In this sermon, the preacher discusses the prevalent superstitious beliefs and practices among people, such as relying on omens and lucky charms. He emphasizes that throughout history, mankind has often turned away from God and sought substitutes for Him. Drawing parallels to the Garden of Eden, he highlights the presence of both God and Satan, with Satan twisting God's word. The preacher concludes by expressing gratitude for the opportunity to gather and learn from the Scriptures, and prays for deep conviction to follow the ways of truth.

Hello, this is Brother Denny. Welcome to Charity Ministries. Our desire is that your life would be blessed and changed by this message. This message is not copyrighted and is not to be bought or sold. You are welcome to make copies for your friends and neighbors. If you would like additional messages, please go to our website for a complete listing at www.charityministries.org. If you would like a catalog of other sermons, please call 1-800-227-7902 or write to Charity Ministries, 400 West Main Street, Suite 1, AFPA, 17522. These messages are offered to all without charge by the freewill offerings of God's people. A special thank you to all who support this ministry. Greetings tonight. Greetings tonight in Jesus' name. Good to have a gathering like this, a little bit of a different setting than what maybe we're normally used to, but we have tonight before us the question of alternative medicine, or maybe we could call it in its connection with the New Age movement or the occult, and whether there is a connection or what about alternative medicine that seems to have flooded our country and our county here especially, many of the plain people. I have a newspaper article with me here that I picked up back in the 99, I think, that was running the Kansas City Post, I believe it is, Kansas City Star, where a news reporter came into the area here and began to investigate some of the general health practices of the country. And he was not a Christian, but he just felt that people are being relieved of their money, and so he put four major articles in the newspaper in the Kansas City Star, and he sent me the first copy, and you have that laying on the table up here. Well, there's quite a history of this. In my own life, I, of course, come from a family that was deeply involved in these kind of alternative methods of medicine. My grandmother, I believe maybe my great-grandparents likewise, brought it on down and practiced it on me as a young child, and I'll give you a little bit more detail on that later on. Maybe we can just bow our heads for a word of prayer here as we begin. Father in heaven, we thank you for the opportunity we have to speak the truth here tonight. We pray for that as we open thy word and historical accounts and the situation as we know it here today. We pray that we may be able to speak the truth, guide our tongue, our lips, that we may be able to do that and give glory unto our creator, the Son of heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has set us free from sin and bondage. We are so grateful to be able to be here tonight and to have seen and learned and experienced the things which we have experienced. Thank you for all these people that have come, and I do pray that deep conviction can be brought upon us all by the scripture, by the word of God, to follow the ways of truth. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, I just wanted to explain. I have a chart here that I may just explain a little bit more tomorrow night, but I met an old lady back in 2002, I think it was. I believe she might have been 80 years old or so, up in Scranton, Pennsylvania at a discernment seminar meeting that I was at, and she had this on the board there, and I asked her if I could have a copy, and she said, I'll make you a copy and send it to me. There are many, many things in there that I cannot explain or have not studied myself, but she has done a tremendous job in trying to link together all the things that have come upon the earth, or in our time, in our day, I would say most of these, a lot of these have roots way back, but the terminology given them today are mostly maybe in the last 60 years, 50, 60 years, that when you have the New World Order, as you know, our president presently ascribes to the New World Order what that all means, the New Age, or the Age of Aquarius, or the Aquarian Age, which New Agers, as we call them, believe that they will eventually, through reincarnation, dying and coming back, and hoping to rise a bit higher every time they make a cycle, they hope to attain to some utopian position there. But the roots of this, of course, is all down here in Lucifer, Satan, naturalism, humanism, atheism, evolution, neo-paganism, and so on. But she did a tremendous job in seeing how all these things are linked together, and if you take the encyclopedias and, of course, the internet, likewise, and really study those things out, you're going to find out that they indeed are linked together. But in the last years, you know, there are many new words that have come on the scene in the health practices. You know, we hear things like the life force, we hear the words chi, C-H-I, or key in some cases spelled with a K, we hear about meridian lines of force, or meridian lines that run through the body, that if you're able to bring them into balance, that the body will heal itself. We hear lots about energy. There's, and people, of course, are very familiar with the word energy and know what energy is about. We have energy in a light bulb here tonight, created by God in the earth, but we also have energy as it is known of a power or an energy supernatural that is able to heal the body if a person adjusts it properly or sticks needles into it or does certain other things. The body, of course, will be healthy or will heal itself from sickness. It's interesting how far that has gone. Just to show you, there would be a couple of men in Holmes County, Ohio, still alive here tonight, as far as I know. At least one of them is. The other may have passed away recently. And they often get together due to treating people. They acquire that much energy, excess energy, that they tie their leg with a copper wire to a stake in the ground to bleed that extra energy off. We hear a lot about removing blockages. Radionics is a new name, a new word for us today, which is also known as the black box or certain other names that it might go by. We have words like kinesiology and reflexology and acupuncture. We have words like yin and yang, which refer directly to a male and female God. I'll probably give some more information on that tomorrow night. We have words like earth balance and Mother Earth. We hear much about trying to be in harmony with Mother Earth. And so the question we simply ask tonight is where is all this going? Where does it come from? What does it mean? And what effect does it have in our lives if we implicate ourselves to any of these practitioners or herb doctors or chiropractors who went back to school and went for more education. And now he hardly touches you, but holds his hands just above you and has a very mysterious touch that is supposed to do it all. You know, all these things are going on around us. And of course, the question is, again, what is this thing all about? And for tonight's session, I would like to spend most of my time in the Bible. And I'm going to lay a foundation from the scripture to show you that this is in direct contrast, direct opposition to the Word of God. God had his plan, just like in the Garden of Eden. We're there all over again. God had his plan, the devil has his. And there's a lot of things duplicated. You're going to know what's good and evil. And, you know, Satan is still saying the same thing. And they did. There's some truth to what he said. What Satan said there. Adam and Eve did get to know the difference between good and evil when they fell. And so we can't, you know, it's these half-truths that are deceptive that lead people astray. And of course, have them follow him and make contact with him. And it's sad to say that today that there's so little discernment, I think, in our world today that simply, it seems like a lot of people are not understanding the Bible or not reading it enough or getting wisdom from it, because a lot of these things are explained in the scripture. All right, we'd like to turn tonight to Deuteronomy 18, verse 9, for our first portion of scripture. And we have quite a few that we just want to talk about here and build our foundation on truth. We don't only want to speak about things that are wrong, but, of course, here a number of things are exposed for their wrong, and we want to do the same. Deuteronomy 18, verse 9, When thou art come, spoken to