Carl Emerson

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Do you believe that mere human beings have the power to turn sticks into snakes? I don't. So what is more likely, that Pharaoh's court "magicians" really had super powers and could create life from non-life? Or that they practiced trickery and slight of hand?

-CryptoLutheran

First question - no, humans cant turn sticks into snakes but demons can. After all Satan morphed into a snake in the garden - been there done that...
This was not about creating life.

Remember that in Ex 7:22 the magicians of pharaoh matched what God did with Moses and turned water into blood. This could not have been 'slight of hand' as you suggest. What was occurring was a spiritual power encounter.

This is confirmed in Ex 8:7 - again causing frogs to swarm the land was matched by Pharaoh's magicians - this cant be done by 'slight of hand' either.

Then the plague of gnats - this the magicians were unable to match. Ex 8:18

The narrative clearly depicts this episode as being a power encounter between the demonic gods of Egypt and the Lord Himself.
 
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ViaCrucis

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First question - no, humans cant turn sticks into snakes but demons can. After all Satan morphed into a snake in the garden - been there done that...
This was not about creating life.

Remember that in Ex 7:22 the magicians of pharaoh matched what God did with Moses and turned water into blood. This could not have been 'slight of hand' as you suggest. What was occurring was a spiritual power encounter.

This is confirmed in Ex 8:7 - again causing frogs to swarm the land was matched by Pharaoh's magicians - this cant be done by 'slight of hand' either.

Then the plague of gnats - this the magicians were unable to match. Ex 8:18

The narrative clearly depicts this episode as being a power encounter between the demonic gods of Egypt and the Lord Himself.

I don't believe that the demons can create life. Indeed, I consider that very notion to be blasphemous. Such has also been the official teaching of the Christian Church:

"It is therefore to be publicly proclaimed to all that whoever believes in such things, or similar things, loses the Faith, and he who has not the right faith of God is not of God, but of him in whom he believes, that is the devil. For of our Lord it is written, 'All things were made by Him.' Whoever therefore believes that anything can be made, or that any creature can be changed to better or worse, or transformed into another species or likeness, except by God Himself who made everything and through whom all things were made, is beyond a doubt an unbeliever." - Canon Episcopi, attributed to the 314 AD Council of Ancyra though probably dates significantly later, to perhaps the 9th or 10th centuries.

Just to add, anyone who has watched any amount of stage magic knows that through slight of hand, distraction, and the like many seemingly impossible things appear to have occurred. I see no more reason to believe that Pharaoh's magicians had actual super powers--whether from demons or anything else--than to believe David Copperfield or David Blaine or <insert famous magician's name here> has super powers.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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Occams Barber

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The narrative clearly depicts this episode as being a power encounter between the demonic gods of Egypt and the Lord Himself.

Hang on Carl - I'm a bit confused.

Did you just upgrade a demon to become a god of Egypt or are you suggesting Egypt has its own gods?

OB
 
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ViaCrucis

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Hang on Carl - I'm a bit confused.

Did you just upgrade a demon to become a god of Egypt or are you suggesting Egypt has its own gods?

OB

This probably needs some unpacking, while also offering some historic clarification.

In the 2nd Temple period of Judaism there developed the idea that the false gods of the nations were "demons", evil spirits. We can see a bit of this, for example, in the word Belial, which is a corruption of the various ba'als of Semitic paganism from the Levant, such as the Akkadian Ba'al Hadad, or the Phoenician Ba'al Hammon. Where Belial had become an alternative name for Satan. While post-2nd Temple Judaism, under the Rabbinate ceased to believe in the idea of fallen angels, and of a devil figure, the idea was obviously preserved in Christianity.

St. Paul addressing the Christian community in Corinth--largely comprised of converted former-pagan Greeks--the Apostle focuses a lot of attention on speaking against Christians returning back to pagan practices. So in his first epistle to them, 1 Corinthians, in the 10th chapter he makes a contrast between the Christian celebration of the Eucharist and pagan temple ritual meals. In making this argument he says that one cannot eat at the table of the Lord and also eat at the table of demons. The implication being that participating in such pagan rites honored demons.

And the Church, rather consistently through history, would argue that those who worship false gods are giving honor to mere demons, not to gods.

Now, this is where some clarification is probably important. It's not that, for example, when someone said a prayer to Zeus that there was a real being called "Zeus" and that this being was a demon. Rather, because the demons are liars and misfits, they want men to worship false gods rather than the true God. Thus idolatry is a lie, it turns men away from the Creator and to things which are false and are not real. It is this falseness, this lie, this spiritual delusion that is attributed to the demons.

