" src="https://d3sqoxgr2vjq10.cloudfront.net/data/images/full/18043/the-bible.jpg?w=300&h=200&l=50&t=40" alt="Deuteronomy 18:9-13 - "Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord; because of these same detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you."While many people rely on horoscopes for direction regarding the future, pastors Billy Graham and John Piper have urged Christians to look to God alone for guidance and highlighted the dangers of dealing with supra-normal spirits to get knowledge and power.
Graham, the 97-year-old founder of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, shared his thoughts in a column for the Kansas City Star on Wednesday.
While God created the stars and the universe, the Baptist pastor contends that followers of Christ should not use these cosmic entities for guidance, whether it's horoscopes, osery, omens, or magic.
"God did make the stars (as well as everything else in the universe), but He intended them to be a witness to His power and glory, not as a means to guide us or foretell the future," the evangelical leader writes.
He references Deuteronomy 18:9-13, in which God refers to such practices as detestable, abhorrent, loathsome, and forbids His people from engaging with them.
"Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord; because of these same detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you," the verses read, in part.
Such practices are dangerous, deceptive and "can easily bring someone under the control of occult spiritual powers that are hostile to God," Graham argues. He refers to the story found in 1 Samuel 28-31, where King Saul seeks to consult with a dead person about his future, eventually prompting him to suicide.
Instead, Graham concludes his message by encouraging Christians to look only to God for guidance, as He has proven He can be trusted.
"God loves us, and we know this because He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to give His life for our salvation. Even when the future is unclear, He can be trusted to guide us," the evangelical leader says.
Another prominent Christian leader, John Piper, also shared his thoughts on dabbling with cosmic entities in an earlier blog post shared on DesiringGod.org.
"When the word of Christ captures a person's mind and heart, all involvement with magical arts goes," he argues. "It is Jesus versus the occult; you cannot have both."
The theolgian charges that consulting mediums, tea leaves, fortune cookies, horoscopes, crystal balls, palmists, or "any other oracles beyond God's Word is wrong" because it belittles God as an inadequate revealer of mysteries.
"It says that God is either unable or unwilling to tell me all that is good for me to know," Piper writes. "Therefore, he lacks the power or the goodness to help me, and so I will take matters into my own hands. Therefore, people who really love God and trust his goodness and depend on his sovereign power shun all practices of the occult."
He concludes that while such practices may seem innocent, they are in actuality "dimensions of the one rebellion that has been underway since the Garden of Eden: the aim to avoid at all costs childlike submission to the limitations and provisions of a sovereign God, and to get instead a power which can be called great. Man in the occult is man in rebellion."