Israel while they were still in the wilderness, before they had gotten over into the land of Canaan, when thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abomination of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone that maketh his son or daughter to pass through the fire, or that uses divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee. One of the sad things in the Old Testament, of course, we have God not being evangelistic like he was in the New, trying to win people to himself, but many times the people had corrupted themselves so deeply in the heathen world that God really wanted them wiped off the face of the earth because they were so contaminated in the depths of sin, and that's what we have here. And the warning is to Israel, now when you get over there and you get around some of these people, and you become friends with them, and interact with them, I don't want you to learn their ways. If you're going to learn their ways, you know, it's for this reason that I'm going to wipe them off the face of the earth. And he's saying here, because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and I don't want you to have anything to do with that, and therefore I'm asking you to keep clean and separate from all those things. So, we want to look at these tonight. As we go through scripture and just explain them a little bit. The first one here is the word, is the matter of passing through a fire, making a son and a daughter pass through the fire. Now nowhere in the Bible is it explained what clearly that was. It's a heathen practice that I believe is actually in existence yet among some of the backwoods tribes of Africa and South America, and maybe in Asia likewise, but they had this certain procedure that they would take a son or a daughter to pass through the fire, and it is at least believed that in some cases the child was offered up to God. Now we have Manasseh, the king of Israel, actually having the worst king there ever was, as far as slipping into idolatry and apostasy, worse than any other king. King Manasseh made his sons and daughters, or at least his sons, to pass through the fire. We don't have much description of what that was. The second one is the one divination. Now that one is very, very interesting because that leads all the way down to our time and our day, and we're able to identify it very easily. The word divination, this is an attempt to find out information with the use of special powers. It's not wrong for us to learn things about nature through the study of God's laws or God's word. We are curious creatures and we want to know what makes things tick and what makes things work, and through the study of science many of those things are available to us. Lightning has been studied out and figured out, and thunder, where the noise comes from, and some of those things are good. How an airplane flies by the law of aerodynamics, that's been a wonderful thing as far as travel across the world in our day, but it is wrong to divine through the use of special objects or specials. Through the years people have read information from crystal balls, looking into a crystal ball and trying to read. Witches have done this for thousands of years. That's the witch at Endor that Solomon went to. I believe she looked into a ball of some kind and divined onto Solomon the words that she gave him. Of course, Samuel was sent up by God there to speak to him, and I won't go into the story. But we have the palms of hands used, where there is today palm reading and certain designs and the way your hand is made determines whether you can smell for water or do dousing or water witching as it's known. It's also people's fortune is told by the palms of their hands. We have tea leaves, and I don't know how that is exactly done. We have the reading of the eyes, which is supposed to manifest everything that's wrong with you and lay its finger exactly on where your problem is called iridology. We have the liver of a dead animal or other body parts that anciently, thousands of years ago in the Bible, we'll have that scripture a little later on, where they actually looked into the liver in order to divine whether they should go here or go there or do this, maybe fight a battle or not fight a battle. That's very interesting. Just about a month ago or so, I picked up the Intelligence Journal here from Lancaster, our very city, and I think it was either there or maybe in the USA Today, if I might have glanced at that, occasionally run into that where I glanced at it. Here it gave a story that a man is now doing fortune telling or declaring the weather in the future by looking into the entrails of dead animals. It's amazing. Here we are, you know, about 3,000 years later or 2,700 years later from this is written in the Bible, and we have never heard of such a thing, and all at once, sure enough, here we are again, having men looking into the liver to determine whether they should fight a battle or not fight a battle. And that is what divination is. So let me explain that. Divination is to learn the unknown, to try the things that you are not supposed to normally know, like where's gold? Where's silver? My child lost itself in a cornfield. Where is it? Or in the woods somewhere. Where is water? How many children am I going to have? Who am I going to marry? That is where the art of divination is used, to try to learn or to find out the unknown. And that is strictly forbidden in the Word of God, that it says here, Thou shalt not be found among you any that maketh his son or daughter pass through the fire, or that useth divination. Nobody should touch any of the arts or any of these practices that try to learn to know something that is not normally known. Now, it's amazing how people excuse it today all over the place. Well, it's the electricity in your body, and somehow that makes connection, you know, with where the water is, so that you can tell not only how deep the water is, but how much gallonage is there. Amazing, isn't it? I usually say it's interesting to me that you normally put a stake in the ground about eight feet, to stop the flow of all electricity. Everywhere you go into a building where there's electric, you will find a stake in the ground which stops all flow of electrons. So the earth is a stopping of electron flow. How can you, and that's 240 volts, how can you, with less than one volt in your body, or only about, what is it, eight millivolts, thousandths of a volt in our bodies, find water a hundred feet down in the earth which stops the flow of electricity, and then tell the people it's the electric in your body? Doesn't make sense. But the serious use of divination that has come into our time and day is that of divining rods, or a divining branch, or a fork stick, or a pair of pliers, or copper rods. And we walk over looking for oil, or gas, or water, or whatever we want to look for. And when we do, we hold these rods out and they cross over and indicate that there's what we're looking for. Diviners look for lost children, look for lost objects. It's amazing also, when you talk about electricity being the source of it, we argue against that because they now open up a U.S. map, or a state map, or maybe a county map, and they, again, divine with their rods over the map to find out where minerals are, or oil, or gas is, or something like that. This is a curious art, spoken of to us in Acts, in the book of Acts, chapter 19, when the revival in Ephesus took place, they brought all their books and curious arts. Divination is a curious art. And those who dabble in it are dabbling in Satan's territory, not in God's, and they're going to have consequences of it. Now, I'll hope to go over some of those consequences, but you have divination with other things, too. A ring, a fingernail clipper, and like I said, a branch of a tree, often a fork in a peach tree is used for water witching and a forked object to locate water, oil, or lost articles and many other objects. The second one we have is an observer of times, where we're using the moon, the stars, to determine how and when to do certain things. What kind of personality one has, or what will happen in the future. This is using astrology, or the signs of astrology, to try to determine what my personality is by the time of the month in which I was born. My grandmother enforced, very strictly, that she must plant and other grasses or various crops by the signs of the moon. She was an observer of times and insisted to my father, who was working for them when he was first married, before he started farming himself, that she must plant, he had to plant the crops according to her divination or her being an observer of times using the German calendar. The German calendar has all that in it of course. That's widely