Charlatans, Exorcists and Magicians in the Ancient World

Transcript

you know this is

really a very interesting uh topic for me anyways and kind of um you know recently i've been doing some deep dives on the ancient world and what it meant to live in the ancient world um the thought process of people living in the ancient world that type of thing and so you know when we talk about charlatans exorcists and magicians that isn't something that really kind of pops into or it didn't didn't pop into my mind as something that was very important in the ancient world but as uh you know as i did a little research here you know come to find out that in fact it was very important and as a lot of things in the ancient world it is going to affect uh god's people first the jews and then um the in the in the early the early church they were being bombarded by a lot of this stuff and we're going to be looking uh at a few uh instances particularly in the new testament in acts where magic

and the holy spirit kind of butt heads you know who was going to win this great battle for the hearts and minds of of the ancient romans and the ancient greeks and so that's that's where that's where our story will lead but before we kind of start our story just kind of going to give um you know just a little background

into magic um let me just let me just say this about any questions uh i'm gonna try to get through all of my um material

but if you do have a question just jump right in and ask okay i don't have any like set time for questions questions are kind of part of the learning process and so if you have a question about something that i i've said something on the screen please by all means um

you know just ask away and i'll be happy to uh answer it in the best way i can so let's begin

magic

was an everyday thing in the ancient world and so when we and i'm on thinking when we think about magic you know we think about uh pulling the rabbit out of the hat right maybe some of the magicians that you know do it was a criss angel or david copperfield some of these guys that through illusion

uh create

uh a you know elaborate scenes of of magic doing things that seem to contradict reality and the laws of physics and stuff like that and so uh that really wasn't part of magic when we're talking about the ancient world magic could it certainly incorporated the the spiritual realm that really was um

why magic was around and it really started at the very beginnings of human civilization there there have been a lot of different findings as far as religious rituals spells incantations amulets all that kind of stuff we'll get into that in a little bit but magic could also

it does go hand in hand in the ancient world brothers and sisters with um knowledge you know knowledge of how things work how to manipulate the natural world and so when you were calling somebody a magician yes they did have kind of secret knowledge of the spiritual realm but a lot of times they were highly educated people they could they certainly could read and write and so they had access to a wealth of information that had been written down and we'll get into that a little bit more so i don't want you to think is like a magician was just kind of like a cartoon character they were very important in the ancient world and the ancients believed and that's the key they believed

that magic was real and that certain people whom they called magicians had power over the spiritual realm and could actually help you

or hurt you and so you know a lot of times magic was used primarily for protection

for health if you wanted to get your enemy you know someone had done something wrong to you well you know you there would there would be a spell for that you'd have to you'd have to have the right magic spell we'll dive deep into that a little bit more if you wanted someone to fall in love with you oh great yes we had a we have some magic for that

and then just in general you know magic magical charms

and magical spells and incantations saying the right words and that's going to come up over and over as we kind of look at this saying the right words

the right way

they wanted the gods to support them and whatever they did but they also wanted to keep the evil spirits away you know these demons that were everywhere and they literally believed that they were being bombarded constantly by evil spirits like by evil demonic supernatural powers that wanted to hurt them in some way and the only way to prevent this was

magic

i have to say the right spells i have to do the right ritual in order for me to be protected from my home to be protected from evil okay so rich can i jump in with a question yes steve so when you say you don't want us to think of this as you know the david copperfield uh magician who's performing simply illusions yep are you suggesting that the magicians in the ancient world were actually uh performing miracles or was it uh

something different than that i mean it seems that's hard for me to think was true

okay so when i when i say david copperfield you know um i'm talking about kind of a slide of hand that type of thing okay um

this was certainly uh these magicians certainly had you know religious power and the people believed that they could do these things now could they where they actually performing miracles no they weren't and we'll we'll get to that but they had the ability because of their knowledge to present themselves as having special powers so so today we might look at a magician for entertainment purposes they were looking at a magician for something completely different absolutely without question yeah okay thanks yeah absolutely good question thank you steve

um so as you know as would be in the normal case you know ancient jews wouldn't you know they encountered magic you know particularly from egypt and babylon and those are going to be kind of the two places that we're going to look at briefly we're also going to look at rome as well now does the law address magic in the occult well yes of course it does and it's negative you weren't uh you know you weren't supposed to have anything to do with saucers

necromancers uh witches

all of that stuff um was prohibited uh in under the law and there's there's a few i put some you know three um three scriptures up there from exodus deuteronomy and leviticus and they all basically say the same thing but let's just take a look at leviticus 19

