“But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness,
so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”

(2 Corinthians 11:3)

In the Bible, in the book of Genesis, a simple but profound story set in a garden illustrates how evil gained influence over mankind:

The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:8-9,15-17).

Although God’s purposes may be largely hidden from us, it is clear that He Himself placed both trees—the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—in the midst of the garden. He Himself set both the right way and the wrong way within reach of Adam and Eve.

It could be said (inadequately, it is admitted) that these trees represent two sources of spirituality, or two spiritual influences with which man must contend, or two spiritual ways: the way of God and the way of the serpent, who is Satan. God forbade Adam and Eve to eat from Satan’s tree, the one that bore fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. But the serpent deceived Eve to taste of it:

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”

And the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you shall be like God, knowing good and evil.”

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate (Genesis 3:1-6).

Adam—not deceived as Eve was, but with his eyes wide open—also ate. The apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, “Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression” (1 Timothy 2:14). And this transgression had profound consequences not only for Adam and Eve, but for all mankind and for all eternity. It brought the spiritual influence of Satan upon them and upon the entire human race. This is the event Christians refer to as the Fall. It was a bad fall, an unholy fall. It led to what we might call a spiritual divorce from God. Adam and Eve were banished from His presence and He said:

“Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the Garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life (Genesis 3:22-24).

The ‘good’ of the forbidden tree

What was the “good” Adam came to know by partaking of the serpent’s fruit?

I was very interested to learn that the Hebrew word translated “good” in Genesis 3—that is, referring to the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—has no moral significance at all. Its meaning is limited to natural or sensual experience that is pleasant, sweet, precious, peaceful or agreeable. But it has nothing to do with moral or spiritual goodness. In other words, the knowledge of good from the fruit of the serpent is about feeling good, not being good.

One could perhaps call the serpent’s tree “the tree of the knowledge of pleasure and evil”.

The evil of the forbidden tree

What about the “evil” that became part of man’s experience through the serpent’s temptation and partaking of the fruit of his tree?

Significantly, the Hebrew word translated “evil” in Genesis 3 contains both natural/sensual and moral/spiritual elements. It indicates experiences both of sensual evils such as calamity, hunger, deformity, distress, injury and misery, and also of moral evil such as wicked desires, thoughts and beliefs. Therefore, the knowledge of evil from the fruit of the serpent is about both feeling and being bad. (Experience shows that being bad often makes the natural man feel good; this is part of knowing evil. It is a grave result of the Fall, and one problem of our sin nature.)

With this in mind, we might now refer to the serpent’s tree as “the tree of the knowledge of pleasure, pain and moral evil”.

Moral goodness

What is missing from the serpent’s tree is, of course, the fruit of moral goodness. For indeed, this fruit was only to be found growing from the tree of life.

But after the Fall man, now sinful, was denied access to the tree of life. Due to indwelling evil and lust for the so-called good of the serpent, man was cut off from real spiritual goodness and the life of God: hence the “flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life”. Death became the inheritance of man, for death is the reward—the payment, the consequence, the final fruit, the just desert—of sin. 

In this age, as is more carefully expounded elsewhere on this Website and in the book True to His Ways, the goodness, life and spirituality of God are revealed to man through His Word, the revelation of the Holy Bible. Here, and only here, can man find true goodness, the fruit of the tree of life. And man can partake of this fruit only by faith: the divine gift of faith that is granted to those who love the truth by the sovereign God, through belief in His Word and the indwelling Spirit of the Lord who comes to us in and through His Word. For words are spiritual, and in the Word of God is the life of God.

On knowing

The Hebrew words translated “knowledge” or “knowing” in Genesis 3, in the context of the knowledge to be gained from partaking of the forbidden fruit, are from the root word yada. This refers to the sort of knowing that comes by feeling or sensual/fleshly experience as opposed to intellectual knowing by study, reason and belief. In Hebrew, yada is also a euphemism for sexual intercourse, like it is in English when we speak of “knowing” a person sexually. It is no accident that this word was used in Genesis to describe how humans can know good—that is, the serpentine “good” of fleshly pleasures—and evil. In a universal sense we all know Satan’s good and evil intimately because our very spirits are, from the day we are born, under his influence. We experience or bestow all manner of pleasure, suffer or inflict all manner of pain, and work or think all manner of evil.