distributed here in the local Amish bookstores, Benedict bookstores, some in some other places likewise, and men and women still use that today. That's what an observer of time is. Astrology and horoscopes would fall under this category to be an observer of times. If I was born in this month or this part of the month, then I'm this kind of a person, this kind of a personality. We are not to have any parts of that. And the next one is called an enchanter. One who uses rituals to accomplish things that cannot be done otherwise or to divine what is unknown. Some would say the powwowing, and that is an interesting word. The actual word powwowing comes from the Indians. There are certain Indians here in the east when the Germans came over in the English from Europe, they were, the Germans of course had the practice of braga, and the Indians had the practice of powwowing. When they compared notes as to how they did the thing, it was so similar that the Amish or German and Mennonite people who had the experience of bragan or braga, the Indians said, was powwowing. So it's the same as what we call powwowing. So therefore you have the interchangeable words braga, powwowing, today. But they were actually not from the same origin other than yes, down in the roots of Satanism and the occult, but the one came from heathenism, wherever the Indians came from when they were here in the United States. The other came out of Europe from our ancestry. And yet was very similar. That would be an enchanter. And by that I mean making strange noises, not touching the patient, holding their hands up above them and making these noises to try to pull the pain or to heal the body or to, oh, there were just numbers, numerous things, get rid of warts and so on. The next one is a witch, a sorcerer of any kind. In the Hebrew, this is a broad term used for any man or woman who has special powers that are not of God. This means having the ability to do good or evil. They'll say a white witch or a black witch. A white witch does good and a black witch does evil. Both are evil. There's no such thing as a white witch or a good witch, even though some may do worse than others with their witchcraft. Nevertheless, there's no such thing as both or that one being good and the other. That, but what they mean here is that following natural laws or through means ordained. These powers include enchantment, the ability to practice magic, and I'm not talking about sleight of hand just that the people don't see what you actually did, the ability to cast spells, the ability to read another's mind, the ability to alleviate pain or sickness or a lot of that is in Ohio and Indiana and Illinois where they draw sickness out of a child and claim, many, many women claim to have the power to be able to draw pain, the ability to charge objects with special power, the ability either to do or to divine through the use of special objects. That's amazing. If you would go to a foreign country like Haiti and you have contact there with the witch doctors, you find out how they practice those very things in the utmost of their heathenism. A charmer is one who uses spells or charms, good luck charms, hex signs, pendulums, a watch or a weight of some kind on a string and various pyramids. We heard a lot in the budget years ago about pyramid power. People were making pyramid stoves here and selling them in Lancaster County that were supposed to reduce a piece of wood to the smallest amount of ash that you've ever heard of and it even went so far that your garden was supposed to grow a lot better if you would put the pyramid stove in the garden in the spring or if you put it on the back of your pickup truck you were supposed to get a lot better gas mileage. It was just totally ridiculous and far-fetched but that is Egyptian pyramid power and comes straight out of the heathenism of Egypt and other such countries that believe in pyramid power but you had all that stuff that's come through Lancaster County in my time. One homeopathic doctor for example acknowledged that she could not diagnose patients or determine the right medication without wearing a certain charm around her neck. In modern times charmers often explain their ability to use objects or rituals by saying they have special body magnetism or electricity and it's not true. It's rather I believe most of that is the result even though I believe the body chemistry varies a bit from person to person but most of that is the result of having contact with an occultic person beforehand. You'll find out if you study this that that Braha can only be transferred from a man to a woman to a man to a woman. It has to go from male to female to male. It cannot be passed from man to man. That's been very interesting and you'll notice other special things like that that surround how this is transferred. My sixth one here in this list is a consulter with familiar spirits. Literally one who seeks counsel from the spirit world and what they do is through the power of a witch or the power like in the case with Saul going to the witch of Endor trying to get her to pull up the spirit of a dead man and consult with the spirit and ask them questions and try to get answers for your life and direction. What do I do? And that's exactly what Saul did. The spirit of God has left me. He doesn't talk to me anymore. And so he comes to the witch of Endor and tries to pull up a dead spirit of an old friend Samuel to talk to him. Well, what normally happens a demon shows up and speaks as being familiar with your family and therefore it's called a familiar spirit. It's nothing but a demon. But in the case with Saul God sends Samuel up to prophesy to Saul that he's going to die. He's going to lose the battle. And that's what he did and that's what happened. I think the next day or very shortly afterward. But that's a consulter with familiar spirits. Now, it's amazing how many people talk to widows and widowers that actually long and try to speak to their dead husband or dead wife after the funeral. Oh, you know, they miss them so bad so they have a desire to talk to them and they kind of go into kind of a trance-like thing and then they claim they see them and are able to talk to them or they come back into their bedroom at night and have a little conversation. That's not the spirit of the dead person. That's a demon that comes up. It's a familiar spirit that impersonates the wife or the husband. That's a familiar spirit. All right. And they do it to gain information or insight of life. It's again trying to divine. What should I do? Should I sell the house? Should I do this? Should I marry the next man who's coming asking for me? You know, crazy things like that. Okay, the next one is wizard. The Hebrew word literally means a knowing one. So, this refers especially to one who has powers or who uses objects to divine or to gain information. And the last one is necromancer. A necromancer is one who seeks counsel from or makes contact with the dead. Now, you might be shocked to find out that the entire Hutterite religion in North America and Canada is based on an experience of necromancy where the leader or the bishop or overseer of the church, a man by the name of Mike Waldner, went over to Europe and he had contact there with his dead dad. In fact, when he left the train to go visit some other Hutterites to try to get them to move to North Dakota, his dead dad, he fell and banged his head on a rock and was all bloody and all that. His dead dad picked him up, showed up there, picked him up, carried his coat and took him across the field to the farmhouse. When they opened the door and the people came out and welcomed Mike in, all bloody, blood running down over, says, what happened to you? All at once, his coat was lying across the chair and he never carried it or put it there and his dead father disappeared. He had contact with a dead person. And when you investigate Mike Waldner's life, first of all, that is necromancy. He was involved in witchcraft. He must have been. Other than that, he would not have had his dead dad show up. Furthermore, his dead dad didn't show up. It was a demon. And somewhere, Mike had contact with witchcraft that allowed that incident to happen. You and I who are walking with God will not have contact or experiences like that because it's not of God. We are not to have contact with dead people or to have conversations with them. And I think Mike might have asked him a question or two on the way over also. But what happened was Mike had other visions that declared the Hutterite Church as being the Ark of God. And so, to this day, the old grandmas in Alberta will say, you're not a Christian because you're not in the Ark. The only people that will be saved, who got saved in the old Ark? Just Noah and his children. That's all that's going to be saved now is just the people in the Ark. So you better join the colony or you'll never get to Heaven. They believed that with all their heart. Dear old people, plainly addressed, love their children, decent people in many ways, nice to be around, friendly, hospitable. But they are deceived by necromancy in their great grandfather in the late 1800s who had contact with a dead spirit, with a dead demon or with a demon who he thought and got information and was deceived by him. And to this day, they believe the colony is the Ark All right, let us turn to some other scriptures. 