We can actually see this in another part of the Canon Episcopi which I quoted above,

"It is also not to be omitted that some unconstrained women, perverted by Satan, seduced by illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and openly profess that, in the dead of night, they ride upon certain beasts with the pagan goddess Diana, with a countless horde of women, and in the silence of the dead of the night to fly over vast tracts of country, and to obey her commands as their mistress, and to be summoned to her service on other nights."

However, the Canon is clear in its position--this isn't actually happening, it is nothing more than the mind being deluded,

"Wherefore the priests throughout their churches should preach with all insistence to the people that they may know this to be in every way false, and that such phantasms are sent by the devil who deludes them in dreams. Thus Satan himself, who transforms himself into an angel of light, when he has captured the mind of a miserable woman and has subjected her to himself by infidelity and incredulity, immediately changes himself into the likeness of different personages and deluding the mind which he holds captive and exhibiting things, both joyful and sorrowful, and persons, both known and unknown, and leads her faithless mind through devious ways. And while the spirit alone endures this, she thinks these things happen not in the spirit but in the body. Who is there that is not led out of himself in dreams and nocturnal visions, and sees much sleeping that he had never seen waking? Who is so stupid and foolish as to think that all these things that are done in the spirit are done in the body,"

In other words, spiritual delusion--not actual manifest power of any kind--is the work of the devils; the gods of the nations are not real, and they have no power; but the devil is a liar and so it is delusion which leads men away from the truth of the one God through superstition.

That's the historic Christian position.

Not that the Egyptian Osirus or Anubis or Ra et al are real, but they are false--they don't exist. And the worship of these is false spirituality, false religion; the devil's role is through trickery, lies, and deceit. Not that he has himself god-like powers.

Having said this, I have met a number of Christians who have tried to argue that the gods of various pantheons are, actually real, and that each one corresponds to an actual demon, and that said demons have actual, real power. But this seems to be a very modern heresy.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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JackRT

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First question - no, humans cant turn sticks into snakes but demons can. After all Satan morphed into a snake in the garden - been there done that...
This was not about creating life.

Remember that in Ex 7:22 the magicians of pharaoh matched what God did with Moses and turned water into blood. This could not have been 'slight of hand' as you suggest. What was occurring was a spiritual power encounter.

This is confirmed in Ex 8:7 - again causing frogs to swarm the land was matched by Pharaoh's magicians - this cant be done by 'slight of hand' either.

Then the plague of gnats - this the magicians were unable to match. Ex 8:18

The narrative clearly depicts this episode as being a power encounter between the demonic gods of Egypt and the Lord Himself.

The Jews never connected Satan to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. It was the second-century Christian martyr, Justin of Samaria, who was first to argue that Satan appeared as a serpent to tempt Adam and Eve to disobey God.
 
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Carl Emerson

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ViaCrucis said..."I don't believe that the demons can create life. Indeed, I consider that very notion to be blasphemous..."

I totally agree - that is not what I said.

An angel can appear in human form.

A demon can appear in animal form.

By the way Paul directly identified pagan gods as being demons...

1 Cor 10:20

the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God,
and I do not want you to be participants with demons.
 
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Occams Barber

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This probably needs some unpacking, while also offering some historic clarification.

In the 2nd Temple period of Judaism there developed the idea that the false gods of the nations were "demons", evil spirits. We can see a bit of this, for example, in the word Belial, which is a corruption of the various ba'als of Semitic paganism from the Levant, such as the Akkadian Ba'al Hadad, or the Phoenician Ba'al Hammon. Where Belial had become an alternative name for Satan. While post-2nd Temple Judaism, under the Rabbinate ceased to believe in the idea of fallen angels, and of a devil figure, the idea was obviously preserved in Christianity.

St. Paul addressing the Christian community in Corinth--largely comprised of converted former-pagan Greeks--the Apostle focuses a lot of attention on speaking against Christians returning back to pagan practices. So in his first epistle to them, 1 Corinthians, in the 10th chapter he makes a contrast between the Christian celebration of the Eucharist and pagan temple ritual meals. In making this argument he says that one cannot eat at the table of the Lord and also eat at the table of demons. The implication being that participating in such pagan rites honored demons.

And the Church, rather consistently through history, would argue that those who worship false gods are giving honor to mere demons, not to gods.

