Dreams, Magic and a Bit of Wisdom

I've been pondering the 'magical' story of Christmas, the one about mysterious messengers appearing in the sky and some Magicians showing up a couple years later. I'd like to come back to those Wise Men.


I read in Matthew 2:12 that they were warned not to report back to wicked King Herod. And how did the warning come? In a dream! That sure sounds magical, does it not?


So I ask myself whether it still happens? Can you or I expect to be visited by some messenger or see something in one of our dreams that gives us warnings or guides us toward the next step in our earthly journey toward heaven's wondrous country?

In Job 33:15-17 we read,


"In a dream, in a vision of the night, 
       when deep sleep falls on men
       as they slumber in their beds,
 he may speak in their ears
       and terrify them with warnings,
 to turn man from wrongdoing
       and keep him from pride . . .

These are the words of young Elihu when he tried to give counsel to poor, suffering and grieving Job. Job does not refute this point. Everyone took it as a matter of course, it seems, that the Lord God may speak in a dream. Prior to these words Elihu said, "For God does speak—now one way, now another— though man may not perceive it" (v.14).

In the Christmas story several people have dreams, including both Mary and Joseph. Joseph was warned— in a dream—to high-tail it down to Egypt right after the Wise Men left, because Herod was going to try to kill the Christ Child (Matthew 2:13). The Holy Family stayed in Egypt until Joseph had another dream in which he was told to return to Nazareth.

Joseph certainly was not a prophet like Abraham, Moses, Daniel and others. Yet he was granted special guidance in dreams. What about you and me?

Again, I want to be very cautious here, because some pretty weird things have been touted by people who claim they had angels visiting them in dreams and visions. Perhaps we'd do well to listen to the writer to the Hebrews as he says,

"In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe" (Hebrews 1:1-2),

What's that mean? It means we must be very careful to listen to what God is speaking to us through his Son. He calls us to put our entire trust in him, to believe that in him we have complete forgiveness of all sins and that he will raise us up together to be with him into endless ages. There's more, but it is all related to Jesus, the One whose birth we celebrate again this year.

So if you do have some kind of dream that you believe comes from God, I for one am not going to deny it. I only urge you to make absolutely certain that what you think you heard and saw is in accord with what Christ and his prophets and apostles have previously recorded for us in God's holy Word preserved in the Bible.

Do not forget that false prophets claim to have dreams—and they may—but whoever visits them in their dreams is from the dark side and not from God. And those spirits mean us no good.

Magical Bible Stories

Yesterday I opened a very controversial topic, especially in a culture filled with a fascination of what we call magic. In addition to that, magic is related to the occult and the so-called black arts. Like I said, it all depends on what you mean, because the term magic is very fluid and ill-defined. Consequently we have a familiar problem when discussing any topic: what are you talking about?

For starters, take a look at the Harry Potter books and movies. The adulation of J K Rowling is worldwide, but there is a growing concern among Christian writers. Do a little Googling and you'll discover a long list. The Harry Potter series is all about magic—with many Biblical allusions. Even such noteworthy magazines as Christianity Today feature positive reviews of Potter's writings. Where does that leave me and you?

Like I said, it's all about definitions. For one thing, I'm not going to comment on Harry, Dumbledore and that crowd of characters. I'll leave that up to the many others who have taken it on. I have a different concern, both in this Blog and in my novel writing. But first, let me clarify what I mean by magic. 


Magic is power, power to influence the normal course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces.

Look for instance at one familiar Bible story, a story that could be titled The Shepherd and His Magical Staff. I speak, as you may have guessed, about Moses and the Exodus. The whole story is about magic and magical power. Some samples:

• From within a magical, burning-but-not-consumed-bush the angel of the LORD tells Moses that he is to confront the ruler of greatest power on earth with a warning. Unless Pharaoh lets the chosen people go free he will suffer many terrifying plagues (Exodus 3). 

• To accomplish this impossible task Moses is given magical power. He puts his hand in his coat and out it comes totally leprous, white as snow. He puts it back in, pulls it back out and it is completely clean. He throws his shepherd's staff on the ground and it becomes a snake! Wow, talk about magic (Exodus 4)! 

• And so on goes the story. With his magical staff Moses parts the sea so the entire crowd can escape and later causes water to pour from a solid rock for God's thirsty people. Still later, as you may know, he forgets how to use his magical staff and is severely punished for his mistaken belief that this power can be used at his own discretion.  

I'm calling this magic, because it is power that changes the normal course of events. Who would normally predict that the Egyptians would even vaguely consider turning their slaves free? Impossible, yet it happened. And who can explain this power? It is mysterious and beyond us. It is not natural. It is super-natural.

So we have all kinds of stories in the Bible about such goings-on. Donkeys talk, flasks of oil and jars of flour never run empty, children are raised from the dead, mysterious flying chariots appear to whisk a man into the sky, men and women have visions, strange beings come and go, thousands of people are fed with a little boy's lunch, a couple men walk on water and on and on.

If I believe in the Bible—and I do—then I must believe in magic. It's stories are full of it. Now should I seek to obtain this magical power? I must be very cautious about that, for the Lord and Master of the Universe warns that he has allowed rebel forces to exercise certain kinds of magical power that we are absolutely forbidden to use. I hear from Moses himself that we are not to practice sorcery, cast spells or consult the dead. All this the LORD God detests, and for very good reasons (Deuteronomy 18:9-14).