um quickly here

yeah uh verse 26 you shall not eat anything with the blood neither shall you use enchantments nor observed times you shall not round the corners of your heads neither shall you mar the corners of your beard so this was a prohibition against the enchanted enchantments and observing times in both of those things um went hand in hand as we're going to see

you know a lot of a lot of the upper class the aristocracy in egypt and in babylon would have their own books of magic the saying the right words in order to um to protect to to protect yourself now um you know the jews the jews even though there was a prohibition

against

practicing magic practicing the occult that certainly didn't stop the ancient jews from continuing to practice magic just like the prohibition against idols and idolatry didn't stop a lot of the ancient jews either and so king manassee is kind of the you know the big leader that kind of sticks out when we talk about idolatry and wickedness but um he's mentioned specifically in second kings the 21st chapter as having um

embraced

a lot of this stuff having to do with magic um

you know beginning in uh verse two but verse six uh well verse five and he built altars for all the hosts of heaven and the two courts of the house of the lord so he's got altars everywhere to all kinds of different gods in the temple uh of god that would be very um you know different gentile groups would look at that as completely normal like that's normal like you've got a god but it's perfectly fine in the ancient world to also worship other gods outside of your your region and this happened all the time but here verse six and he made his son pass through the fire and observed times

and used enchantments and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards he wrought much wickedness in the sight of the lord to provoke him to anger and so you know he's dealing with different enchantments and we'll we'll look at some of that that stuff what does that mean like an enchantment uh familiar spirits wizards people and that that term wizards there um

also can be can be translated as a magician so this person uh you know the people thought king manasseh thought he had some kind of secret knowledge um and he had the ability to protect the king by using these words by having this secret knowledge okay

now this picture right here is a it's from egypt and it is a wand

so the egyptians would have uh you know wands like this kind of looks like a um what is that thing a big boomerang yeah boomerang and so um you know there's there's some writing on there having to do with um you know very powerful gods and so this wand would be carried around in order for um

you know this wand to protect people and so the egyptian thinking was hey i have this wand you know it looks like a piece of ivory or something like that and then drawn on or carved on this piece would be different types of gods and so they felt if you draw the god on here the power of that god is going to be transferred

to that wand and now this wand has this power to protect you

but also

uh to put curses on people right that was a big thing particularly in the roman world you know people were always scared of someone putting a curse on them and then what do you do when you have a curse put on them it's bad news very bad news okay so egyptian magic we know that uh ancient jews the hebrews are going to come in contact with uh the egyptians in fact they're going to live down there for 200 years or so they're going to be slaves they're going to inhabit uh lower egypt and they're going to you know they're going to come in contact with this culture which was heavy a heavy magical culture i can't stress that enough like the egyptians were big

into ancient magic and so they actually had a name for the magical force that flowed through everything and it was called the hika and it was a very powerful force and so both humans and gods

could pred possess this power god's obviously had more of it than humans but it could only be used in certain ways by certain people and so this is where slowly this idea particularly in egypt that there is a selected group of people who were the priests they're going to become the priests that had this secret knowledge that knew the incantations

the special words that would bring about a certain end or um you know would protect the pharaoh would protect egypt and so there was a certain type of priest that had these uh these secret words and they were called lecter priests um and they they had access to a lot of the ancient books that contained a lot of these powerful chants and now remember the thing you hear brothers and sisters is you know just the everyday run-of-the-mill egyptian you know

we'll get to that a little bit in a second but these guys had the real special sauce right they had the real powerful magic the real powerful chance that could really do damage in the spirit world and also protect you in the um in the natural world that we live in and so slowly but surely this this group of priests that just specialized in magic um

they they became known as

uh magicians right and they took over this role and we know from scripture that magicians are mentioned in egypt a few times and we'll we'll look at that

this picture right here is actually that like a pillow a headrest of a bed you would put your head on there looks extremely comfortable and um

and the this had chance on it as well so it had magical incantations that were written down on it uh to protect

the person as they slept because you know as you're sleeping this is a perfect time for demons or evil spirits to come and to do damage to your body you know the ancient egyptians and others in the ancient world they were really very afraid of getting sick you know we get sick now uh you know think of it like covered times ten right like they were they were scared of like you know legitimate uh diseases that they that they could get they certainly didn't attribute that to germs or viruses or anything else these were evil spirits well how do you protect yourself from evil spirits that you can't see you got to say the words the magic words and this is uh you know really just comes out out of egypt and it was prevalent in egyptian society

um

as far as kind of the regular run of the mill guys in egypt families would have their own written spells in their homes they would have like a book or scrolls or something like that written on papyrus