2 Kings 23-24 Moreover, the workers with familiar spirits and the wizards and the images and the idols and all the abominations that were spied in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem did Josiah put away that he might perform the words of the law which were written in the book of Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the Lord. Josiah was the son of Manasseh. Manasseh was a or grandson of Hilkiah the priest Is it grandson? Or son? I am not sure now. It is either his son or his grandson. I think maybe it is his grandson. But Josiah, Manasseh was the most wicked king there ever was in Israel. The Bible says no king ever committed more idolatry and did more wickedness than Manasseh. Even though he changed his heart, changed his mind at the end of his life, repented, tore down the idols and it looks like he died a righteous man. But his grandson Josiah went through the land to cleanse the land from Manasseh having bring all the idolatry into the temple and he had the temple of God polluted with idols. And Josiah went in there and he hacked him to pieces and he stomped him and he crushed him and he threw him out the door and he cleansed the temple and he brought the priests back in and brought in godly worship again and all that. And here it says the workers with familiar spirits wizards images idols abominations that were spied in the land of Judah Josiah put away. And that shows again that God will not have a mixture of these two. If you're involved in witchcraft or in the occult many times people are involved innocently but they are guilty before God and will not have God's power and God's blessing upon their life. 2 Chronicles 33 3 Let's see 33 6 I'm sorry This is speaking about Manasseh He caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Himnon. Also he observed times he was an astrologer or involved in the signs of Zodiac and horoscope he used enchantments he used and used witchcraft and dealt with a familiar spirit and with wizards and he wrought much evil on the side of the Lord to provoke him to anger. Isaiah 2 6 Isaiah 2 6 Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob because they have replenished they be replenished from the east and are soothsayers like the Philistines and they please themselves in the children of strangers. Now that's interesting first of all we notice here that they first thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob this is apostasy among the Jews and look what their sins are. They be replenished from the east. When we look at a chart like this we often call this eastern religion or eastern mysticism. Well again between 2 and 3 thousand years ago there was this matter actually in one place Ezekiel chapter 8 Ezekiel talks about them when he went in through the hole in the wall. God told him to look and see what the elders of Israel do and they all had their faces toward the east and they were worshipping the sun. They had fallen into idolatry. Now today again what we have here is the rise of eastern mysticism. When you go to most of the ologies like kinesiology and reflexology and iridology and all this that we'll talk about tomorrow night more in detail maybe you will find out that they have all of their roots into Taoism Hinduism Buddhism and various practices not only practices but they are actually religions from the east. The next one here is that they are soothsayers like the Philistines which means that they are fortune tellers or involved in witchcraft and the third one is very interesting they please themselves in the children of strangers child abuse child abuse today plane loads of men fly to the far east from Holland Amsterdam Germany England plane loads upon plane loads and commit this horrible sin of abusing children over a week or a weekend. Unbelievable how these things have returned to our time and our day. Alright Isaiah chapter 8 verse 19 chapter 8 of Isaiah verse 19 and when they shall say unto you seek unto them that have familiar spirits and unto wizards that peep and that mutter should not a people seek unto their God for the living to the dead to the law and to the testimony if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them. And here we have a situation again the church has fallen Israel has fallen into sin Isaiah the prophet is reminding her of her sin and is simply saying why are they seeking unto wizards that peep and mutter and trying to get information from an evil spirit in order to find out what's water find out what their future is should not a people seek unto their God should they not pray to God instead and ask him for their daily needs instead of to wizards and then he said to the law and to the testimony if they do not speak according to this word the reason is that a light has gone out there is no light in them anymore and that's what happened in our day religious people who are doing these things it is because they have no light in them they have no discernment anymore all right Ezekiel 21 21 there's another verse there that talks about for the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way at the head of two ways to use divination he consulted with images he looked to the liver now there you have the verse that explains looking into the insides of the entrails of animals in order to determine now here he has two different things one is a bright arrows it says that he made his arrows bright now what I understand that means historians indicate that arrows were used for fortune telling or for direction it would take a handful of arrows and throw them in the air and watch where they come down and how they fall and then it would mean go this way or go this way depending how they would fall others would put them in a quiver mix them up blindly they would reach in pull out an arrow and they had yes or no written on the arrows and that was also a way of determining whether they should do something or not do something so but he looked in the liver amazing and here we are again 2008 and people are looking into the liver to get direction for their life now back in Hosea 4 we have another very interesting scripture verse 12 where he says this my people as counsel of their stocks and their staff declareth unto them for the spirit of whoredom hath caused them to err and they have gone a whoring from under their God now this is simply saying that their stick is declaring to them they are getting direction from a stick using a forked stick maybe or divining rods and that we would say too their divining rods declare unto them instead of they have gone a whoring from under their God and went after new age practices and that's why they are doing these things now I did mention I have a few in the New Testament Acts 19 19 of course the one I quoted before that when they had the revival there in Ephesus where Paul preached the gospel and we notice there they came and confessed and showed their deeds verse 18 many of them also which used curious hearts brought their books together and burned them and counted the price of them and they found it was 50,000 pieces of silver when revival comes the strange and curious hearts come to the surface and people start asking questions is it right that I do this and they get down to pray when they get born again and it doesn't feel right anymore to do the things they used to do before they go to a practitioner or to a doctor somebody who treats them and all at once they feel eerie strange and they don't feel like they want to be there anymore that is happening all over the place and has happened through my converted years over and over again whether it be Indiana, Ohio or Canada or here in Pennsylvania that people get enlightened to God to the gospel and get right with God and then they all at once pick up that something is strange and they don't want to go back to that doctor anymore that they were often visited before curious hearts come to the surface in revival and men get right with God and these things are exposed and a man backs away from them and doesn't want to do them anymore but better yet that's okay but that's often not enough when we have been contaminated with these things a lot of times we