Waltke highlights some ways pagan people determine the mind of God:
- by studying the liver of sacrificed animals (hepatoscopy)
- by studying the direction of arrows (rhabdomancy)
- by making sacrifices to idols (teraphim)
- by watching the stars (astrology)
- by fortune telling (hydromancy)
- by talking to spirits
Selected text from Pages 48-58 of
Finding the Will of God
Pagans devised all sorts of special tasks to help them determine the mind of God. Each of these tasks included searching for some special sign given by the gods.
The most popular was hepatoscopy, the study of the liver. Pagans believed that memory and intelligence resided in the liver, not the brain, and they created an entire course of study to read livers. The liver was the heaviest organ, and therefore if God was going to reveal His mind to man He would do so through the heaviest and supposedly most important organ. This may not be as incredible as it first sounds. Earlier in this century we had phrenologists, who studied the brain's wrinkles and protuberances to determine the character of the individual. Likewise the ancient priests studied the liver and intestines to determine the mind of the gods. They would sacrifice a sheep, and "read" the liver's shape to see what God had to say to them, much as a carnival gypsy might read your palm at the fair. One of the greatest kings of Assyria, Ashurbanapol, spent much of his life studying livers in order to divine the will of God. Most of the ancient texts offer explanations for reading the liver of a sacrificed animal, and they include special notations for encountering unique situations.
The ancients saw hepatoscopy as being particularly important, especially in times of war or famine. It was not unusual for a team of priests to slaughter a dozen sheep and study their livers, hoping to find similar signs in several animals. They felt that the use of many livers, with the work being done by a number of different priests, assured them of a measure of certainty in their work.
As silly as this may seem to us now, this was common practice and the people put much faith in it because they all recognized that there is a God, and they all wanted to communicate with Him. Since the shedding of blood and the very thought of life was wrapped up in a sacrifice, they thought this would offer them a sign from God.
It was certainly more bloody, but theoretically not much different from a modern man or woman who asks God for a sign to guide them. Both are methods of divination that require God to work in a miraculous way to reveal His will.
Another method of looking for a sign was that of rhabdomancy, the use of arrows as a sign from the Lord. An example of this occurs in Ezekiel 21:21: "For the king of Babylon will stop at the fork in the road, at the junction of two roads, to seek an omen. He will cast lots with arrows, he will consult his idols, he will examine the liver." The king, unsure of which road his armies must take to conquer the holy land, uses three different forms of divination to make up his mind. There were various ways to use arrows in determining the will of God. The could be cast, or tossed, to see which way they pointed. This may seem like nothing more than an ancient equivalent of spinning a lottery wheel, and that would be a valid analogy. But the people of that day believed in the superintendence of the gods in all matters, so even the direction of dropped arrows could not be chalked up to mere chance. As a matter of fact,
at least once in history a king turned his soldiers around and refused to attack the enemy because even though he had superior forces, the arrow's strongly suggested a retreat.
Teraphim, the use of idol images, is one other method of looking for a sign from God. Making sacrifices to idols was a common practice, and the people hoped to intercede for themselves and gain the favor of the gods. Scripture is very clear about how God's people are to respond to idols: "Do not turn to idols or make gods of cast metal for yourselves. I am the Lord your God" (Leviticus 19:4). We have a jealous God who does not want His people involved with any sort of idol worship. "All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind; they ignorant, to their own shame. Who shapes a god and casts an idol, which can profit him nothing?" (Isaiah 44:9—10). Idols were usually statues of a god, sometimes in the form of an animal or other being, although Scripture makes clear that anything which inspires our devotion can be an idol.
After trying to please the idol, questions would be asked of it and the people would await the idol's reply.
God's people are never to be involved with idols. The prophet Hosea criticized the people of his day by saying, "They consult a wooden idol, and are answered by a stick of wood. A spirit of prostitution leads them astray; they are unfaithful to their God (Hosea 4:12), and Jonah adds, 'those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs' (Jonah 2:8). That's why the people of Israel were so reviled. Rather than worshiping the various gods of the pagan cultures, they held to their belief in the one true God. And when the nation turned away from worshiping God and began chasing after pagan deities, the country's problems began. "What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said, 'I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people'" (2 Corinthians 6:16).
The Bible tells us that when people bow down to worship an idol, they are actually worshiping a demon. "They sacrificed to demons," we read in Deuteronomy 32: 17, "which are not God—gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your fathers did not know." Paul, writing to the church at Corinth, teaches us that "the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons" (l Corinthians 10:20). Satan is behind all idol worship, since it is a means of turning people away from the true God. So any time an individual worships at an Idol, he is actually worshiping Satan. That's why Paul commends the Thessalonians for being people who "turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God" (1 Thessalonians 1:9), and why the apostle John warns his flock to "guard yourselves from idols" (1 John 5:21).
Any time a believer gets into a behavior pattern where they perform some activity to gain God's pleasure, then await His word through some obscure sign, I believe they are in very treacherous waters. Certainly Christians who use their Bible like a magic book, letting it fall open to a page and randomly pointing to a verse, come dangerously close to idol worship. And those who use a promise box, with various Scripture verses written on cards that are pulled out at random to speak to the need of the moment, behave like those involved teraphim. We should stay away from that sort of divination. We are no longer pagans, and we should have nothing to do with these pagan behaviors.
