The Beliefs of Pagan Practices, Where did they First Begin? Paganism 101Paganism, Eastern Religions, New Age beliefs, Wicca, Nature Spirit worship, Many Native beliefs, Evolution’s claims, and many holidays, rituals and teachings of professed Christianity, these and much more all come to us from the stream of man’s own religious inventions, that leads all the way back to the rejected altar of Cain. Cain’s ‘Do it My Way’ religion, with it’s roots deep in self pride, very quickly developed into oppression, hatred and murder of his own brother. Then from that inglorious beginning it has slithered down through the ages, gradually getting more trappings and finery, but always based on the same foundation of man’s pride and traditions and always, always in opposition to the purity of God’s Eternal Law. For convenience in these studies, I will refer to all of the above as ‘Spiritist Religions’ or ‘Paganism’. However we can go back another step, as we carefully examine the lies told to Eve in the Garden of Eden, lies which she believed and carried to her husband, resulting in the plunging of this planet into sin, misery, and death, we can see all the teachings of spiritist religions laid out before us. Lets take a look:
1st: the very first words Satan, in his disguise offered to Eve were these: “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” Here we see the insinuation of doubt and scepticism being planted. Did God really say that? Are you sure you actually understand what God said? In nearly every experience with teachers and promoters of spiritist concepts and religions the first thing you will hear is some doubt or reproach cast upon the Holy Bible, or some twisting of some statement from the Bible to gain the ear of a person with a Christian background. Never be fooled by this as Satan even quoted scripture when tempting Jesus! He knows the Bible cover to cover and just how to twist its words to promote the false teachings he has most of the world snared in. He plies his arts with a flourish in the modern versions of the bible, which are swarming these days as the frogs of Egypt. You don’t have to look far in any of them before the question, “Yea, hath God said…?” is popped into your mind by verse or footnote!
Unless the person can be moved away from his reliance on the Word of God, Satan’s pleasing fables can have no effect at all, so first comes, “Are you really sure about what God actually said?” By using a text or part of one in a completely different way than it is intended, he leads the listener into confusion, and feeling they need to defend their beliefs, they enter into conversation with the tempter, which is exactly what Eve did next. 2nd: This second item actually was presented together with the first; it has to do with how the sneaky serpent approached Eve. Now I want to establish a fact, Satan and his nasty cohorts, cannot actually read minds, however, any keen observer can often tell by expressions, positions, and motions, what the person’s thoughts are on. Often too, a person in deep thought will often whisper a few words to himself also. This is what Eve apparently did as she was there looking at the forbidden tree. She whispered to herself something about wondering why God told them not to eat of the tree? Quickly Satan took the opportunity of the moment and by his words to her, Eve got the impression that this serpent had amazing abilities that even she did not possess! She got the idea he had read her mind and therefore had amazing powers. Even the fact that this animal had the power of speech seemed amazing to her as well, it created an immediate desire to possess what she saw as ‘supernatural power’. Often people have been led into unwise associations just through the idea that the person had special abilities or powers wanted by them too! Always later on, this writer found, it just a front or a farce and whatever 'powers' they had were minimal if any and their claims were exaggerated bluffs. This writer recalls the disappointment of seeing a New-Age/Martial-Arts star that acted as a very pure and clean-living hero on movie and TV, he was on the site stinking drunk and his support staff basically despised him. The tempter was using other ‘aids’ to promote his cause also. The serpent was at that time a most bright and beautiful animal, gleaming like burnished gold in the sun, and trimmed with lovely colors, it had wings and could fly gracefully from tree to tree. Settled in the rich foliage among the colourful fruit of the forbidden tree, it was a lovely sight indeed! So here we see the appeal to the love of beauty; “the lust of the eyes”. His voice was sweet and had a musical quality to it and as he was there feasting happily on the forbidden fruit, this created a desire in Eve to eat it also. Have you ever tried to sit and watch someone partaking of some very appetizing food and not wish to have some too? There we see the appeal to the “Lust of the flesh”. The tone of his first question to Eve seemed to be an insinuation that she ought to have better sense than to actually believe what God said word for word. This aroused a desire to defend her personal pride and so appeal was made to the ‘Pride of life’. On one or all of these three weakness all temptations are based. The stage was set! Before we proceed further to study the principles of paganism in the very first lies on earth, we need to look briefly at some of the foolish mistakes that Eve herself had made, to bring her to where she could be tempted. First off, she had left her husband to wander off on her own. Now Adam and Eve had been carefully taught all about the fallen rebel angel and that he would have designs to tempt them. She also knew that God had limited him from bothering them, he could only tempt them at the forbidden tree. Angels had warned her to remain close to her husband. Have you ever noticed that a wolf or lion after prey will always try to single out one from the group and when it is alone then attack it? So Satan will seek to alienate us from faithful friends or family, or get us seeking adventure on our own, so as to set us up for attack! Eve may have unintentionally wandered off and no doubt felt a twinge of fear when she first found herself in the area of the forbidden tree. Beware, Beware! Often a twinge of fear in a situation is a warning, and those who are wise will take heed and get out of that situation fast! But too often, we, like Eve just start to reason thus, “I knows right from wrong, I can take care of myself, I wouldn’t be fooled by this stuff, I just want to have a look at it.” So instead of a wise retreat, Eve moved closer to the forbidden tree. Oh how many today are being led into temptation by feeling they must investigate different religions and learn what they believe! They are tempting Satan to tempt them and he is not at all shy about doing it. The Bible warns: “Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, …and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise.” Deut. 12:30 Now in response to the tempter’s question Eve herself misquotes God’s command. She adds a little something of her own to make it more dramatic. She answers, “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 hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” God had not said this, but the fact that Eve began adding her own exaggerations to the Words of God set her up even more for a fall. Did you realize that nearly every apostasy from truth begins by ADDING something to the Word of God? Yes indeed! Bringing in something extra, something that seems innocent and even desirable for a ‘deeper religious experience’. Those promoting it will often say, “Well, the Bible doesn’t say we are not to do this.” Strangely, this ‘adding in’ is always quickly followed by actual commands of God being subtracted. The ‘made up additions’ become more important than the real commands of God and soon take their place.