should do it as they did it in the book of Acts bring your literature bring your books like I wish people would do the old books that are still on the bookshelves of many homes here in Lancaster County and burn them renouncing it in the name of Jesus and giving your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ and confessing that you're sorry that you ever did that not knowing what it was alright Galatians chapter 5 verse 19 now the works of the flesh are these which are these are adultery fornication uncleanness lasciviousness idolatry and witchcraft now those two are beside each other for a reason as we read some of these scriptures in the Old Testament you will notice that those that practiced witchcraft also worshipped idols and the two were often connected and so it is here but here it takes all those Old Testament experiences in Deuteronomy 18 necromancy and familiar spirits and charming and all this stuff and puts it all into one word and calls it witchcraft now later on he simply very clearly says that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God in verse 21 they I have told you if I tell you before and I have told you in time past that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven now it would be nice for us to think you know that people who are involved in these things our relatives our grandparents our great grandparents they didn't realize that they were innocent but the Bible says that those that practice those things cannot enter heaven and that is the saddest note of this whole matter and that's the reason we have a meeting like this and why we're urgent that people get rid of it confess it forsake it see it for what it is and free themselves from it so they can be saved because they will not be able to be saved if they are practicing this all their life like that that I I would not see any way that that would be possible so he sums that all up and just calls it witchcraft and then in and that's what it is simply all the different things that we have talked about whether it's looking in the liver whether it's speaking with the dead and getting information whether it's going to a witch and looking in a crystal ball and trying to determine what your future holds like Saul did and was cut off from God whether it's looking for water with a fork stick or a pair of pliers those things are all in that word witchcraft it is the craft of witches does not belong to Christian people and all Christian people need to separate themselves from it Ephesians 5 warns us again of that very clearly verse 11 it says have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather reprove them have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather reprove them or speak out against them tell people how wrong it is tell people to repent from it and confess it and burn their stuff that's what God asks now let me explain to you a little bit of history and how suddenly that that has come in into our day if you go to Langston Mennonite Historical Society in here on Lincoln Highway years ago and I don't know if they still do it or not but they used to have book sales when the old people Amish Mennonite people would die they would donate their books to the Historical Society and the Historical Society would have book sales and the money would go to the Historical Society people who had done well in life and I used to attend those oh maybe 30 years ago because I was interested in getting my hands on old books I wanted to know what people believed 100 years ago just to see how they wrote what they wrote about the Christian faith and I stumbled on this thing being at the book sale and there were numerous times the 6th and 7th book of Moses came out 6th and 7th book of Moses well I knew from my German ancestry that the Genesis through Deuteronomy is called the 5 books of Moses because Moses was the author and in German we don't call them Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus we call them 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th book of Moses and this book was called the 6th and 7th book of Moses I found out later on that they were actually books of Egyptian sorcery they were books that were loaded with witchcraft and formulas and methods how to heal yourself or how to do things and they were very very strong they were like they would have come right out of Egypt another name for the book it has been reprinted many times I think here in the United States even but a lot of them came over from Europe and the old people had them and passed them down to their children and so when they died and donated their books to the historical society this book came up I wouldn't doubt in a given sale it would have been 7, 8 or 9 of them sold at the sale throughout the evening nobody said anything about them and I only found out what they are another book that surfaced and it was called the Egyptian Bible excuse me the Devil's Bible Egyptian Sorcery 6th and 7th book of Moses I think that's all mainly those three names and it's amazing as I started talking to people about this you know I went up to McVeigh town one time and visited a family there and she said well my mother has one of those in her attic and there were a lot of strange things going on in the family and in the mother's life and even the daughter's life some and she realized that her mother would have had a source of information right out of these books well I never knew what the source was from my family but my grandmother was so steeped in those things I mean it was just unbelievable when I grew up and I began to see what we were into it wasn't until I became converted that I realized it was so wrong but then later on I didn't do anything about it for many years until God worked a deep revival in my own heart and I began to see what this stuff was and began to research it and to see the foundation behind it another book that was widely known here in Lancaster County was The Long Lost Friend or De Lange Verborgene Freund which was printed both in German and shortly afterward in English by a man by the name of John Holman who lived over in Reading or somewhere close by in Berks County he printed that book and I just have a couple of photocopies out of it to give you an idea of some of the things it says now here about three years ago my mother died and my mother was an only child and so when my grandmother died we did not have sale everything just got given to my mother and she put the stuff in the attic and all over the place and it was a lot of stuff and so when my mother died she was the last one my father had died earlier we made sale for us nine children well one of my two of my brothers well one of my nephews and one of my brothers was an auctioneer and we auctioneered all day from about nine o'clock in the morning until five at night and there were a lot of stuff there and you know you would get boxes of cards that they had and little booklets and big books and all kinds of stuff quilts and everything well going through my stuff you know I took it home and put it in the house going through my stuff I found this little booklet A Long Lost Friend that was handed down through my grandmother to my mother I doubt if my mother ever knew she had it but anyway we my wife found it and took it down in the stove downstairs the wood stove made a little fire and burned it but here's some of the crazy things that it said for swollen glands fat was supposed to be applied a tumor if somebody had a tumor or a growth they were supposed to walk up to our coffin take the dead hand of the individual laying in the coffin and rub it on the tumor put the hand back when the body would deteriorate and rot the tumor would disappear they would also tie a string around the tumor and then tie the string around the finger of a dead corpse before they close the coffin and again when the string would rot away the tumor was supposed to disappear during the pronouncement of a benediction in church the tumor is to be stroked with the words spoken this is sin which I see what I stroke shall cease to be and we also had many things in the powwowing of a braha line in that book like the braha or the practitioner of the person taking that role would throw three shovelfuls of live coals over a patient over top of a patient not on the patient but over top in and whispering healing words at the time that they would do it in order to help the individual cure themselves and I got this somewhere I don't have it written here but I remember that if you wanted to make a good deal at buying a farm you would put the twelve apostles in your shoe written on a piece of paper stick it in your shoe and go to buy your farm or go to the public sale to prevent fevers rye blossoms were eaten the first three rye heads seen in the spring