As we have seen, witchcraft in the Bible means the use of drugs to control or to kill people, and it is one aspect of occultism, which is condemned in its every form.
We see still another facet of the meaning of occultism in 1 Samuel 15:23, “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubborness is as iniquity and idolatry.” The word rendered as witchcraft can be better translated as soothsaying or divination. Keil and Delitzsch translated the verse thus: “…rebellion is the sin of soothsaying, and opposition is heathenism and idolatry,” and commented:
Opposition to God is compared by Samuel to soothsaying and oracles, because idolatry was manifested in both of them. All conscious disobedience is actually idolatry, because it makes self-will, the human I, into a god. So that all manifest opposition to the word and commandment of God is, like idolatry, a rejection of the true God.198
Very clearly, the text says that rebellion is the sin of witchcraft or divination, and stubbornness, intractableness, or opposition is heathenism and idolatry.
Central to all occultism is man’s desire to be his own god; practically, this takes the form of trying to seize control over men and the universe by lawless and ungodly means. Occultism in its every form is thus rebellion against God and therefore against every godly authority.
Now, basic to all such rebellion is self-righteousness and Pharisaism. When Satan and then Adam and Eve rebelled against God, they did not thereby say that they planned to be sinners. Far from it. Rather, they saw themselves as freedom fighters, as heroic champions of freedom against a tyrannical and arbitrary God. For them, sin was in the picture only as an attribute of God who had supposedly concealed from them their own claim to divinity and had lied about the consequences of freedom from God. “Ye shall not surely die”; God has lied. The purpose of His lie was to prevent man from realizing himself: “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:4-5). Since then, rebellion has been the principle of freedom and self-realization, self-development, for fallen man. Men have rebelled against God and chosen freedom from responsibility as their ideal. Playboy, one of the most successful magazines in history, sees man, not in the image of God, but in the image of a bunny, an aging child’s version of the rabbit, a carefree, nonproductive, nonworking, copulator. Women have rebelled against men, and, in a world with a skyrocketing amount of rape, only a small fraction of which is reported, women seek less protection and more exposure as the answer to all problems. Children are encouraged to see themselves as the equal of adults, with equal bargaining powers and rights, when the basic right
198 C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Books of Samuel (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1950), 157.
of the child is to obey godly authorities which will lead him into godly maturity. It is a right of the child to have godly authority in home, church, school, state, and community, because it is that godly authority which will best equip him for maturity, responsibility, and authority. Our Lord said, “[W]hoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matt. 18:6). The word for offend means to put a snare or a stumbling block in their pathway, i.e., to frustrate their godly growth in faith, obedience, and responsibility.
Why is rebellion comparable to occultism, to fortune-telling, witchcraft, and every form of such illicit practice? To seek the occultist route to the future is to say that the future is determined apart from God, either by a dark and sinister fate, or else by an ostensibly autonomous man. In any case, the future is determined, and man is capitalized, by means other than those of God’s ordination. For Scripture, it is faith, work, and obedience to the law of God that capitalized man and society spiritually and materially. For occultism, the future can be capitalized only by rebellion against God and against all godly authority.
Revolutionary movements have commonly had a background of atheism, freemasonry, and other occultist beliefs. The very idea of revolution is a belief that destruction, chaos, disobedience, and lawlessness can capitalize a society, and such a belief is basic to occultism. Hence, “rebellion is the sin of soothsaying, and opposition is the sin of heathenism and idolatry.” Such attitudes decapitalize man and society and foster anarchy in every area.
Turning again to Matthew 18:6, the reference to execution by drowning, with a millstone around one’s neck, was a Greek form of execution (Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica, 16.35), and, according to Suetonius, was used by Augustus for especially infamous offenses. Christ cites a particularly severe pagan penalty as preferable to the judgment God would execute on any who become a stumbling block to “one of these little ones.” The millstone cited was the larger, ass- drawn stone used for milling; no doubt, useless, worn, or broken millstones were used for execution purposes.
The rabbis regarded Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, as the greatest sinner because by his leadership all Israel was drawn into sin (1 Kings 14:16). It is in this same spirit that Christ condemns all who cause little ones to stumble or fall into sin. Teachers, parents, pastors, and all others who incite or encourage rebellion in children thus fall under this severe indictment and classification. Rebellion, and all incitement to rebellion, is thus a form or manifestation of occultism. The occult is that which is deliberately concealed from observation or knowledge; it is so concealed because it is antinomian; it is at war with law because it is lawless. It creates an opposition which is in essence idolatry, the enthronement of man’s will as against the word of God.
The rise of occultism thus will foster rebellion in every area of society, and the rise of rebellion will likewise foster occultism. The two are linked and have their common origin in man’s rebellion against God.
St. Paul, in citing the works of men who are not in the Spirit of God but are under the indictment or death penalty of the law, lists the related manifestations of such an unregenerate person:
Now the works of the flesh are in evidence, such as adultery, unchastity, impurity, lewdness, idolatry, magic (KJV, witchcraft), animosities, hatred, jealousy, bad temper, dissensions, a factional spirit, heresies, envy, drunkenness, carousings and everything of the kind, of which I warn you as I did previously, that those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. (Gal. 5:19-21, Berkeley Version)
Rebellion is thus not an isolated fact; it is a part of a much larger pattern. In the history of revolutions and of cultural collapse, the occult plays a significant role. It is an evidence of radical decay and a major influence for destruction.