But it could also be said that in occult practice a further form of intimate, experiential knowing occurs. Occultism is repeatedly and expressly forbidden in God’s Word; thus when a man or woman turns to occult ways to taste of the spiritual experiences afforded thereby, he or she is again reaching for forbidden fruit. He or she—whether deceived like Eve or knowingly like Adam—is reaching out for a deeper, experiential, knowledge of the serpent. This spiritual knowing can in some aspects be likened to the sexual knowing that occurs between persons in sexual encounter. And just as sexual encounters create a spiritual bond between the participants, whether they realize it or not, so occult encounters create a form of spiritual bond between human and demon, whether they realize it or not.

This has serious implications for occult practitioners.

The communion with apparently sweet, peaceful, loving spirits (or violent or electric or ecstatic or drunken or animal spirits) that manifest during occult practices such as Charismatic soaking, Hindi samadhi, meditation or contemplative prayer, is experiential. It is not mindful or intellectual but is a sensual/spiritual sort of knowing.  Who or what is known through these practices? The answer is Satan, for Satan is god of the occult. And through occult practices humans come to a deeper experiential knowledge of him and of his angels and spirits, and through them will come to know in greater measure all manner of pleasure, pain and moral evil. Occult experiences may seem good—good to make one wise, as Eve thought—but of course it is not so. (See J’s Testimony for examples of the pleasure, pain and evil that develops through occult meditation. Also more fully expounded in the book True to His Ways.)

People often turn to the occult to find God. But there they find only His enemy. God is to be found in His Word only, for His words are, as Moses said, no empty words: they are our very life. But Satan would have us run after experience.

Adulterous spiritual encounters

When we realize that occult practice involves a mysterious, intimate sort of communion with Satan or his angels we begin to understand why the Bible refers to occultism as harlotry, unfaithfulness and spiritual adultery. We understand one reason, at least, why trafficking in spirits is abominable to God and why He casts out those who covet occult experience. How can a believer commune with an angel of Satan and remain pure for the Lord? Of course, he cannot. The fact is, the knowledge gained by men and women in occult spiritual encounters is an experiential knowledge—of the pleasure the serpent affords, and, sooner or later, his evil plagues. To know Satan thusly is gross unfaithfulness to God and dreadfully defiling.  When people soak, enter trance states, and open themselves up to occult “love” they are, whether they realize it or not, lying with God’s enemy, the serpent. This is spiritual harlotry.

Our Lord cannot abide when our hearts and thoughts turn to and are taken up with His enemy. How can He do anything else but cast out a bride who purports to enter into covenant with Him and then lies repeatedly with His arch-enemy, all the while professing faithfulness with her lips?

To dabble in the occult is to step into a chamber of spiritual adultery. To commune with occult spirit is to consort with the devil.

Through forbidden occult practices we come to know and be known by God’s enemy, Satan. Intimately. Increasingly. Spirit, soul and body. We open up to him, invite him in, trust him, surrender to him, want more of him, worship him and love him. Charismatics ask him to “fill them up” and “dig in their hearts” and ask for “more, more” manifest occult spirit. Even Satanists ask him to “fill their hearts” (see Chapter 9, posted on this Website).

Therefore, occultism is spiritual adultery. It is not the only form of spiritual adultery, but it is an extreme form because it involves experiential intimacy with satanic spirits and a direct transgression of God’s clear command to avoid occultism; in a sense, it is a further transgression of the command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Occult lures and plagues

When people first experiment with the occult Satan usually delivers good experiences—that is, pleasurable, apparently good experiences. We get hooked, and return to occultism repeatedly, again and again—meditating, calling down the spirit, whatever. Occult spirits take these opportunities to whisper lies, build stronghold of erroneous belief, and turn our hearts away from the truth of God and from those who love His truth. They work in our thoughts and hearts and, apparently, even our flesh through spiritual drunkenness, vomiting, and manifestations such as jerking, etc. When things start to go wrong, instead of walking away we try harder. We blame ourselves, our faith, our spiritual walk. We are duped. Charismatics, yogis and others who have become deeply involved in the occult report frequent, terrifying poltergeist experiences, damaged relationships, obsessive thoughts and compulsive sexual behaviors, insanity or fears of insanity, and many more evils.

