The problem is, sexual liberation and consent are in opposition: you can’t have full liberation so long as there is the barrier of consent.
My view is that consent is not, and will never be, enough to stop boys and men from taking advantage of women. You can’t say to young boys “the best thing about life is sex. You need to make sure you have the best sex life possible, because it’s the ultimate thing about life” – and then, in the same breath, tell them: “only… make sure it’s consensual”. It’s a nonsense! In the world of sexual ethics, where consent is the only value, then there are effectively no values.
The solution to the problem is not to try and hammer home the value of consent – you need to question the more fundamental message about sexual liberty.
It seems to me that there is a reason why God designed sex to be within the confines of marriage. As I have already quoted on this blog, talking about #MeToo:
Sex is like fire. In the fireplace it keeps us warm. Outside the fireplace it burns down the house.
Ray OrtlundIf our society stopped trying to promote the one value of consent and started trying to promote marriage instead, I think we would see this problem begin to fade away. Many young women think they must have sex in order for men to like them – they think if they insist on marriage, it will rule them out of the game. But the problem is – and I see this all the time – that young men use this to get what they want without any of the responsibility. It’s why so many mums are raising children on their own. Mark Regnerus talks about this in his book Cheap Sex. If women insisted on the traditional Judeo-Christian ethic of sex – that is, sex should happen only within marriage – then men would be forced to take responsibility, which seems to me to be what Laura Bates is aiming at.
As I was reading the interview, I felt my heart breaking: people have got no idea of which way is up any more. There is a huge problem in society, virtually everyone agrees on that – but no-one seems to be willing to admit that the solution might be dethroning the god of sexual liberation.
You cannot have your cake and eat it. How many more young people will have to be hurt before we realise that?
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What’s wrong with mediums?
What’s wrong with mediums?
I’ve noticed that a lot of people where I live are into mediums. The local community centre runs a regular (or semi-regular) night with a medium coming in. Not long ago I saw a ‘psychic fair’ being advertised. I’ve seen friends on Facebook keen to have palm readings and other things – some of whom I wouldn’t have thought were into that kind of thing.
What I find surprising about all this is how most people seem to think that mediums do actually work, at least sometimes, and that there isn’t really any harm in using them.
The traditional Christian understanding is that mediums are not just harmful but expressly forbidden. Let me try to explain why.
Who’s in charge?
I think most people would say the spiritual world is real, but we don’t know much about it. A lot of people have a view that the recently departed ‘hang around’ in this world, for at least a period of time after death, and are able to communicate with the living through mediums. One of the biggest reasons for using a medium in the first place is to try and communicate with a loved one who is dearly missed (a perfectly understandable response to grief).
But the question I have is – who is in charge of these spirits? Do they have free reign to roam anywhere? Can you be sure it’s genuine, or could it even be a harmful and deceiving spirit? There are forces of evil as well as good. How do we know what we’re dealing with in the spiritual realm?
And is there anyone in charge of this whole mess? Is God there, is he in control, and does he have anything to say about it? This is where the Bible comes in.
What the Bible says
In the book of Deuteronomy, part of the Old Testament, God says this to his people:
Let no one be found among you who … is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord … You must be blameless before the Lord your God.
Deuteronomy 18:10-13Now I haven’t gone into all the context, but I think the message is pretty clear – and it’s a message which is repeated several times throughout the Bible. God’s people are forbidden from consulting mediums etc. But why? We find the answer to that in the New Testament.
Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Ephesians 6:11-12Our struggle is not against flesh and blood – it is against ‘spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms’. What the apostle Paul is saying here is that we face a struggle every day against evil, but that’s not just because evil exists on a human level – it is because evil exists on a spiritual level. In other words, Satan and demons really do exist and they are in opposition to God and everything good.
When people turn to mediums and the like, they are opening themselves up to a world of pain. It says elsewhere that Jesus came “to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8) – not to encourage people into it!
Let me spell it out: if through a medium you speak to the spirit world, you will not be speaking to the spirit of someone recently departed. You will be speaking to evil, a spirit who intends you harm, a spirit who intends to keep you from the truth and keep you from God. In fact, I would say the best possible outcome with a medium is that they’re actually lying and using psychological tricks (like Derren Brown).
Nothing good will ever come from using a medium or spiritist.
What should we do instead?
Most people look to mediums for comfort and reassurance. I can sympathise with that. A few years ago my Mum died of cancer, and it was a very difficult time. I can understand the reaction that people have when losing someone close! But for me, in the case of my Mum, I am 100% certain that I know where she is.
The Bible says:
Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-15I know that Mum is with the Lord, the Lord she loved and served her whole life, and one day she will be raised to life in the new creation – along with all those who love and trust in Jesus. I don’t need to consult a medium, because I know where Mum is.
And that’s the thing: anyone who has died is now in the hands of God. They are not spirits floating around this earth until they move onto the next plane. They do not have liberty to speak to whoever they would like to speak to. They are with God. And if you want to be comforted in the face of death, you need to speak to the one who overcame death, to the one who holds our lives in his hands, to the only one who can grant eternal life.
I’m going to finish with some words of Jesus which we often speak on at funerals.
‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.’
Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’
Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me
John 14:1-6The answer to suffering and death is not mediums, but rather Jesus Christ. He alone is the way, the truth, and the life. He alone can forgive us of our sins (including using mediums), can bring us to God and assure us of our eternal destiny.