3rd: In Eve’s case it was her undoing as the serpent moved to hand her one of the fruits as he gave her the next lie, “Ye Shall not surely die!” ‘See Eve, you’re touching it, and you are not dead!’ ‘Hmm, so I am, I guess maybe the serpent has a point!’ Eve ponders, completely forgetting that is was not God who said she would die if she touched it, but rather what she had herself made up. Now take a good look at the serpent’s lie as it has been echoed down through the ages and preached from pulpits all over the world! “Ye shall not surely DIE!” “There is no DEATH, Man has an immortal soul!” But what did God say? “In the day that ye eat thereof, ye SHALL surely DIE!” It comes as a shock to most people to learn the Bible nowhere teaches that man is immortal or ‘has an immortal soul’! On the contrary, it states clearly that “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Eze 18:4 and 20. And that only God has immortality. 1 Timothy 6:16. Here we see the foundation belief of all Paganism and sadly it has permeated into most ‘Christianity’ also. “Ye shall not surely die, in fact, you cannot die you are immortal.” But we see people die all the time, so Satan had to invent more lies, thus came the idea of some inside ‘ghost being’ that lives on when the body dies. But was Eve immortal? The Bible is clear that their immortality was only conditional on their remaining obedient to God. The Tree of Life was what would sustain their life and the condition of partaking of this tree was obedience to God. When they disobeyed God they were sent from Eden and prevented from continuing to eat of the Tree of Life, Genesis 3:22 “… lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:”. They had been given conditional immortality, but they threw it away by disobedience! It is the plan of salvation that offers man a second chance at that ‘conditional immortality’, the condition? The same as in the beginning, obedience to the Law of God, only while Adam and Eve could obey, we must be given forgiveness through the Blood of Jesus and strength and grace through Jesus Christ to obey! This is all made available to us in the Plan of Salvation. Now let us just take a look at the abominations that have come from this belief in the natural immortality of man: Fear of the dead; taboos; worship of ancestors; eternally burning hellfire; an open door for devils to parade as spirits of the dead; the enslaving doctrine of purgatory; and so on.
4th Satan continued; “for God doth know…” And here we see another teaching that has come down through the ages, that God is selfish, arbitrary and wants to keep from man what is actually best for him. Many, if not all spiritist religions teach that the serpent is the friend of man and brought him life and light. A little thought would show that if God was keeping the tree from them for selfish reasons, He could have kept it somewhere that they could never reach it.
5th “…that in the day that you eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened”. Enlightenment, every false religion talks of it; people do all kinds of things to achieve it; and what it is really if you do get it? Just a hypnotic manipulation of the mind by demon spirits. But they all teach it as a series of steps to the godhead.
That brings us to the 6th: “And ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Every false religion teaches that man is somehow on his way to godhood. Some have longer paths than others but they all are claiming you become a god, or part of a god, or like a god, in the end. Man can never be a god any more than Satan really can become God! WHY? Because we are all created beings and we do not have life in ourselves and neither does he.
The 7th is inferred and it is the foundation of the entire concept of ‘magic’; the teaching that certain things of nature have mystical, magical qualities and by eating them, or wearing them, etc., magical transformations take place. From hence comes the idea of potions, talismans, crystals, jewellery, luck charms, witches brews, symbols, magic words, rituals and on and on! And it is all lies; Eve never gained any ‘special powers’ from that forbidden fruit, instead she lost big time! Ever since Eden, man has been looking for some source of ‘power’ that he can somehow ‘plug into’. Many of the explorers made their dangerous trips in hope of finding a ‘tree of life’ or a ‘fountain of life’. The sad thing is that before she sinned, Eve had both of those items to partake of freely, and she sold out for a ‘knowledge of evil’. If we look to God and believe His Word and accept the Plan of Salvation He offers, we will each have that real Tree of Life to eat from in the future! All other searches for ‘power’ are totally false and futile. Satan sometimes makes it to seem like things like that have power, but it is only a trick and delusion, like the bait on a mouse trap. This also includes all those gimmicks supposed to ‘develop hidden powers of the mind’. The only ‘hidden powers’ are demon tricks, not in man’s mind at all!
And then comes the 8th, right from Eve herself, “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.” Gen 3:6. So what took place here? Eve chose to be her own god, she would decide on the basis of her senses what was good and what was not. She had come to the conclusion God was not to be believed, and therefore not to be obeyed. With a little thought you can find every major belief of all spiritist religions right in that ancient interaction between Eve and the rebel leader, and they have no more truth now, than they did back then! |