um and they would have their own kind of family spells that would protect their home protect the people that were in there um they would they were also you know healing spells as well that would be written down on paper and then um it would be put on the body of the sick person and so the thinking was the reasoning was hey you just put these magic words on a piece of paper on papyrus it's a healing spell the power of those words

uh would heal the sick person once they put it on there and so listen the fact of the matter is brothers and sisters you know in a situation like that the person doing it right the magician or the doctor doctor doctors also use magic hand in hand the egyptians did believe in you know in um you know doctors they know that they could do certain things as far as the body but you couldn't just kind of deal with the body you had to deal with other issues as well and that's where magic came in but anyways um

you know the doctor would put that this on on the body and the person would uh either get better or get worse it was a 50 50 shot right okay not bad um they would there is a um

or like there's a bit of papyrus that talks about a uh an egyptian doctor

uh writing the name of a god on the area of the body that was um sick or hurt or whatever and then the the patient would lick it off and so once you licked it off the body part that was injured the healing power of the words would go into your body and then heal you so this is this is some hardcore stuff you know we kind of kind of laugh of it laugh about it right now but it was you know this

it was important to have people that knew the magic words that knew how to say these chants to say these spells and so along with that the egyptians would wear what's called amulets and it wasn't just the egyptians either you know the babylonians the mesopotamians hittites greeks romans they all are going to wear these amulets and they were warned for protection for long life for wealth that type of thing um

but in order for the amulet to work you couldn't just kind of get an amulet and then wear it as a necklace or around your wrist or something like that before the amulet got power or before it was kind of uh it became active

in protecting you and giving you you know wealth and long life you had to speak the right words

and so there is this connection brothers and sisters between the written word right writing it down and then speaking as well and uh you know it's interesting you know one of the questions is you know what you know as as civilizations kind of uh you know became more and more advanced um you know you see kind of the stratification of society and one of these groups of people is the priest you know the religious cast and you wonder if a lot of this thinking um

you know helped kind of push along this idea of organized organized religion as we know it in some of the these ancient civilizations so hold on i got a little chat here um

okay yeah it's god bless you that's a good that's a good one jason yeah you know people say god bless you to war you know like and this comes from the middle uh the middle ages right black cats right being uh bad bad news that's not true by the way black cats agree um so yes we have a lot of that kind of stuff as well um so amulets will be wearing there's some um there's some examples right here of different different amulets that would be worn by the egyptians but here's the thing ancient jews are going to wear them as well and there's a couple instances here um let's well let's uh let's see is this

my hand let's see the next one

all right yeah we'll we'll get to that in a second but in the isaiah the third chapter in the 18th verse

um

let me get that real quick here in the 18th verse yeah in that day this is isaiah is prophesying about the destruction of jerusalem and that day the lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet in the in their calls

in their round tires like the moon the chains the bracelets the mufflers the bonnets the ornaments of the legs the headband the tape uh the tablets and the earrings the rings and knows you so on and so forth and so um part of the things that they were wearing here was these amulets they would wear them around for good luck really right you know the ancients really didn't have the an idea of luck you know either the gods helped you or they didn't so but these amulets if they had the right words associated with them that you you could you could be protected for sure and isaiah uh sorry ezekiel 13.

uh in verse um okay let's hold off on ezekiel 13 because i i got it there's a certain translation that i want to use here and i already have it on another slide so

um

get rid of that

all right so how do we know about egyptian magic am i just you know making this stuff up that would be incredible but i'm not uh so we have this three different texts among other things that we have

from the ancient egyptians the book of the dead the pyramid texts

in the coffin text i'm gonna we'll take a look at a couple of these just kind of give you a flavor of what we're dealing with um but just kind of keep that on the back burner for now

you do need to know however that there is going to be massive overlap with other civilizations and other peoples in the ancient world when it comes to magic and exorcists and stuff like that you know having the ability to manipulate the spirit world um mesopotamia right where babylon is where assyria is nineveh or all of those cities um they had magicians as well we we're told that and we'll we'll take a look at a couple of those daniel right daniel uh is going to be dealing with magicians in nebuchadnezzar's court um

written spells for healing and protection are taken out of mesopotamia they've found different types of little spells that are written on clay tablets and one right here on uh on the right hand side they have that's about two inches long and what they would do is they would write down a spell for healing or protection and you would carry that on your person or you would it would be put on a sick individual or it would would be kind of um you know if it was about protection for a house it'd be written on clay and then kind of put up on maybe a a post a post inside the home um and so

most of the world at that time the ancient world particularly in the near east the ancient near east uh they're going to be very much like the egyptians i think the egyptians and the and the babylonians are going to kind of take it to another level but they believe that you know there was this whole spirit world that particularly evil spirits and demons and sickness and think about all kind of the the hardships of life and then you add on to that you know now i got to deal with evil spirits and there's demons trying to get me that you know demons are trying to get my child my unborn child they want they want to cause a um