in the name of the father, son and holy ghost so you would look for the first three rye blossoms pick them off eat them in the name of the father, son and holy ghost and that's amazing that they used those three names a lot in their powwowing or in their braha because it was a mixture of religion and heathenism there or witchcraft and you will see that very prevalent in the Catholic church the Catholic church is a mixture of witchcraft you go to Haiti today the Catholics down there have actual voodooism as Catholics which is witchcraft and also their Catholic religion also the first three hailstones that would fall in the year was a protection not only against fevers but against all sickness throughout the year hard boiled eggs shell and all were eaten on Good Friday we always had soft boiled eggs on Good Friday I think or I believe they were soft boiled but we had to eat eggs on Good Friday and if you saw sheep dance in the sun and I can't I remember year after year my grandmother standing at the window looking at the big red ball coming up in the early morning and imagine and imagine and hunt and hunt and hunt for those lambs dancing in the sun believing that if you saw lambs dancing in the sun it would mean good luck to you the rest of the year and she'd stand there and says there they are I think I see them well then she wasn't quite sure and the rest of us would almost laugh you know there's no sheep dancing in the sun grandma you're just imagining it but she believed it with all she had that there were lambs dancing in the sun on Easter morning remedies for the cold were also or cold and fever were likewise they had very strange things but in my own experience the first time I knew it I was probably about six years of age I started to I had a weak membrane inside my nose and somehow it just started bleeding and it would just bleed she would take a hidden writing in a hidden in a sewed together pouch and put it around my neck and that was supposed to stop the bleeding I was also supposed to count from a hundred down to one backwards and I learned to do it about as good because I had a nosebleed many times and I always was told I had to count backwards from a hundred to one to stop the blood and she would and you know by the time I got down to one the blood had coagulated in my nose like it normally does and the blood would stop and then you get an idea this thing works I tell you we were bombarded with those things my dad didn't like it but she would practice that stuff on us too and when he was in the field but the worst thing came in my life now I had some strange things going on in my childhood that I cannot explain that were not normal I can look back and I remember there were things in my childhood way back there way young that were not normal and I believe she practiced these things on us as babies and I believe I had effects from it probably in one way or another although they were not too bad but when I was ten years of age I was burned in a lantern fire where I had gas put gas in the lantern I guess and I forgot to put air into it and so I put a match in the inside of a Coleman lantern and turned on the spigot of course or the valve and it wouldn't light so I decided to just let the valve open and quick try and put some air in pump some air in a little air pump when I did that the check valve stuck and the gas sprayed out on me and the lit match was right there just like that I was on fire and I ran for help rather than knowing what to do instead of rolling myself on the ground or whatever and there was a tourist there or somebody for ice cream at the time and took me and rolled me in the grass and got the fire out and I was of course in horrible pain unbearable pain that night that evening they took me to the doctor but you know how it is with burns there's nothing to do hardly there actually are remedies today that take that fire and heat out of there but we wouldn't have known any of those things at that time and so I got a big scar I had second degree a little bit of third degree on my wrist and across my chest and lo and behold a witch doctor or a braja doctor from Holmes County, Ohio was in the area where he would come in and treat about a hundred people in about three or four days and then he'd go home again then he'd come about a month or six weeks later and he'd treat a whole bunch of people again and go home again and that fellow happened to be in the area and my grandmother got him in there to treat me and it was after that sometime after that that I began to experience more major difficulties I would wake up right between sleep and awake when I would fall asleep at night and my spirit would leave my body and I just had frightful experiences that I remember to this day they did not stop when I became a Christian I don't understand why but I continued with them struggling with them into my marriage and only when I realized this truth concerning witchcraft and all that it has to do and took a clear position on it that thing disappeared and I know nothing of it to this day today and I'm very thankful for that but I then realized the depth of the apostasy even when our forefathers came from Europe they brought this stuff along it was already they were already so fallen in Europe when they came to America that they brought these books along in their big chests when they came over in the 1700s and got them reprinted and passed them down through word of mouth and all this stuff down through the years and that was the situation that I grew up with I mean if my grandmother would have had a black cat that would have crossed her pad she'd have turned the buggy around and you'd turn right on the road and went back the other way I'm sure we couldn't put umbrellas up in the house we couldn't walk through the door with an umbrella and have it ever put it up in the house that was a bad omen you know against the house we had to take we weren't supposed to take the ashes out before breakfast you know it was this Easter thing it was just on and on I have probably forgotten half of them but but I know that yeah even on little babies you know the whole short growth problem and that little babies were if they would go outside we were supposed to get a mysterious sickness called short growth and you know we were we were planning by the signs of the moon we were we were just immersed in that kind of stuff and I just am so grateful and so thankful in my own testimony that God has shed light into my own life and has been able to help me to now speak about it and to warn people of this involvement in what it does to us I was so afraid I was gripped with terrible fear through my youth I remember in a bad thunderstorm that I would sit in the middle of a room on a little chair that I had and close my eyes squeeze them shut and sit there and not move until the storm was over I was so afraid lightning would strike me or strike the house or the barn I was just terrified by those things now we wonder where did it all come from and I just want to read a little bit about that it is known the fraternity of water diviners or dowsers is found in Rome you go back in the hedonism of the Roman Empire you will find dowsing going on or water smelling or water witching you will find the divining used by using entrails from beasts likewise way back there the Scythians we know that they exposed prejudice by the use of a wand they would they would expose an individual's guilt over a crime or prejudice that he had been involved in with a wand the line of magic and the Germanic tribes also practiced divination with their letter staves the line of magic runs all the millennia or the thousand thousand years to the present day in the last two centuries the history of missions has yielded valuable material on this question on all the mission fields Christianity has had the struggle with the heathen arts of divination and almost all of them have had to do with witch doctors who hated them tried to curse them tried to kill them with curses and was so against them you can go into a heathen place today you can go down to Haiti tomorrow if you want to you can go back in there where we have had a mission for a number of years and the people love you and are friendly and numerous people have gotten converted the church is full of people overflowing when you go down there and speak to them but there's a witch doctor at every corner and a person who is involved and they hate you and they hate your presence and they but they don't curse you because their curses don't work they have tried it over and over again over the last ten years ten years now twelve years that we have been down there and they just kind of gave up and tolerate us because their curses don't work and I thank God for that but this you go back