What About Occult Practices?

An individual once asked me, “What about occult practices, such as divination, reading tarot cards, or fortune tellers? Or looking to astrology to see how to plan each day of your life? Or trying to speak to the dead through mediums?”

Any kind of divination (attempting to foretell the unknown by occult means) is condemned in the Bible as an abomination (Deuteronomy 18:11-12), punishable by death (Leviticus 20:6,27). It was considered a fraudulent system (Ezekiel 13:6-7).

God gave His people a stern warning regarding them (Leviticus 19:31; cf. Exodus 22:18; Isaiah 8:19; Acts 16:16-18). By reading Acts 13:6-11, we can readily see what happened to Elymas the sorcerer.

The word, “sorcerer” (Grk. – magos) in Acts 13:6,8, refers to “a wizard, sorcerer, a pretender to magic powers, a professor of the arts of witchcraft”. Where Bar-Jesus was the Jewish name, Elymas, an Arabic word meaning “wise.” Hence the name Magus, “the magician,” originally applied to Persian priests (Vines, 1996, p. 587).

—Mike Riley, Gospel Snippets