you know a miscarriage or something like that you know okay i got i got to say the magic words i got to say that i i have to say the spells in order to protect me and so they believe that carved images

that had spells chanted over them had power to protect as well and we'll get into that um

in when we when we look at some events in scripture particularly with rachel with jacob rachel and laban right remember the idols it's translated idols or gods in the king james we'll we'll look at that that's there's some interesting stuff with there um

okay here is an example of a pyramid text all right now so this is you know we're talking about over 4 000 years old so 4 000 years old and we have this very complex uh you know religion that is coming out of egypt but also very complex uh chants and hymns and spells that someone wrote down again you know you got to say the right words now the pyramid texts are found surprisingly enough

in pyramids

um and and what they are is they're really directions for the pharaoh to get out of the pyramid in the afterlife in other words how am i get how is my soul getting out of this pyramid right because remember the whole thing is locked up well don't worry about it pharaoh we're going to put in hieroglyphics all around in your tomb

we're going to put the magic words

but you have to say the magic words correctly and in the right order and at the right time and you also the pharaoh as he's you know being resurrected he had to chant one set of spells facing east another facing west north south that type of thing so it was it was this whole rigamarole that had to be done in order for the pharaoh to the pharaoh soul to get up to the afterlife and so this is one of the things it's called the cannibal hymn because as we read it um you know the pharaoh as he's being uh you know resurrected his life for he's going to eat it says a god who lives on his father's whose flea feeds on his mother's

is the bull of heaven who rages in his heart who lives on the being of every god who eats their entrails

when they come their bodies full of magic from the isle of flame and so the pharaoh is rising up and he's eating uh his father and his all the essence of his father and his mother and everything their bodies full of magic right and so now guess what he's eaten he's eating his mother and father he's eaten the bowl of heaven and now he is full with this magic nut and he's saying the right words and he's he's doing the enchantments

he's using the magic on the walls

his soul goes right up to the afterlife right

and so this is the mindset this is the mindset that the ancient israelites are going to be in um

yeah so i was actually thinking about this jim says makes me think of the i verse we in baptism wrong word baptism doesn't count and that actually just happened in a diocese i think down in arizona where this particular priest has been using the wrong words he's saying we instead of i you know the vatican the you know the vatican council has says that you have to say i as the priest i'm doing this he says the we so all of these baptisms that he's done for the last 20 years according to the church are invalid you use the wrong words so is there a connection well yeah sure sure you've got to use the right words even today in certain rituals

um

but the words themselves and here's the difference the words themselves

uh you know had had power in and of themselves and i guess that's true today right certain words have power there's powerful words um that that we can use

all right

okay now this is um this is uh i had this law this slide in the wrong place but this is from um ezekiel the 13th chapter

and this is ezekiel kind of uh ranting against um you know against the jews at that time you know because of the idolatry that there that they continue to fall follow after even though jerusalem is about to fall

um and so uh let's take a look at this and this is from the esv which i think gives a kind of a better feel of what uh ezekiel is talking about so let's read it and you son of man set your face against the daughter of my people the daughters of your people okay so that's interesting who prophesy out of their own hearts so we have women prophesying here prophesy against them and say thus saith the lord woe to the women who sow magic bands upon all risks and make veals for the heads of persons of every stature in the hunt for souls

uh so this is interesting what are they doing well they're putting magic bands upon all risks and make veals for the heads of persons of every stature and so they're putting on their on their hands in their wrists

magical you know bands of cloth or whatever we're not really told but they're magic well why are they magic well they had an incantation

uh spoken before they were put on the person the words were spoken the right words the same thing for the veil of the head right now there's an interesting commentary that i that i really like when i was looking at this this goes hand in hand with the writing remember they had to wear and brother jason i forget what the name of this is but they had remember they had to wear it on their heads they had to keep the law portion of the law in their heads and the black you get the teflon

the philosophers phylacteries thank you yes the phylacteries that was to remind them of the lore and to remind them of yahweh but what are some of you know these magicians now the or you know the daughters of your people these women kind of involved in magic what are they doing well they're sewing magic bands on your wrist now they're putting veils on the heads of persons on people so they're saying yahweh isn't going to help you whatever god was associated with this magic and we're not really told but they're using magical thinking in magical processes that are directly from where well from egypt and they're trying to superimpose that upon the worship of god and ezekiel's saying what are you doing this is nonsense it's getting this is going to get you nowhere you're practicing in verse 23 therefore you shall no more see false visions not practice divination i will deliver my people out of your hand and ye shall know that i am the lord so god's looking at this is you know just complete nonsense what are you doing he says i am against your magic bands