into heathenism you find this problem everywhere in the world it doesn't matter whether you go to Suriname South America you go into the Amazon jungle Brazil you go to the far east into Indonesia into Papua New Guinea or wherever you will find these things that are existing there alright in Africa it was witch doctors in Tibet the red hooded monks with their occult practices among the Malays it was the Pei Wong and among the pygmy people of Malaya the Polyong or the Poyong in China there existed besides the idol priest the stronger cult of Geomancers with their system of Feng Shui in East Siberia were the shamans among the Eskimo the Angakok among the American Indians the tribal or magic priests these all presented a strong occult and magic resistance to the advance of Christianity in enlightened Europe divination is in spite of rationalism and the blossoming of science very prevalent the daily and weekly papers including here satisfy the superstition on all classes of society with their astrological forecasts card layers fortune tellers palmists or palm readers tea leaf diviners crystal ball gazers pursue a flourishing trade information about the fate of the missing persons is given by means of a pendulum held over a photograph superstitious dependence on omens and fetishes such as lucky mascots horseshoes four leaf clovers lucky pigs chimney sweeps black ravens and so forth are very prevalent among the among the people and so I believe we can prove that way that this has been going on for a long long time all through history that men have turned away from God it is a substitute for God you know just like in the Garden of Eden we have God and we have Satan we have the word of the Lord what to do and then you have Satan twisting the word in another way and that's what we have all down through the ages you have Babylon and you have Jerusalem you know you have these two kingdoms and today you have the occult you have the new age movement and you have Christianity and the truth of God's word and the Bible but one of the things I just want to mention here in closing yet is the the effect of this I have noticed in numerous communities an increase of depression sadness of life taking antidepressant medications is up above average in many of these communities that practice these things people are heavy sad not joyful many of them have pre death terrible accidents a lot of sicknesses and deaths in their youth in Illinois and Missouri there are 16 year olds dropping over dead for no reason at all it seems like that without hardly being able to find out what the reason is of their sickness people involved in witchcraft of course or in with the spirit preacher as we know in the sleeping preacher churches have those kind of things among them you have the worst thing is the darkness where they don't have the light of the gospel or the light of the truth or assurance of salvation they are filled with doubt and negativism and like I say depression and sadness and you see many of those things that I believe that are in connection with this Dean Hostetler who has worked against witchcraft in Napanee Indiana for the last 30 years he just died now about a year ago or so but Dean Hostetler was very active there and he said he has personally investigated every suicide in that whole northern Indiana area whenever there is a suicide among the plain people he checks it out and in every case he told me witchcraft was involved individuals commit suicide they were involved in braga they were involved in strange things water witching and what have you and there is always that connection there that hopelessness of life and witchcraft and so there are many things like that that really concern us and it just be our heart that the people would open their eyes and learn to know the truth and spread the good news Jesus Christ can set you free from your involvement in the alcohol but it's not going to do you any good until you know it see it for what it is and are willing to confess it if you still think there is nothing wrong with it I can do it and it doesn't affect me I'm normal and you may be because it doesn't affect all people right away or early on some people lead normal lives they say you can meet many witches on the street today you would never know they are witches and that has been proven out many times I believe but yet in their secret times or in their all alone times very strange things are taking place so tomorrow night what I'd like to do is go over some of the literatures and go over some of the distinctives concerning reflexology kinesiology iridology or maybe numerous things dousing and just explaining some of those things more in detail and just be able to take a look at the individual practices that are being practiced today that are being defended as not being witchcraft not having anything to do with the occult and just taking a good long look at it and see the connection it has with this whole eastern mysticism and eastern religion and hopefully have some time again for questions and answers but tonight I just want to open it up here to close if someone have a question on anything that was spoken of tonight that they would need any further clarification on anything feel free to just give us express yourself if you have any questions yes yeah the origin of those came into Berks County from the from Germany I believe pretty much I think it's come from Germany directly they were to ward off evil spirits numerous things were done which is in this book too on the long lost friend that you would take the skin of an owl and nail it on the barn or various other animals skin them out lay them flat out and nail them to a barn to ward off bad luck or evil spirits but the hex sign had to do with that that's the way it was in the 17th and 18th hundred today it's looked at as a piece of decoration nobody has any idea where they come from or hardly anybody but their origin was to ward off evil spirits Mark right yeah well I usually feel like yeah many many of these things actually do work I will never argue with an individual and say it's nothing happens there are so many proofs of that I've seen it in my own eyes and heard the testimonies of people and there are also stories in literature here in Lancaster County Pennsylvania Dutch folklore of the success that people have had to get rid of very severe illnesses from it the problem is that when the devil heals it's only a trade-off a lot of times yes there's a healing maybe of sorts but you'll pay for it in another area in another area you may be severely depressed after that and you don't know why yet you were wonderfully healed over here of this thing in your leg or in your stomach or whatever and so I have been able to trace that a lot of times that it seems like there is an exchange going on when God heals he heals and there's no after effects but when the devil heals a lot of times there's just a trading off there yeah right yeah in the new age religion in Hinduism and Buddhism they believe in a life force in opposition to the God of Heaven who created you and made you and is Lord of Heaven and Earth and they talk constantly about the force this little booklet here on homeopathy picked up in a local Mennonite ladies who practiced it and treated people for it page through the book and you find in page 27 here in the bottom may the force be with you that is direct idolatry it is giving credence or giving honor to a force outside of God or Jesus Christ and but that goes all the way through every one of those ologies they have to do with the force and it's what they believe is an existing supernatural power and they interpret it for well being and they believe that these lines of force run through the earth north pole to south pole and you have people here in the county that are lining up their beds with divining rods between in children's beds in order to go in there and divine which the right direction is and they line up the bed for the meridian lines of force to be in agreement with you meaning you will be better you will be healthier you will have a happier marriage bed or whatever when you get it adjusted according to that the whole thing is a total new age deception but whenever you read anything about the life force and you do that in much herbs today they give credit to the life force or the force or homeopathy or it's amazing you can just read a little news article about anything in the new age and they'll give credit to the force and it's because they don't believe in God and so they give their honor to the force but what it really is there are invisible lines called meridian lines that they say run through the earth and run through the human body when you bring that into agreement and what they call harmony earth harmony I think that's