Day 1 of 10
What Deuteronomy 18 Actually Forbids
The list Scripture gives — and why it has not aged out
Scripture Readings
Today's Reading
Read Deuteronomy 18:9-14. Read it slowly: "When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord."
Then read Isaiah 47:12-15 — God's mockery of Babylon's spiritual industry: "Stand fast in your enchantments and your many sorceries, with which you have labored from your youth; perhaps you may be able to succeed; perhaps you may inspire terror. You are wearied with your many counsels; let them stand forth and save you, those who divide the heavens, who gaze at the stars, who at the new moons make known what shall come upon you. Behold, they are like stubble; the fire consumes them..."
Read Acts 19:18-20: "Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver."
Finally read Galatians 5:19-21, where Paul lists the works of the flesh: "sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife..."
Reflection
Notice how specific Deuteronomy 18 is.
This is not a vague warning against "bad spirituality." Moses lists nine forbidden practices: child sacrifice, divination, fortune-telling, interpreting omens, sorcery, charming, mediums, necromancy, and inquiring of the dead. The list is not random. Each one is a way that the surrounding pagan cultures were trying to access spiritual power, predict the future, manipulate outcomes, or contact the dead. Israel is told: do none of this. The reason is not arbitrary. It is given in the next verse: "for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord."
Now translate the list to today, gently and honestly.
Divination and fortune-telling — what tarot is. What the daily horoscope app is. What "asking the cards" is.
Interpreting omens — what astrology is, especially the form that says the alignment of planets at your birth determines your personality and your future.
Sorcery and charming — what manifestation cultures call "ritual," "spell work," "intention setting." Different vocabulary, identical posture: I will, by my words and my will, bend reality.
Mediums, necromancers, those who inquire of the dead — what mediums and "psychic mediums" still are, what "channeling" is, what some forms of "spirit guide" work are.
The honest difficulty for modern American Christians is that the cultural air has saturated so thoroughly with these practices that we have stopped registering them. Astrology shows up in newspaper apps next to the weather. Tarot is a Target endcap. Manifestation language is in Christian women's books. "Sending energy," "the universe," "what your sign is" — these are the lingua franca of conversation in many circles. Christians have absorbed them in part because we have stopped reading Deuteronomy 18.
Francis Schaeffer saw the larger pattern coming forty years ago. His diagnosis was not panic but anthropology: modern people cannot live as though spiritual reality does not exist, because the evidence inside them keeps insisting otherwise. If they will not have the God of Scripture, they will reach for whatever spiritual experience is on offer — and there are always offers. The post-Christian West has not become rational. It has become more spiritual, just in directions Scripture warns against. The bookshop that no longer carries Bibles carries a wall of tarot decks.
C.S. Lewis, in his preface to The Screwtape Letters, gave the church the precise pastoral note this subject requires: there are two equal and opposite errors. One is to disbelieve in the spiritual world entirely — the rationalist temptation that secularizes the church. The other is to believe with an excessive, unhealthy fascination — the temptation of the demon-hunter, the deliverance-ministry obsessive, the Christian who sees a witch behind every yoga class. The devils, Lewis says, "are equally pleased by both errors." Today's plan rejects both. There is a real spiritual world. Some of it is forbidden territory. Christians are to walk through the world clear-eyed, neither asleep nor frantic.
John Calvin, writing in 1549, took the question of astrology so seriously that he devoted an entire treatise to it. He distinguished between the legitimate study of the heavens (what we would now call astronomy — Calvin had no problem with that) and "judiciary astrology," which presumes to read human destiny in the stars. He called it a superstition the faithful must "flee as a plague," not because the stars have no influence on the world (he was a sixteenth-century man and grants the moon affects tides) but because the practice trains the soul to look for guidance from a place God has not put it. The harm is not the prediction — most predictions are vague enough to land somewhere. The harm is the slow rewiring of the soul to look anywhere but to the Lord.
Acts 19 gives the early church's response, and it is bracing. The Ephesian believers do not quietly stop their occult practices. They bring their books — fifty thousand drachmas worth, an enormous fortune — and burn them publicly. Luke records the financial value because he wants us to feel the cost. These were not cheap pulp paperbacks; these were valuable manuscripts containing the spiritual investments of their old life. The new Christians let it all burn. The text concludes: "So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily."
Today's job is just to let Deuteronomy 18 say what it says, and to do the harder work of asking which items on its list have made their way, with new packaging, into your own life and the lives of those you love. The next nine days will give us the language and the courage to talk about it.
Going Deeper
List, privately and honestly, the spiritual practices that have any presence in your life or your home — apps, books, podcasts, jewelry, casual phrases ("the universe is telling me," "what's your sign?") that have come from beyond Christianity. Do not pre-judge any of them. Just take inventory. Tomorrow we will sit with Acts 19 again and ask what the Ephesian fire would look like in our own house.
Key Quotes
“Modern man cannot live as if there is no spiritual reality. He has too much evidence inside himself to the contrary. So if he will not have the God of Scripture, he will reach for whatever spiritual experience is on offer — and there are always offers.”
“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”
“Astrology is the great superstition of our age. It is a serious matter, and it should not be lightly esteemed. The faithful are to flee it as a plague.”
Prayer Focus
Bring to God any spiritual practice in your own life — or in the life of someone close to you — that has begun to feel ordinary but that Deuteronomy 18 names as forbidden. Ask for clarity rather than condemnation.
Meditation
Schaeffer's diagnosis is that modern people who reject the God of Scripture do not become rational; they become spiritually hungry in unmoored ways. Where do you see this in your own friends, family, or yourself?
Question for Discussion
Acts 19 records new Christians at Ephesus burning their occult scrolls 'in the sight of all' — at huge financial cost. Most modern Christians, when convicted about these practices, quietly stop. What might be the difference, spiritually and practically, between a quiet stop and a public renunciation?