Now, this is where some clarification is probably important. It's not that, for example, when someone said a prayer to Zeus that there was a real being called "Zeus" and that this being was a demon. Rather, because the demons are liars and misfits, they want men to worship false gods rather than the true God. Thus idolatry is a lie, it turns men away from the Creator and to things which are false and are not real. It is this falseness, this lie, this spiritual delusion that is attributed to the demons.

We can actually see this in another part of the Canon Episcopi which I quoted above,

"It is also not to be omitted that some unconstrained women, perverted by Satan, seduced by illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and openly profess that, in the dead of night, they ride upon certain beasts with the pagan goddess Diana, with a countless horde of women, and in the silence of the dead of the night to fly over vast tracts of country, and to obey her commands as their mistress, and to be summoned to her service on other nights."

However, the Canon is clear in its position--this isn't actually happening, it is nothing more than the mind being deluded,

"Wherefore the priests throughout their churches should preach with all insistence to the people that they may know this to be in every way false, and that such phantasms are sent by the devil who deludes them in dreams. Thus Satan himself, who transforms himself into an angel of light, when he has captured the mind of a miserable woman and has subjected her to himself by infidelity and incredulity, immediately changes himself into the likeness of different personages and deluding the mind which he holds captive and exhibiting things, both joyful and sorrowful, and persons, both known and unknown, and leads her faithless mind through devious ways. And while the spirit alone endures this, she thinks these things happen not in the spirit but in the body. Who is there that is not led out of himself in dreams and nocturnal visions, and sees much sleeping that he had never seen waking? Who is so stupid and foolish as to think that all these things that are done in the spirit are done in the body,"

In other words, spiritual delusion--not actual manifest power of any kind--is the work of the devils; the gods of the nations are not real, and they have no power; but the devil is a liar and so it is delusion which leads men away from the truth of the one God through superstition.

That's the historic Christian position.

Not that the Egyptian Osirus or Anubis or Ra et al are real, but they are false--they don't exist. And the worship of these is false spirituality, false religion; the devil's role is through trickery, lies, and deceit. Not that he has himself god-like powers.

Having said this, I have met a number of Christians who have tried to argue that the gods of various pantheons are, actually real, and that each one corresponds to an actual demon, and that said demons have actual, real power. But this seems to be a very modern heresy.

-CryptoLutheran


Thank you again VC. It reminds me of an entry I read somewhere in Bede's Ecclesiastical History where Bede, with a straight face, describes the genealogy of a particular Saxon as going all the way back to Wodin. He appeared to accept the existence of other gods.

There's a phenomena I've seen in this thread, and in others, where the line between the God related supernatural (God, angels, demons etc.) and the 'generic' supernatural (fairies, elves, ghosts, leprechauns, crystal balls, Ouija boards etc.) seems to get fuzzy.

This thread started out with 'spell candles' ('generic' supernatural) which were then dragged across into the God based supernatural by putting them under demonic control. This seems to be a common practice where a, typically evil, supernatural entity which belongs to all of us gets acquired by Christianity by adding a demon.

What falls within which supernatural group seems to be a matter of individual (or denominational?) preference.

OB
 
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ViaCrucis

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Thank you again VC. It reminds me of an entry I read somewhere in Bede's Ecclesiastical History where Bede, with a straight face, describes the genealogy of a particular Saxon as going all the way back to Wodin. He appeared to accept the existence of other gods.

There's a phenomena I've seen in this thread, and in others, where the line between the God related supernatural (God, angels, demons etc.) and the 'generic' supernatural (fairies, elves, ghosts, leprechauns, crystal balls, Ouija boards etc.) seems to get fuzzy.

This thread started out with 'spell candles' ('generic' supernatural) which were then dragged across into the God based supernatural by putting them under demonic control. This seems to be a common practice where a, typically evil, supernatural entity which belongs to all of us gets acquired by Christianity by adding a demon.

What falls within which supernatural group seems to be a matter of individual (or denominational?) preference.

OB

In the case of Bede, that's not entirely surprising. Many Christian authors in the past suggest that various pagan myths are, in a sense, corrupted histories. And the gods were really just regular people who lived at some point in the past, but attained divine status over time. I'd have to go back and actually do some reading to find some examples, so I'm saying this with only a somewhat hazy recollection.

But that Bede may have been of the opinion that Woden was based on an ancient human figure, and thus a lineage could be traced to him, wouldn't be entirely inconsistent.