on here somewhere up here at the top harmony here you have it aquarium economics but unity over here some places it talks directly about earth harmony or harmony with mother earth see since the earth is your mother and you want to be made into harmony with her then of course your body will work right and you'll be healthy it's a replacement for prayer for God for truth spirituality that's what it is but I was so shocked oh that poor lady that practiced homeopathy up there in Lebanon county didn't have any idea what it meant to be with you but we gave that to a young lady who visited our home she brought this up she was a former new ager and I showed her this and she said where did you get this and I said oh he just got it up here in Lebanon county at a plain lady's waiting room for treatments and she screamed she literally screamed she said these people have no idea what this is they have no idea what they're messing with you know and like I say she was a former new ager and was in it up to her neck got converted got delivered and straightened out from it all but that's the way it is people are naive are ignorant don't understand and therefore get trapped in these things totally innocent but nevertheless we're responsible to search these things out read our Bibles God has given us light and be free from them yeah yeah yeah of course according to the Bible no but since the Holy Spirit has come very few uses of dreams or divine revelation are true I would say probably the only cases where I see them really to be have been coming out right is in the jungle where people cannot read and have no Bible in their language there you have divine revelation sometimes revealing Jesus Christ to the people in amazing ways and you do have more miracles of all of other sorts too but in a people who have the word of God for direction and have the Holy Spirit and have understanding and education on that there you see it very negatively and usually when there's a dream there or a revelation there it misguides people it's of wrong spirit that's how I have been able to divide it pretty much if something is in the scripture and a person gets a dream that is either different or similar you can just know that it's not of God especially so when it doesn't agree with the word of God but even so it's very very fickle and undependable multitudes of people have been misled through dreams and visions it's very dangerous to go by them but I do not put it 100% because God has used it in the book of Acts but there again they had nothing but the Old Testament and the verbal words of Jesus handed down to them it wasn't until 150-200 years A.D. that they finally brought the Bible together maybe even a little later yeah that would make a difference too if they have to do with the occult well then of course because when you go into the occult it's amazing in Haiti you'll have speaking in tongues almost sounding the same as in a charismatic church you'll have dreams and revelations and spiritual things going on mystical things that almost duplicate what people are having up here in the Pentecostal or charismatic movement and it is all demonic we work with some demon possessed girls down there one time they spoke in tongues that night you know and things like that while we were dealing with them and they were trying to choke themselves with their own hands kill themselves and would say even she would occasionally cry out that the devil is killing me and so you know there's a lot of that in the heathen world you know that duplicate of Christianity in that sense and totally false yet being similar to the truth yes in the back there no I have not all of them yeah I knew that the history that I have heard is that the chiropractor actually comes from a heathen base also but Luke was a physician himself and it was very evident that I mean you can trace herbs being used for healing through the ages in the right sense that is that is right I think the apocrypha and I know that's not a right book but that mentions even that herbs are given for the healing of mankind I believe but ancient writings indicate and yet a witch doctor in Suriname South America will mix herbs into his skull and drink them in order to bring the demons on him and so you have to be very very careful because some herbs are very potent a lot of medicine is made from herbs very strong medicines too in the medical societies today but others are very well used for healing and save people's lives but witch doctors will use herbs too in their own way yes right now those are four sessions that he gave in Iowa I believe not sure where it was and some of them are very very interesting he worked with a lot of people possessed with demons through the years yeah yeah I believe there is that danger however sometimes it is a little different you have roots of trees or bark or that are collected from all over the world that are just a chemical substance to have a chemical effect on your life there's nothing spiritual connected to them that is a different realm than if something is connected to a Hindu religion like Reflexology I have the book up here produced by them this book here I got it at Minneapolis at the airport in a New Age bookstore there this actually shows the lines of treatment and zones on a statue of Buddha has a picture of it in there they glorify the fact you know that this is ancient and I have pictures up here to yes of treating feet by the Egyptians likewise and so in that situation it is connected to religion oh yeah yeah that would be a crutch to say but normally the chemical side of medicine does not encounter religion however you have to be real careful you know this word witchcraft in Galatians 5 means potion of drugs that's what the word actually means in the Greek so I'm not sure where the line is there yes it did actually where I draw the line where I kind of come to and nothing is absolute here either because I don't know it all there is when there are mind altering drugs when there are drugs that totally change the way a man thinks in his mind and it's just like there are drugs out there today many of them you don't know the person if they've taken these for a while and it has so changed their personality and all that that I would probably call a drug that has demonic influence and would be to me Galatians 5 a potion of drugs to do that that gives you an altered the other drugs there are many drugs in the drug world to give you an altered state of consciousness and that's what he's saying about LSD LSD took you from where you were and made you a cat might have made you a lion or a tiger you would have seen yourself as an animal somebody really involved in those heavy drugs back in the 70s had horrible experiences in it and would walk off of a roof and not even know they were up there and kill themselves a lot of things like that happen I took a health course at Victor Weaver's years ago here in New Holland when I worked there and I remember our health instructor told us if anybody is on LSD keep them off of any height they have no perception of the depth and they'll walk right off of a roof alright yes throw it away not take it that's what I do you know I try what I believe and I'd rather take herbs than some of this high chemical medicine myself is just try to study out what a natural herb is for like to thin your blood or you know if you have trouble with your blood being too thick or blood pressure problems or whatever look for the herbs and you can study them there are books that are not involved in the alcohol that just give an herb for what an herb is and look for combinations of those herbs in a capsule buy an herb company or buy them in leaf form and make a tea out of them and drink the tea or whatever that's the safest way that I know to work with that. Yes? I guess so. Yeah. Well, no. You could use wine for that stomach's sake you know it would show medicinal value in some things that you'd take in order to heal yourself in that sense. Others would be left behind sick you know Epaphroditus was left sick at Crete was it or somewhere and couldn't travel with him anymore why didn't they just heal him? You know the healing does seem to change from the beginning of the book of Acts to the end. In the beginning they just laid their hands on him or even just passed a handkerchief to him and they were healed you know Paul did but in the end of the book of Acts people were left behind from the work of God for being sick and I think it was used especially and that's why I think it shows up in the African jungle it's used to authenticate the word of God when they have no bible and no base for it and you have some of that today but a lot of times when they have the word of God the miracles go down it's not just because we don't have faith.