.JPG)
We are in the midst of a national epidemic, and it’s not
COVID, but the epidemic of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide among
our youth:
·
Nearly 1 in 10 high school students admitted that
they had tried to take their own life in the previous 12 months, according to a
survey published by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, and 1 in 5
had seriously considered it. Suicide rates among adolescents had risen 53
percent between 2010 and 2020. (AARP.ORG/BULLETIN; Sept. 2022)
Many are identifying the usual “culprits” to explain this
explosion. Social media and the lack of mental health services seem to head
everyone’s list. However, as mental health services have proliferated, so too has
this epidemic. Conspicuously absent from these lists of culprits are the
proliferation of LGBTQ experimentation, witchcraft (judging from the massive numbers
of youth joining social media witchcraft groups), and the widespread rejection
of the Christian faith, especially among the youth.
In short, we need to question whether our tormented youth
have placed their hope in the wrong things—sexual exploration and spirit guides,
neither of which have solid track records. Just consider the big picture of the
nations and people groups who have embraced them. Have these groups prospered? John
J. Davis has written about the work of British Anthropologist J.D. Unwin:
·
After a comprehensive study of both Western and
non-Western cultures throughout human history, Unwin concluded that the record
of mankind “does not contain a single instance of a group becoming civilized
unless it had been absolutely [heterosexually] monogamous, nor is there any
example of a group retaining its culture after it has adopted less rigorous
customs.” Unwin observed that a society’s adoption and maintenance of
heterosexual monogamy as a social standard “has preceded all manifestations of
social energy, whether that energy be reflected in conquest, in art and
sciences, in extension of the social vision, or in the substitution of
monotheism for polytheism.” (Evangelical Ethics, p.116)
The same can be said regarding pagan spiritistic, shamanistic
cultures, where violence abounds and peace is a rare commodity. In Whence
the “Noble Savage,” Patrick Frank, summarizes the research regarding
analysis of ancient burial sites of spiritistic cultures. The findings, for
instance, demonstrate that the violent death rates of British Columbian Native
Americans (27-33%) far exceeded even the violent death rate of 20th century
Europe and the US (1%). Frank also adds,
·
“The Southwest is dotted with finds of people
killed en masse…These indications of war, violent deaths, mutilations and
cannibalism are from tribal societies that experienced no European or modern
contact, thus contradicting the idea that peoples who were free from European
influence lived relatively peaceful lives.” (Skeptic Mag. Vol 9,
#1,2001, 54-60)
Spiritistic societies build no hospitals or enduring
institutions and establish no universities. In The facts on Spirit Guides,
John Ankerberg and John Weldon sound the alarm about the strong association
between spiritism and mental illness:
·
“One discovers many mental patients who are
mentally ill precisely because they are demonized. This is born out by the
research of German psychiatrist and parapsychologist Hans Bender who coined the
term “mediumistic psychosis’; by theologian and psychologist Kurt Koch; and by
clinical psychologist and Swedenborgian Wilson Van Dusen, who has examined
thousands of patients and noted the parallels to spiritistic experiences and
phenomena.” (27)
However, the spirits do not gain a foothold by advertising
the costs, one of which is suicide. According to Ankerberg and Weldon, there
have been:
·
innumerable cases where the “loving” spirits
have deliberately induced emotional dependence upon their advice and then at a
moment of weakness encouraged their contact to commit suicide. And this has
been occurring for decades, probably even centuries. In the 1920 text The
Menace of Spiritualism, case after case of tragedy is listed.” (37)
The authors have compiled their own list of horrors that
have stalked mediums:
·
Arthur Ford became a morphine addict and
alcoholic…Bishop Pike died a tragic death…The biography on [Edgar] Cayce by
Joseph Millar reveals the extent of suffering Cayce’s occultic involvement cost
him—from psychic attacks to mysterious fires…Many channelers seem to succumb to
various vices later in life.” (39)
Although they describe the medium M. Lamar Keene as
“fraudulent,” from his book, The Psychic Mafia, the authors cite:
·
All the mediums I’ve known or known about have
had tragic endings. The Fox sisters, who started it all, wound up as alcoholic
derelicts. William Slade…died insane in a Michigan sanitarium. Margery, the
medium, lay on her deathbed a hopeless drunk….Wherever I looked it was the
same: mediums, at the end of their tawdry life, dying a tawdry death.” (39-40)
Violence was another price to be paid:
·
Spiritist and guru Sri Chinmoy, a spiritual
advisor at the United Nations observes, “Many, many black magicians and people
who deal with spirits have been strangled or killed. I know because I’ve been
near quite a few of these cases.” (40)
·
Dr. Kurt Koch observed after 45 years of
counseling the occultly oppressed that from his own experience ‘numerous cases
of suicide, fatal accidents, strokes and insanity are to be observed among
occult practitioners…Anyone who has had to observe for 45 years the effects of
spiritism can only warn people with all the strength at his disposal. (40)
I had joined numerous social media witchcraft groups where I
found that many were complaining about mental and extra-physical afflictions.
However, false hopes are only abandoned after the costs can no longer be
sustained. For example, one practitioner joyfully reported that he had finally
made undeniable contact with the spirit world when one had slugged him across the
face. I too had naively given the abusive and foul-mouthed spirits I had
encountered through the Ouija Board the benefit-of-the-doubt.
We all need hope, but what better hope can we have than the
God who loves us and promised to take care of us in every circumstance and
proved it by dying for us:
·
What then shall we say to these things? If God
is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him
up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans
8:31–32)
I am deeply grieved that our youth will not give this God
any consideration and will even opt to destroy themselves rather than giving
Him a chance.
.jpg)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)