Before posting this, I decided to do a small amount of digging, and was able to find this from St. Clement of Alexandria in his Exhortation to the Heathen,

"Hercules, therefore, was known by Homer himself as only a mortal man. And Hieronymus the philosopher describes the make of his body, as tall, bristling-haired, robust; and Dicærchus says that he was square-built, muscular, dark, hook-nosed, with greyish eyes and long hair. This Hercules, accordingly, after living fifty-two years, came to his end, and was burned in a funeral pyre in Œta.

As for the Muses, whom Alcander calls the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, and the rest of the poets and authors deify and worship, — those Muses, in honour of whom whole states have already erected museums, being handmaids, were hired by Megaclo, the daughter of Macar. This Macar reigned over the Lesbians, and was always quarrelling with his wife; and Megaclo was vexed for her mother's sake. What would she not do on her account? Accordingly she hires those handmaids, being so many in number, and calls them Mysæ, according to the dialect of the Æolians. These she taught to sing deeds of the olden time, and play melodiously on the lyre. And they, by assiduously playing the lyre, and singing sweetly to it, soothed Macar, and put a stop to his ill-temper. Wherefore Megaclo, as a token of gratitude to them, on her mother's account erected brazen pillars, and ordered them to be held in honour in all the temples. Such, then, are the Muses. This account is in Myrsilus of Lesbos.
"

And in another place,

"This is Jupiter the good, the prophetic, the patron of hospitality, the protector of suppliants, the benign, the author of omens, the avenger of wrongs; rather the unjust, the violater of right and of law, the impious, the inhuman, the violent, the seducer, the adulterer, the amatory. But perhaps when he was such he was a man; but now these fables seem to have grown old on our hands. Zeus is no longer a serpent, a swan, nor an eagle, nor a licentious man; the god no longer flies, nor loves boys, nor kisses, nor offers violence, although there are still many beautiful women, more comely than Leda, more blooming than Semele, and boys of better looks and manners than the Phrygian herdsman. Where is now that eagle? Where now that swan? Where now is Zeus himself? He has grown old with his feathers; for as yet he does not repent of his amatory exploits, nor is he taught continence. The fable is exposed before you: Leda is dead, the swan is dead. Seek your Jupiter. Ransack not heaven, but earth. The Cretan, in whose country he was buried, will show him to you — I mean Callimachus, in his hymns:—

'For your tomb, O king,
The Cretans fashioned!'
"

Clement, here, suggests that he thinks that such myths and stories are simply fables born of common mortals, exaggerated and writ large by time.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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KayJoy

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Blessing in Christ Jesus! I am sorry, that in this place, no one came forward to tell you, that they are sorry you had to suffer so much, and indeed you have. But know this, The Lord in His tender mercies heals and restores all that the enemy has taken. He replaces all the suffering and pain with Himself which in it's season is joy unspeakable and a peace that surpasses understanding.

God bless you and thank you....
 
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ViaCrucis

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ViaCrucis said..."I don't believe that the demons can create life. Indeed, I consider that very notion to be blasphemous..."

I totally agree - that is not what I said.

An angel can appear in human form.

A demon can appear in animal form.

By the way Paul directly identified pagan gods as being demons...

1 Cor 10:20

the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God,
and I do not want you to be participants with demons.

Note that I've addressed what St. Paul says here already in an earlier post.

If your argument is that the devils are liars and simply make "appearance"--delusion, falsehood, etc, then I have no issue.

Where I would take issue is with the notion that a mere creature could actually cause a stick to become a snake, could actually cause water to become blood.

That's why I said that I reject the idea that a demon could create life. If a stick literally was transformed into a real, actual snake, that would be granting to demons the capability of creating life.

To attribute to the devil--or to any mere creature--divine power is blasphemous.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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Carl Emerson

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Yes I am good with this but you seem to deny the powers angels and hence demons were given by God. They have the ability to morph from a spirit life to a creature life. Therefore life is not being created. We know Angels appear as humans. I have no problem with demons appearing as snakes.

I think our differences relate to how we view scripture.

I hold the position that God has presented reliable and understandable scriptures that don't need fancy interpretations otherwise the simple are misled and are defrauded of understanding by God Himself. So being accountable to His inspired word goes out the window very quickly.
 
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I would address it as a pagan nonsense targetting at not too smart people. And i would stop buying/browsing such low quality media.
Pagan is one thing. But the practices mentioned in the OP are straight up occult, which is completely different.
 
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i have never heard of candle magic before, sounds preety strange & shocking


Or it could just be a bit of baloney and woo made up by someone trying to sell candles to the gullible at inflated prices.

OB
 
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