he's against it right and so that it kind of shows that again there was to be this separation between the things of egypt right when we think about the things of egypt we often think about you know slavery and stuff like that but you know this was a big thing and they they didn't there was no difference between the jews and the egyptians when it came to a lot of this magical thinking because they wore the same ambulance uh they believed in magic on a certain level as well and they shouldn't have believed in magic magic wasn't going to give them salvation they were to put away those superstitions the superstitions of the gentiles of the people and follow after god but you know like like history tells us that is something that they continue to struggle with they struggle with idolatry and guess what they're gonna struggle with magic as well

um saw that saw that okay so let's take a look at some events in scripture i think we're doing all right um in genesis 31

um rachel you know jacob high teals it out of there remember and laban and he takes all his family and laban is uh he gets up and he's he's going after him and rachel had taken the terror film right and so there's a lot of controversy about what this these terraform are there's some pictures right here of some of the smaller um you know these smaller figurines now

some commentators and some scholars have said well they they were gods laban had some gods um you know and these are these are what he worshipped okay um

you know is there any indication in scripture that laban was you know followed after idolatry no but okay you know there's a lot you know there's a lot of different stuff that kind of infiltrates into the lives of the patriarchs particularly in this case they were important though and so

i believe these terror femme had magical powers associated with them particularly around

protection um and so to have these was to protect the family and so rachel's like hey these are very important they have magical powers they have magical ability uh i'm gonna keep them in order for uh the magic of these terrafim to keep my family safe

um it's it's certainly possible we're not really told exactly what what these are now another commentary and a jewish commentary on this

he kind of goes in this is an interesting story but

the story is is that laban had a firstborn son that was murdered

okay his firstborn was murdered and so the family now which was common in this this area right um

they took the head of of this of the sun

and uh kept the skull

and then put plaster over the skull um in order to keep it as a remembrance of uh of this firstborn child that was murdered at some point now is there any evidence of this no there isn't but it does go hand in hand with the story of david and michael remember michael is going to take an idol that went

excuse me that was in the the house of david it's called an idol but you know some some commentaries have said well it was just one of these terror femme where they were keeping this you know for good luck um and you know this was a larger one and it may have you know it had a skull or something like that would plaster over and this is why saul's men were um you know they were tricked because remember michael put the the terra film or the the idol whatever it is inside the bed and it looked like a real person so it was bigger right again we're not really uh we're not really told um you know what they look like but they have unearthed these little figurines right here you know like two three four inches long so they're not very big and this is one of the reasons why that i think rachel could have hidden them right she hit him under a whole bunch of stuff and said laven look i'd love to get up but i can't right now apologize um so boom she's got she's got these things magic was always associated with these uh figurines right here brothers and sisters they all had some type of magical power now

does that mean that they you know the the ancient jews have have magical incantations during this time yes they did and we'll look at that as well um

and so did they did they kind of perform some type of ritual which uh you know had the magical words right the incantations the special words that imparted

protection

on on these figurines don't know don't know but these were very common they're found in other places as well outside of the holy land they're found in egypt they're found up in modern day turkey in greece and in mesopotamia and in all cases brothers and sisters they were used

um for protection and for there was some authority associated with them as well so um just just some interesting stuff

um very quickly joseph and the magicians right when you know he again having to do with dreams that was a big thing with magicians they could uh they knew the you know the signs they knew the divination they could they knew the numbers they knew the magical uh spells they knew the secret knowledge right the magicians moses and the magicians as well he kind of you know moses kind of comes head head to head with the magicians and for a period of time

the magicians could replicate

a lot of the stuff that moses was doing and so this is going to cause pharaoh to kind of disparage moses but eventually um

you know the magicians aren't going to have the ability to do some of the uh some of the great miracles that moses is going to do uh which brings us to balaam balaam is an interesting character we'll take a look at um numbers 22

um verse 5.

