Under normal circumstances, we can't perform magic. No matter how many times you throw a staff to the ground, it won't turn into a snake. However, there are spirits with supernatural power to do such things. These include demons, angels, and God. Witchcraft is Satanic, and it's supplied by evil spirits.
In modern day society, I wouldn't expect to see any genuine witchcraft. First of all, even in Biblical days, real magic was far from common. Second, when demons do act, just as with God, we count it as coincidence. But I think there's also been a shift in strategy.
In the Old Testament, demons allowed people to perform miracles so they could give credit to false gods. Today, religion spreads quite well enough on its own, and devil is more concerned with laying low and staying off the radar. Widespread skepticism is their current weapon of choice.
You're speculating. Real magic isn't common at all. If it were, we would be able to test it in a lab and prove it is real. I'm not talking about the kind of cheap tricks performed by Penn and Teller or Paul Daniels. I'm talking about turning sticks into snakes and other such nonsense. The Egyptians were a literate people; they would have recorded how to do such things and/or passed them down to their children. In other words, we would still have knowledge of such practices today if they were in any way real. But they're not.
So why did these stories get written in the Bible? Simple. People in those days were incredibly superstitious and would believe anything a "priest" told them. A magician turning sticks into snakes just doesn't happen in the real world, but it makes for a good story. Look at all the miracles God supposedly did during Israel's wilderness years; are you telling me that magic and miracles were so common in those days that Israel would worship any God at the drop of a hat? According to the Bible they did, but again, they're just stories. Such things and turning water in blood, sticks into snakes, making a plague of frogs, etc, do not happen in the real world. If they did then we would be living in chaos in our modern times because people would be doing magic all the time. Think about it. Everyone would turn to magic if it could be practised as liberally as the Old Testament would have us believe. Therefore I have to discard all the supernatural tales from the Bible as superstition, myth and stories to tell children to keep them believing in God.
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