Some truths are difficult to accept…. I know. I get it. The church especially has a hard time adjusting its beliefs, even when history or translation errors get it wrong.
I. What is The Problem With Divination
Divination is to foresee, foretell, predict, prophesy, or be inspired by a god. It is the attempt to know the will of God to gain insight into a question or situation by occult means or rituals. To practice divination is to peek into the stars. It’s like spying on God to discover his will and uncover hidden information by supernatural means.
Horoscopes, tarot cards, and angel numbers are common forms of divination in the new age community. You can even find them in bookstores today. They seem harmless and even kind of fun. There are other deeper forms of divination, such as palmistry, fortune telling, pendulums, bibliomancy, necromancy, spiritism, sorcery, ouija boards, tea leaf readings, witchcraft, etc.
According to the Bible, all forms of divination are to be avoided because it’s an attempt to use some form of method or magick to know what’s hidden. To the church, it’s occultism and possibly demonic because it’s an individual’s desire to know the future when it hasn’t happened yet. The Bible is against fortune telling because nobody can accurately predict the future and the future isn’t for us to know.
“There shall not be found among you anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens.” (Deut 18:10) The prophet Samuel said rebellion is like the sin of divination. (1 Sam 15:23) It is something to be rebuked or exorcised, just like the Apostle Paul did in the book of Acts. The apostle met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune telling. Paul believed the girl’s ability to know the future was demonic, so he rebuked the spirit, who immediately left her. From this passage, if the spirit of divination was a good spirit, it wouldn’t have left upon hearing Jesus’s name, but it ran. According to the Bible, divination is a spirit, just like the spirit of fear and neither of them is from God.
The church believes the enemy gives those who are destined to do good things the spirit of divination so that they can never receive the Holy Spirit to help them achieve those things. They believe the devil has a counterfeit gift for every true spiritual gift to distract people. For discernment or prophecy, he gives people the spirit of divination.
To the church, horoscopes, tarot, and angel numbers aren’t harmless entertainment or an alternate source of wisdom. It’s satanic because it is not of God.
But is there any truth in that?
Divination is to foresee, foretell, predict, prophesy, or be inspired by a god. It is the attempt to know the will of God or gain insight into a question or situation by occult means or rituals.
II. Is It a Real Problem?
The Bible says many things about divination, and none of it is positive. But there’s one story where a great man of God practiced divination and still found favor in the eyes of God.
In the book of Genesis, Joseph, son of Jacob, tests his brothers who sold him by returning their money in each sack of grain they had purchased. In Benjamin’s sack, he places his special divination cup. After the brothers leave for home, Joseph sends his steward after them and tells him to say “Why have you repaid evil for good? Isn’t this the cup my master drinks from and also uses for divination?”
When his brothers are brought back, Joesph says to them, “What is this you have done? Don’t you know that a man like me can find things out by divination”?
Joseph’s claim to have knowledge by divination conflicts with the Bible’s condemnation of divination. Yet God blessed him abundantly.
How so?
The church argues that Joseph’s use of the divining cup was not real, but just to test his brothers. Others believe there is no indication that Joseph actually used the cup for divination, even though he said it. Some others say divination was common in the Egyptian court where Joseph was in prison. Laban once said to Jacob, “I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you” (Genesis 30:27) The church also thinks that although unlikely, that was one of the few cases where God allowed Joseph to use a divining cup for discernment but in all other cases, it is a sin…. Yeah. Tell that to any unbeliever and they’ll scoff and call God a hypocrite which would be more than a reasonable thing to say. However, God is not mocked…. so why does He contradict Himself OFTEN throughout the Bible? Perhaps it is US who is simply not reading it with the lense God expects us to use.
Something isn’t quite right with all of those arguments. A sin is a sin! It would be unlike God to tell someone to sin just one time.
If you pay close attention to the passages above, you will find that Joseph and Laban’s use of divination was early on in Genesis and it seemed okay by God. What if God allowed it back then? What if it was okay to practice divination in the early days? What if it wasn’t a sin but became a sin later when it was misused? What if God actually placed signs and messages in the sky for people to access?
In the book of Luke, Jesus said, “And there will be signs in the sun and moon and stars.” (21:25)
And there are indeed signs and messages in the sun and the moon. If you know someone is a Pisces zodiac sign, then you can understand why they’re so interested in the mystical and have the tendency to escape to other worlds. If they are a Virgo, then you can understand why they reject anything mystical because they’re so logical and scientific. If you know there’s a full moon, then you can understand why your emotions are heightened and people are acting like lunatics. If you know Mercury is retrograde, then you can understand why your laptop just won’t cooperate. Also, it was the stars that led the three wise men to Jesus. Looking for signs in the sun and the moon is innocent until you bow down and worship them.
