Is there more than one Supreme Being?

This is fundamental to our enquiry, and we need to be sure of the answer. Yet without looking at any of the evidence, the answer is apparent by carefully considering the question. Unless there is somehow an equal sharing of power, there can only be one Supreme being: the word does not allow a place for any challengers. Yet many people do believe that a great power struggle between two equally matched opponents has been continuing throughout man’s history; between a god of light and the powers of darkness. This idea can be found in the religions and customs on every continent and in every age. The view is so widespread that most ideologies include it in their own philosophies. But the existence of the belief – even the antiquity and extent of the belief – cannot be used to prove the truth of the idea. That remains open to question and examination.

Followers of the occult may claim to believe in this struggle between good and evil, but by their ‘worship’ of a supernatural evil force they make wickedness supreme, not good, nor an equal sharing between the two qualities. Applying the test of the scriptures, we find that the Bible allows no room for this concept. Indeed there is a simple and straightforward statement found first in the Old Testament and repeated by the Lord Jesus Christ in the New which denies the idea of a divine contest between gods of good and evil. When he was asked which was the most important commandment in the Jewish law, Jesus prefaced his answer by saying:

“The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God, the Lord is one’” (Mark 12:29)

The law to which he referred went on to say that God recognises no rival: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). Not that God was recognising the power of other gods and asking His children to follow only Him, for elsewhere He calls these other deities ‘no-gods’ (e.g. Isaiah 37:19). He was in fact instructing His people that they should worship Him wholeheartedly because there is no other God; there is no other Supreme Being claiming the devotion of human hearts. To worship anything else is thus a denial of the authority and majesty of the One God, the “Lord of heaven and earth”, as the Apostle Paul described Him to a company of Greek philosophers who believed in a whole panoply of deities vying with each other to receive the worship of mankind (Acts 17:24).

A warning against involvement

Wholly in harmony with this important principle about the supremacy of God, He specifically forbade the nation of Israel, His specially selected witnesses among the nations of the earth, to get involved with any of those who indulged in satanic or occult practices:

“When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or one who practises witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord your God drives them out from before you … for these nations, which you will dispossess, listened to soothsayers and diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not appointed such for you.” (Deuteronomy 18:9-14)

In this important passage various practices are brought together, all of them alien to the worship of God. They have one thing in common, and that is a denial of the supremacy of God who created all things. One of the most heinous and repugnant practices it is possible to imagine heads the list: sacrificing one’s own child by burning him on a bonfire. Only a depraved mind could conceive of such an inhuman act, and only a warped or desperate person could actually carry it out. Yet, if reports are to be believed, child sacrifice is not something only to be found in the history books: it is still practised. Some reports even suggest that it is on the increase.

And as we look down the rest of the list it has to be admitted that it is fully up to date. All these things are found in our modern world. Not only is it true that voodoo is still practised in the Caribbean, and that witchdoctors still wield frightening power in many African countries, this list describes practices carried out today in countries of the Western world also, countries which pride themselves on their civilisation and freedom from superstition. The age of tolerance, where everyone is allowed to do virtually what they wish, actually makes the control of such revolting things very difficult to impose.

After describing child sacrifice, the passage in Deuteronomy mentions the following practices:

Witchcraft: describes the use of magic arts in order to try and influence the destiny of others.

Soothsayers: attempt to discover the unknown or future events by supernatural means, by invoking powers believed to control the future destiny of individuals.

Interpreting omens: is better known to us as the interest in astrological forecasting, or reading the stars.

Sorcerers: use various means to bewitch and deceive their fellow men, claiming that they have special powers. One who conjures spells is called a witch or a wizard.

Mediums: claim to pass and receive messages sent between the living and the dead.

Spiritists: are also concerned with messages from the dead, They get involved in the whole range of spiritualist practices – tarot cards, ouija boards, automatic writing, etc.

Calling up the dead: most believers in the occult feel that it is possible to communicate with the dead. When the Bible was translated into English in the 17th century, the word ‘necromancy’ was used to describe all the different practices used to obtain messages from the dead. The most extreme form of this belief actually uses dead bodies, mostly of animals, but sometimes of humans, to make forecasts about living people.

An example of how men indulged in this forecasting is given in Ezekiel’s prophecy where the king of Babylon is shown trying to discover whether he should attack Jerusalem: would an assault prove favourable, or should he attack the Ammonites first?

“The king of Babylon stands at the parting of the road, at the fork of the two roads (one to Jerusalem, one to Rabbah, the capital of Ammon), to use divination: he shakes the arrows, he consults the images, he looks at the liver …” (Ezekiel 21:21)

By dropping a bundle of arrows to see where they pointed, by questioning his idols and by examining the liver taken from a sacrificed animal he thought he would be guided in the most propitious way. How could these things have any eloquence? How could they tell him the true answer? No wonder God instructed His people to have nothing to do with them.

One of the important things to be noticed from this catalogue of occult practices is that there are some which are indulged in casually by many in our modern world. Their pursuit is not confined to undeveloped countries where belief in the supernatural is sometimes blamed on lack of education, nor can they be relegated just to the history books. It is not possible to brush them aside as being the province only of a small minority, or as being utterly harmless. The fear engendered by occult and satanist groups is known to hold many people in a trap of terror. Even the apparently harmless interest in ‘the stars’, where astrological forecasts claim to describe the pattern of future events in an individual’s life, is potentially dangerous. The destiny of man is in God’s hands, and is not controlled by the stars, or anything else.

Where then did the idea of a rival power come from? For someone who believes in an ungodly and supernatural power of evil it provides the answer to why there is so much wickedness and evil in the world. The blame is thus placed outside man; he is not held responsible for any of the world’s ills. And in any case, so it is alleged, this life is only a preparation for entry into the spirit world.