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yeah bailiff the son of z4 he sees israel he's he's uh he's got he's got major problems on his hand first five and he sent messengers therefore unto balaam the son of beor to pethor which is by the river of the land the children of the people to call him saying behold there is a people come out from egypt behold they cover the face of the earth they abide over against me um come therefore i pray thee curse me this people for they are too mighty for me he goes on for i want that he whom thou bless is blessed and he who thou cursed is cursed and the elders of moab and the elders the median departed with the rewards

of divination in their hand

so balaam was a magician he was a he was a um you know some type of sorcerer right he he had he could he had convinced the king that he had this ability now balaam probably was also like a you know a wise a wise man in other words he knew how the world worked he was he was in the palaces of the powerful and so he understood the diplomacy he was well read that type of thing and he's using this knowledge

to enrich himself um

and so for whatever reason balaam is looked at as an authority he's got you know the he charges a certain rate for divination for curses you want one occurs it's going to cost you a hundred thousand curse the children of israel you've got it and so again this has to do with the magic right he's gonna curse he's gonna say the magic words

and the word you know just interesting you know the word abracadabra that's actually taken directly from egypt right that was actually a magic word that the egyptians would say um and so again this idea of magical speaking

of an individual having the secret words the ancient knowledge he knows how to put the words together to bring about a curse on a whole people to bring a blessing upon a whole people right um we know that the witch of endor we're not going to spend too much time on there but the witch of endure um

you know saul ghost goes to her and you know both of them are actually in for a shock right because i believe that god you know kind of uh you know either made made them all see a vision of samuel but uh you remember that when when samuel was made present uh to uh saul and to the witch of endor you know she cried out she was very scared you know she's like oh man does this finally work

uh so anyways now this is something interesting that josephus says about solomon and this kind of goes with what i've been talking about about knowledge and ancient uh the ancient writings and stuff like that but josephus says god gave him knowledge of the art that is used against demons is that idea of evil spirits right in order to heal and benefit men so solomon had this wisdom and he's going to use it you know in the area of medicine but also to benefit men how to make civilization better and so part of that was attributed to understanding the ancient the ancient writings which obviously solomon did we're told in scripture that he wrote many books we're told in scripture that he read many books on all kinds of different topics right the king say that ecclesiastes talks about that as well um so that's one aspect he goes on he says elsewhere however there was an egyptian

magician a false prophet that did the jews more mischief for he was a cheat

okay so there was a lot of shenanigans i would imagine in the area of magic right scooby doo scooby d um but people believed it had power that's the key brothers and sisters there was a belief that these words when they're spoken the right way can cast out demons

uh can protect you can heal you that type of thing

you know rich it it makes me think of some of these um

you know healing ministries where uh people will come up on stage and a minister or uh you know somebody will place their hands on them and say a certain word and they'll you know fall backwards and yes you know be healed they they want to believe these things it seems to me yeah and steve that that's a great point because you know those people they want to believe that they're suffering from something right and so these these ancient people were no different from us they were suffering right with everyday life a lot you know you know if you were poor

or you kind of like low middle class there wasn't a whole lot of middle class in the ancient world but anyways you know he had a little money at a little house or whatever at any time

your whole house could get sick and die you know there were there were a lot of things that could kill you you know you when you're you're talking about you know a lot of um you know a lot of births you know stillborn children children are gonna die under five um you know a lot of people dying when they're in their 30s and 40s you know so you know people that were living uh to 70 80 years old you know a lot of times were few and far between in the ancient world they had to really worry about a lot of stuff and they needed the magic words you know steve they needed them

yeah fear is absolutely a powerful motivator jim without question and i think that as the priest the priestly class got more and more powerful and wealthier they're going to rely on fear for sure without question so you had said earlier in the class rich that you know these people would be getting sick and dying and they didn't know why you know like we today might recognize oh you know someone got coveted or somebody has an infection or somebody has cancer right and we're going to re you know we can

we can come up with a reason for why they died they had no idea and so what you're saying i think what you're saying is they they blamed it on the spirits and therefore these magicians were were viewed almost like medical doctors so there was yeah medical doctors of the spirit world i guess steve there's a lot of particularly in egypt you know the doctor would also use some of this magician stuff as well like magic it would go hand in hand no question about it so how long were certain things that an egyptian doctor could do like he could set a bone you know he could stitch up certain things but you know as far as um

you know like bacteria and viruses forget about it yeah so you've looked a lot at the old testament in the new testament in acts for example we see this uh young girl who was being traipsed around by her handlers right were you going to get into that you i will yeah a couple slides so we're at uh 8 20. let's do it let's use jim to use jim boykos let me give you a time check thank you but speed it up people

okay let's not let's not get into this but um jezebel is called a witch by jihu right so uh you know nebuchadnezzar

um now i need we need to look this up because this is kind of fascinating in ezekiel