More on the question of dark magic another time. For now I shall be quite content to use only that power that the LORD has chosen to grant me—the mysterious power of His WORD! 

Do Christians Believe In Magic?

Do Christians believe in magic? That all depends . . . upon whom you talk with and what your definition is of the word. With Christmas but a few days away I'm thinking about the Wise Men who came for a visit a couple years after Jesus was born, but who inevitably appear in Nativity scenes as if they dropped in that great night, along with the shepherds.


Those men—three, ten, two or however many—were called Magi. Those men came from the East—the lands between the rivers. There they were considered magicians, men acquainted with mysteries and forces beyond the normal course of events. To ask if you believe in magic is then also to ask if you believe in the Magi who followed that mysterious star that went before them.


Why did they come? Why did they bring their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh? What mysteries did they know about? What was their magic? I'd like to work with those questions for a couple days as we who do believe in the Savior prepare to join millions around the earth to kneel with the Magi before Him.


The question of magic and the Bible is also a very scholarly topic. Books are written about it, conferences are held and learned men pontificate about it. They use complex phrases like "magico-religious phenomena" and "the modern system of classifying magic fails to accurately represent the mentality of the ancient civilizations under observation." I think that means that magic and religion were quite mixed together in those old days. And I think these modern wise guys tell us that we have misunderstood how the ancients thought about magic.


But back to our ancient Wise Men.


They came from somewhere in the Persian empire (modern Iran). That empire started in the seventh century B.C. under Cyrus the Great, way back in the days when the Israelites were sent home after being slaves of the Babylonians for seventy years. It continued until Alexander the Great overthrew them in 330 B.C. One of his generals began the rule of the Seleucid Empire. They were followed by the Parthian dynasty, ruling at the time of Christ's birth and never conquered by the Romans.


The Magicians who visited the Christ Child were likely priests, not kings, of the caste of the Medes. Herodotus tells us that the Magian priests formed one of the two councils of the Parthian empire. God-fearing Jews—Parthians, Medes, Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia were present at the first Pentecost (Acts 2:5-12). Those Jews were descendants of the Jews who had not returned to the Holy Land after the Persians set them free.


The Biblical Daniel was one of the Magicians during the days of the Babylonian captivity (Daniel 1:20 and Daniel 2:2). These wise men interpreted dreams and visions, read the stars and gave counsel to the king. Daniel wrote about the coming of the Lord Jesus (Daniel 7:13-14). So we must assume that his writings and teachings were preserved among the other wise men and that the Magicians who came to worship Jesus knew about and believed in the promise of the Savior.


To ask whether you believe in magic, therefore, is to ask whether God rules over all that He has created and grants revelations and wisdom to those whom He chooses. From this viewpoint the Bible is a great and wondrous book of Magic. More on this next time. 

Priests, Priestesses, Magic and Spell Casting

How many priests do you know? If you are a Roman Catholic Christian you refer to members of the clergy as priests. Such a priest is quite different from the Biblical reference to priest and in the Bible passage I'm looking at this week (Hebrews 9:23-28) where Christ is called the high priest who put away the sin of all men by the sacrifice of himself.

All religions have one common idea about a priest. He—or she—is the person appointed by some authority to lead the people of the tribe or nation in worship and honor of God and offer Him sacrifices.

This was a critical issue in the Reformation led by Martin Luther. It has to do with an understanding of the primary worship service, known as the Mass. Here is the language to be found even to this day in the Catholic encyclopedia in reference to the priest:

"The Christian law also has necessarily its priesthood to carry out the Divine service, the principal act of which is the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the figure and renewal of that of Calvary."

Lutherans reject as unbiblical the idea that the sacrifice Christ offered on the cross of Calvary can and should be repeated in any sense. We Lutherans gladly and joyfully accept the fact that Christ offered Himself "once to bear the sins of many."

Roman Catholics still use phrases like "the unbloody Sacrifice of the Eucharist" and "expiation" to explain the Mass and what the priest does within the Mass. We  Lutherans reject such understanding, even while we retain a very high view of the Lord's Supper and Jesus telling us that we receive His Body and Blood together with the bread and wine.

All this has been argued at great length in many other places and I will not go into it here once more. My only point is that when the Germans who became Nazis in the 1920s rejected Christianity, either Roman Catholicism or Lutheranism, and embraced Odinism or Asatru, they still had priests. Their priests, however, were primarily and almost exclusively women, at least if they wanted to practice the magic and gain the wisdom of the gods.

Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth

Here's what modern day Odinists say about this issue—very strange and very interesting, I might add.

"Seið is a term which is used in Old Norse for any magical practice which requires altering consciousness and raising energy. It includes shamanic skills such as spirit journeying and weather working, magic that affects men's minds, spell casting and oracular divination (spæcraft) for good or for ill. As such, it is the natural complement of the more intellectual, controlled, runic galdor magic. A woman who practiced this craft was known as a Völva, visenda (wisewoman), spákona, or seiðkona (spá- or seið-woman). The titles for male practitioners were thul (a lorespeaker, though this could also refer to galdor magic), vitki (sage), andspámaðr or seiðmaðr (spá- or seiðman)."


No Christian priest or pastor claims such powers, nor should he. Yet the desire for magic, divination and spell casting still attracts.