>But God has warned us. “Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god” (Psalm 16:4). Of false prophets, Isaiah said, “Pause and wonder! Blind yourselves and be blind! They are drunk, but not with wine; They stagger, but not with intoxicating drink” (Isaiah 29:9). In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses repeats tirelessly the same stern warnings:

You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are all around you (for the Lord your God is a jealous God among you), lest the anger of the Lord your God be aroused against you and destroy you from the face of the Earth (Deuteronomy 6:14-15).

The warnings most consistently repeated in the Old Testament have to do with religious practice; see Deuteronomy 4:2-4,15-16,28; 5:7-9; 7:4-5, 8:19; 11:28; 12:30-31; 13:1-8,12-13; 17:2-4; 18:9-22, 29:18-21,25-27,29, being only some in the book of Deuteronomy alone.

The occult ultimately brings gall and wormwood, spiritual blindness and many plagues. Alas: through mystic and occult practices men and women offer their souls to Lucifer for intimate spiritual intercourse, and are in grave temporal and eternal danger.

How to find and commune with God biblically

Hear Moses in the verses below as he teaches the Israelites that God is to be found not through occult practice but, rather, through obedience to His commands in the Book of the Law. Note how Moses says that the voice of God is not something mysterious to be “called down” from heaven. Nor is it brought from “beyond the seas”, for example by impartation such as takes place from one Charismatic fellowship to another. No: the believer’s part is to learn, love, keep and obey God’s Word. And that is how we commune with Him; it is that simple. It is not easy, but it is simple. Moses said to the Israelites:

…the Lord will again rejoice over you for good as He rejoiced over your fathers if you obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this Book of the Law, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?'  But the Word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.

See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, that you may live and multiply; and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you go to possess. But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear, and are drawn away, and worship other gods and serve them, I announce to you today that you shall surely perish; you shall not prolong your days in the land which you cross over the Jordan to go in and possess. 

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days (Deuteronomy 30:9-20).

Moses also warned men and women not to think they can understand the “why” of God’s commands in the area of spiritual practice. Our part is to simply do as we are told, and this is what it means to trust God. Moses said, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 29:29).

To find, keep and obey the Word of God is the way to know Him. Seek first His righteousness! But to dabble in the occult is extreme disobedience, and is to step into a chamber of spiritual adultery where we commune with satanic spirits and become intimately known by them. And to keep spiritual fellowship with occultists is also extreme disobedience.

Which God are you getting to know through your spiritual practices? Do you know the God of true good through obedience to His Word and biblical spirituality? Or the god of pleasure, pain and evil through disobedience and occultism? Heaven and earth will witness against you. Therefore, choose the goodness of God; choose life.

* * * * * * * *

© Baruch House Publishing, 2008

This article is adapted from Chapter 18 of True to His Ways: Purity & Safety in Christian Spiritual Practice, the book that provides clear guidance as to what is occult and what is biblical, so practitioners can be certain to avoid wrongful, adulterous spirituality.

Hebrew studies are with reference to Strong’s Concordance and Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon.

Baruch House Publishing hereby grants permission to all readers to download, print, and distribute on paper or electronically any of its reflections or articles provided each reprint bears our name (Baruch House Publishing), copyright notice, and Website address (www.truetohisways.com); and further provided all such reprints are distributed without charge. The reflections and articles may not be issued or sold in book form, CD-ROM form, or microfiche.

	About the Book   Order   Contact   Sample Chapters   About the Author   Reflections   Add to Favorites Copyright © 2008 Ruth Davis, Baruch House Publishing. All rights reserved.