21 ezekiel is actually telling is prophesying

um about what nebuchadnezzar is doing in ezekiel 21

verse 21

for the king of babylon stood at the parting of the way at the head of two ways to use divination he made his arrows bright he consulted with images he looked in the liver so here's nebuchadnezzar he's using magic and divination to figure out what um what road to take am i going to go to rama

or am i going to jerusalem and he obviously picked jerusalem right um but his arrows bright now other translations talk about uh uh using the arrows

uh to uh predict the future so what they would do with the arrows is they would put a certain amount of arrows in them and they would number the arrows and whatever arrow came out say arrow number five with the five on it came out the magician right he would have a special book and he would look through it the divination book and look oh it's a five and there would be a whole list of things of what that represented and so he would have to interpret that for nebuchadnezzar now we're gonna find out that nebuchadnezzar was on to these guys right he was on to their nonsense but anyways i just thought that that was interesting you would look at the livers too that was divination you would cut open a sheet take the liver and look at it you know if there was like a node on it or something like that that could either be good or bad how the liver looked you know that type of thing so

um yeah so that i i just thought that that was interesting that ezekiel is actually talking about what nebuchadnezzar did and he didn't do anything until he uh he got the magic okay from the magicians

like reading tea leaves absolutely phil yep same principle okay kabbalah is a sect of judaism that really has a lot of secret meaning a lot of magical mythology types of stuff as well so even sex of judaism okay let's let's get moving boom let's get moving okay um we know a lot of stuff from the greek and roman world because we actually have magical books that were written there's two of them called the greek magical papyri

um and the egyptian magical uh para and so it's interesting that the names of god

are listed on there and so the greeks and the romans felt that using the secret names of gods would bring you protection or power and so the name yahweh sabayoth and adonai

are all mentioned as names of god that's interesting and so remember that the romans looked at the jews as yeah they were a weird sect you know we had religious belief to believe in one god cuckoo for coco puffs but they respected it and they actually felt that the jews were very spiritual people and the jews some jews are going to use that too with their advantage right a lot of recipe for spells and stuff like that a lot of the aristocracy in rome you know the educated they thought like magic was silly superstitions they even tried to outlaw it in in rome but it didn't take people loved magic it was it didn't stop people from practicing in everyday life here's a quote from flinny the elder who actually died at the eruption of mount vesuvius um he said there is no one who is not afraid of becoming the subject of lethal spells

so think about that that's another thing you got to worry about right is someone putting a curse on me is someone putting a spell on me right now right that was a big deal and so you had to protect yourself from these curses from these spells you had you had to do some stuff and a lot of that stuff had to do with going to the right person and so there were certain men and women who were known to cast spells on people but you had to pay them and this is when it refers to when roman law is sorcery it was punishable by death the romans didn't play around with this kind of stuff because they believed it they felt that we got people we got women first of all running around knowing the magic words putting spells on people can't have it

um and so they also had something like a voodoo doll where if you wanted your enemy um you know to be harmed or something like that you would you would get a um you know you would make a doll it kind of looked like this person and then um you know would would put like pins or stuff like that or cut off its head or its arm or something like that so um you know a lot of stuff

all right you got your same christmas on right now thanks jim that's right so there is a connection right i think you know the catholic church did keep a lot of uh not magic like you know the catholic church isn't big into magic but you can still see that kind of thinking right from the ancient world saying the right words the ritual of everything people love rituals they love them it gives them a sense of belonging it gives them a sense of order and the ancient world was no was no different okay four minutes people all right let's forget about this this is the some characteristics of roman magic right complicated rituals and spells and recipes that's all you have to know right now okay um

here is the example from uh the greek magical paparai and where god's name is used i conjure you all by the god of abraham isaac and jacob that you obey my authority completely and give me favor influence victory and strength before all small and men and great as well as gladiators soldiers civilians women's girls boys everybody quickly quickly because of the power of sebaoth the clothing of elo elio the might of adonai so here are some of the names the clothing of el uh the might of adonis the power of sabah these are all names of god of yahweh and so they have been included

in this greek book of magic and so here you have an individual trying to manipulate god

uh into doing something and that was part of kind of the the ancients thinking you have these magical spells

incredible power that i can manipulate god god is gonna do this for me because i have the magic words i have the magic amulet right and so boom here you go here's the connection between the greek and roman world and judaism as well it's all being meld up together and this was this was the danger

of the jews that were living abroad in these greek and roman cities this was the danger of the early church this thinking about magic and we're going to see as um as brother steve pointed out that um is the last slide by the way uh that paul is going to directly confront this okay and so enemies of the early church are going to say that jesus was just a magician he was a sorcerer he went down into egypt which is true right when he was little he but this is where he learned the craft of magic

um and they also said that um you know jesus's dad was a roman soldier right which kind of you know gives uh you know nefarious there's a little nefarious beginning of jesus and so this is what the enemies of the early church would say um about jesus just another long line of magicians what the school would he do with scooby d right

luke in the book of acts makes it very clear that there is a difference between the holy spirit and magic not once in the acts as the holy spirit um is ever taken down by a magician

we have a lot of different instances right and because of time we're not going to turn these up but simon magnus right he wanted he got um

he wanted to buy the holy spirit from uh from peter he's like oh this is this looks like he's this guy's a really good magician look at the stuff he's doing you know can i have you know what what are the magic words

excuse me peter what are the magic words right so um

interesting uh this you know by jesus the sorcerer as well um

paul is going to confront him he's going to blind him

right here's another guy who could manipulate he had power in the eyes of the roman officials brother steve pointed out the slave girl in acts 16.