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Priests and other learned men believed they could determine the divine mind by reading the stars, and they created elaborate systems for doing so. The prophet Isaiah, writing to comfort the exiles in Babylon, mocks the astrologists in Isaiah 47:33: "Let your astrologers come forward, those star gazers who make predictions month by month." The premise behind astrology was originally that the stars, as the celestial home of God, would reveal His mind. Later the harmony of science led astrologists to believe that the eternal purposes of God would be evident in the message of the heavens.
Based upon the observations and the traditions of the centuries, astrologers claim that certain heavenly phenomena are synchronous with earthly circumstances. The movements of the planets are believed to influence the events of mankind. The heavens are divided into twelve sections, called "houses," and as the planets pass through each section they form geometrical patterns, known as "aspects," which exert a beneficial or troublesome influence.
By plotting the signs under which a person was born, an astrologer creates a horoscope that summarizes the individual's personalities and tendencies. When this information is applied to a particular date, the astrologer claims to offer specific predictions regarding success, failure, warnings, opportunities, and the like.
Astrology gained much favor during the Hellenistic age, offering a supposedly more precise method of determining the will of God. The introduction of the Julian calendar made astrological computations easy, and people from all walks of life began to depend upon horoscopes. Emperor Tiberius made decisions in accordance with his horoscope, and intellectuals through the centuries have found astrology's claim of universal harmony appealing.
However modern astronomy, in revealing the vastness of the universe, has shown the lack of information available to those drawing up astrological charts and the implausibility of anyone relying on them for important decisions.
Having said that, two York University professors have found that 45 percent of first year university students studying the liberal arts believe there is something to astrology, and that 20 percent have made at least one decision in the past year based on their horoscope. Even more astonishing is that 37 percent of those studying in the hard sciences at university hold some belief in astroloor, telling the researchers that astrologers can "predict one's character and future by studying the heavens." Michael De Robertis, who along with Paul Delaney conducted the study, said the survey reveals how science and mathematics courses in public high schools have failed. "In education we should be teaching students what real life is all about... They don't know that statistically there is nothing to (astrology) and there never has been anything to it."
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Scripture clearly warns against depending on astrologers and any other diviner. 2 Kings 17:16 warns of people who "forsook all the commands of the Lord their God and made for themselves two idols cast in the shape of calves, and an Asherah pole. The bowed down to the starry host and they worshipped Baal." Later in that same book we read of King Josiah ordering the high priest "to remove from the temple of the Lord all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts" and to do away with the pagan priests, "those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts" (2 Kings 23:4-5). The prophet Jeremiah warns us, This is what the Lord says, do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by signs in the sky, though the nations are terrified by them, for the customs of the peoples are worthless" (Jeremiah 10:2-3).
One of the oldest forms of determining the will of God for an individual's future was by hydromancy, or using water to tell fortunes. If you remember the story of Joseph having a steward hide his cup in his brother Benjamin's sack, the cup itself was noteworthy. In Genesis 44:5 we read, "Is this the cup my master drinks from and also uses for divination?" His statement is sarcastic. The cup could not even reveal who stole it! The ancients, however, believed they could read the liquid left in a bowl, and that it would predict the future of the person who used it. It is the same principle as reading tea leaves or mixing tarot cards, believing that a person's "karma" somehow significantly influences all that he touches.
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Much of our modern new age religion is based upon this principle of divine influence in everyday articles. People who worship the earth, those who believe in reincarnation, and the growing interest in universal harmony all stem from this same idea that there is a mixing of the spiritual and the physical that can be attained by those who study it. Nearly all of the new age movement is focused on trying to attain some hidden knowledge of God, with the hope that the knowledge will change both the individual and the world. Books, tapes, and seminars preach a pantheistic message of finding supernatural power that fills the spiritual void of the individual.
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Those writing books on seeking the will of God by meditation or hallucinogenic drugs are getting rich. And the fable that man can somehow tell the future continues to intrigue the gullible.
Talking with spirits
God laid down the law with Israel:
"Do not practice divination or sorcery... Do not turn to mediums or seek out spirits, for you will be defiled by them" (Leviticus 19:26,31)
"Let no one be found among you who... practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord" (Deuteronomy 18:10-12).
"They practiced divination and sorcery and sold themselves to do evil in the eyes of the Lord, provoking him to anger" (2 Kings 17:17).
"When men tell you to consult mediums and spirits, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?" (Isaiah 8:19).
The Bible rejects these pagan forms of divination because they imply some other spiritual power rules the universe than Israel's good, wise, and just God. He rules along the lines of justice, ultimately rewarding the good and punishing the evil. For Christians, Christ's active obedience satisfies God's demands of justice and the Holy Spirit enables them to live righteously and for Christ to live in them.
Throughout history men have turned to prophets, oracles, and seers to help interpret the signs of God. In our own day we have witnessed the rise in phony messiahs and spiritual charlatans who deceive many people, usually getting extremely wealthy in the process.
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With all of this interest in the supernatural, with all of this activity aimed at getting in touch with the will of God, it is amazing how few people seem at peace with the Almighty. The fact is all of this divination activity has done little more than confuse people. Meanwhile, a loving and patient God waits for His people to turn to Him in obedience.
Finding the Will of God: A Pagan Notion? by Bruce K. Waltke