The prophet's handbook

communications that relied upon the hearer’s performance of certain rituals. The collection of practices and rituals required to receive their words of wisdom and mystical knowledge from divine beings became known as divination. It rested on animal sacrifices, severed body parts, nature worship, and the handling of objects believed to possess magical powers. Supposedly embodiments of the divine one, various objects were ritualized in area revered as magical sites. Inquiring worshippers resorted to them to answer their questions. Such sites were seen as sources of supernatural deposits that were designated by the interrogated deity as the exclusive mode of approaching and appealing to it for information. The information routinely retrieved includes astrology, tarot and palm readings, crystal gazing, and necromancy, to name a few. Baal, Ashtorath, and Molech of the Bible, along with Diana (Artemis), Apollo, and Zeus, all had such sites, usually in forests or groves that they centralized for worshippers’ sacrifices and petitions. Nature and astro worship exemplify the Lord’s objection to their religious forms. As Deuteronomy 4:19 indicates, they worship the creature over the Creator. (See also Deuteronomy 17:3 and Romans 1:25.) Today, these are often popularized as entertainment to hide their true aims. Countless Christians call psychic hotlines to learn about their futures and to get advice from the supernatural about their life affairs. More than a few engage in talking to the dead to ease the grief over a lost loved one. Millions follow their astrological signs and have their palms read. Psychic networks are a multi billion-dollar industry that refuses to be curtailed no matter how many of its front-runners are found to be charlatans. The hunger or need for answers about tomorrow drives people to do anything and to pay any price to get even a tidbit of information. Such information for the Christian, on the other hand, is locked up in the house of God. By His Spirit in the prophets, the Lord ordained the performance of this function to be by His people. That is the whole goal of Pentecost. The entirety of creation’s spiritual activity and its authorities, once distributed to all invisible powers and beings, is now gathered and localized in the church of Jesus Christ. (See Acts 2.) Having a prophetic staff in every church regulates its releases to thereby discourage the Christian’s temptation to seek the darkness for the light. (See Isaiah 8:19–20.)