uh she had the it's called the spirit of divination she was being used by his by um you know the slave owners in order to what get money she was saying all of these things you know divination um okay for a price we're gonna we'll we'll let her use you know use her power to tell you the future and this really bothered paul um now the seven sons of steve let's let's look at this i i wanna i wanna look at these last two just because i think it kind of puts everything in perspective and this is where we're gonna kind of end our uh end our story but in acts 19

uh verse 11

uh and god wrought special miracles by the hands of paul so that from his body were brought onto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons and the disease diseases departed from them and the evil spirits went out of them and so paul

is using the holy spirit to heal these people didn't even have to be there in fact they were being brought you know these uh different uh parts of the sick person's body or the clothing and it is through that that paul is going to heal um these people um verse 13

now

then certain of the vagabond jews exorcists took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits the name of the lord jesus saying we adjure you by jesus whom paul preaches and there were seven sons of once ever a jew and chief of the priests which did so and the evil spirit answered and said jesus i know and paul i know but who are you and the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them and overcame them revealed against them so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded and so here are some um you know the seven sons of st skiva they were they were jews it says they were vagabond jews who are most likely traveling from place to place

but they were they presented themselves as exorcists or magicians and this kind of plays into the roman and the greek idea that the jews had some kind of special spiritual secret religious spiritual secret there's no i mean there's no idol of yahweh they didn't make any idols so how can you really understand them well the jews had special knowledge they had secret knowledge and so these seven sons of steever are using this um you know knowledge that they have

to make money they would go around to different cities and say hey we got the special knowledge we can say the magic words we're magic we're exorcists we can cast out devils and they're trying to do the same thing as paul does but what happens well this guy who's always got you know mental health issues attacks them and again who comes out victorious well it's the holy spirit and paul paul once again shows that he is uh superior in every way to all of these magicians that there is no equal when it comes to the the true god of the universe now lastly in the same chapter in acts in 17

um

in many let's see

yeah in verse 17 and this was known to all the jews in greeks also dwelling at ephesus and fear fell on them all in the name of the lord was magnified and many that believed came and confessed and showed their deeds and many of them also used curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all men and they counted the price of them and founded 50 000 pieces of silver so mightily grew the word of god and prevailed now last thing on this if you look on the right here is a picture of diana of ephesus right you can see that both her face and her hands are black and that's a that's a meteorite okay they believe that they that you know part of uh diana of ephesus was given

uh by zeus came down from zeus boom and they built the temple around this but anyways tremendous amounts of money is

going to be made um by making little fig figurines

and this is um this is why uh what's his name uh alexander the silversmith right he is gonna kind of rally everybody and say this guy is taking away our livelihood right here we're making millions and millions of dollars off of this thing we're making you know he would make these idols are these trinkets um that would have magical powers

because they were made at ephesus they were made at the site of diana

or artemis his greek name her greek name and so these figurines were the things that would give the owner protection and they would be blessed because they had these little silver figurines so that's one thing the last thing is

verse 18 and many that believe came and confessed and showed their deeds and they also brought their curious art so here you have ex magicians

coming to uh coming to the truth putting on the saving name of christ and what did they do well they did two things number number one they they confessed that they were doing all of this stuff right that you know how well how are you doing all this stuff they kind of spilled the beans on all their kind of tricks that they would use number one but also

once you say publicly

the magic words and again this may sound hilarious to us but once you say publicly the secret magic words to everybody they no longer have the power you've now expressed the secret ancient words now they have no power over anybody so they do that and then number two all of the books the magic that they have the books of magic the incantations the spells the recipes for this that and the other thing they burn them and so once again what happens we have the holy spirit in paul

once again coming out victorious over uh the gods of the greeks and the romans but also there is puts puts aside the superstition of magic as well and so um that's the story in a very quick nutshell there was a lot of interesting stuff that i found that helps you kind of understand the old testament it also helps us uh to understand the new testament some of the cultural things uh that these early believers uh both in the old testament and the new testament were dealing with