“And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.” (Deuteronomy 4:19)
In ancient times, worship of created things was literal. People worshiped the sun, moon, and stars as gods and even named the planets after Roman gods. Divination is a sin if it causes you to make false gods and idols out of the sun the moon and the stars and worship them. It’s a sin if it makes you turn your back on God. It’s a sin if you are waking up in the morning and checking your horoscope before saying your morning prayer….
God doesn’t want his people to practice divination because divination started to be used to predict and foretell the future. Foretelling can be destructive when it changes the natural course of things.
So if your divination doesn’t predict the future or do anything dark and is as simple as a Wednesday horoscope in your email or looking at the zodiac sign of a crush, is it still a sin and a real problem?
Biblically, yes and no….
But besides that, horoscopes are generalized information that you should not base your life on. They are shallow pieces of information that lead to disappointment when it does not provide the satisfaction needed to live a truly fulfilled life. Western astrology can help you better understand yourself like it helped me understand myself but once you do, it’s no longer needed.
Like so many things on the surface of the earth, divination can be misused. Then it becomes a real problem.
The Truth About Spiritual Awakenings
This is not to take the fun out of your awakening. This is simply to show you a different perspective of this happening.
III. It’s a Personal Choice
It’s true that the spirit world is real, but it is not to be messed with. There are many spirits in the spirit realm, and not all of them are good. It isn’t just holy spirits that roam the spirit realm. There are deceiving spirits of evil and darkness who pretend to be angels of light to deceive people.
Any kind of activity that attempts to contact spirits is risky and dangerous. You risk opening yourself up to unholy spirits that may come into your mind uninvited and lead you astray. These spirits look for any spiritual door left open to enter.
In a new age where people feel sovereign and powerful and don’t care for God and can believe whatever it is they want to believe in, it is very easy to fail to see spiritual realities, whether it is good or evil. These spiritual realities, whether communicating with the dead, or spirits or relying on horoscopes and tarot cards, can have a negative spiritual impact.
Divination will take your focus away from God. That happened during my first awakening. It can lead you to make the wrong decision or take the wrong action. There are good people I wouldn’t marry because astrology said we’d be incompatible. It can lead you away from where you’re meant to go. I was awakened by the Holy Spirit but my spiritual practices allowed the devil to whisper things into my ears. It can open spiritual doors that let demons and other malevolent spirits into your being or into your home risking various kinds of spiritual attacks. My mind was a battleground during my first awakening.
The truth is that divination is risky and the worst part is you wouldn’t know you are being deceived until you are destroyed. You wouldn’t know you’re communicating with an unholy spirit until it’s too late to prevent it.
But the decision to practice divination is very personal. The church may try to force things on you, but God forces nothing on no one. He just left a Book for his people to live by and He left. We can all do whatever we want because we have free will.
For me in the beginning of my spiritual awakening, I dove deep into YouTube, watching videos for my astro sign (Aries), and seeking wisdom from many channels. I would keep my fingers crossed hoping something powerful would happen but the transit passed just like all the others and nothing ‘powerful’ happened. That frustrated me. It was disappointing and confirmed something from the Bible. “The household gods utter nonsense and the diviners see lies; they tell false dreams and give empty consolation. Therefore, the people wander like sheep.” (Zechariah 10:2)
I was lost and wandering about the world like a sheep without a shepherd. I was troubled and confused and there is one thing I know to be true — whenever I feel troubled and confused about something, it means there is some truth that has not been revealed. There is some more truth about this matter that I don’t yet know and as the person that I am, I would hate to disappoint God. I would hate for God to say I’ve fallen short because I wrote and taught astrology when the Bible warned against it.
So divination or God?
God cares more about the heart than he cares about an action. God cares what’s in your heart above all else and that thought is always refreshing. Seeking God first and using astrology/divination second, is what I personally do. Is there a chance for me to be misguided by spirits that come in disguise? Of course, but that is why you seek God first, so you can learn to decern spirits (which is a gift given to some). This is why it is a gift…because every day we do things that have a huge chance of letting in evil spirits.
The Bible says if any of us lacks wisdom we are to ask God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given. But remember that you can do what you want, but not everything is beneficial. Every action has a consequence whether in this life or the afterlife.
Another truth is that the Bible has been tampered with and we only have what’s left of it. Divination is a sin if nothing was taken out or added to the original text that was inspired by God.
These are very difficult truths, but we’ll find the ultimate truth someday when this is all said and done.
I will end with this, concluding with the story I began with: Joseph.
The silver cup is only one of the few cases in which God permitted the use of objects to discern His will. Other examples include the casting of lots (Leviticus 16:7-10), the priest’s use of the Urim and Thummim (Numbers 27:21), and Gideon’s use of the fleece (Judges 6:36-40). If Joseph did practice divination with the silver cup, it was not divination in the pagan sense but seeking God’s will through a particular method…..which God deemed ok.
Use discernment….always, and do not judge another’s walk with God. Leave judgment to God and God alone.
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